We have the two 1sts and we’ll take who we take and we’ll assume they won’t be busts as 1st rounders.
We need a couple guys at 10 and 11 of comparable calibre to Pinelli and Rehkopf. We cannot miss on these picks. Valade has been a good Ranger but that calibre player could have been had in the 2nd round. And we’ve talked enough here on LeBlanc. We need to hit home runs on these two picks.
What’s really going to make or break this draft is how we fare with our picks in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th rounds. These three picks need to be good players. Very good players.
Here’s a look at players of note, who eventually reported, that we’ve taken in those rounds over the last 5 years:
2nds
Vukojevic
Sebrango
Schmidt
3rds
McDonnell
Parsons
Mercer
Bottineau
4th
Serpa
Motew
Martin
Andonovski
Those three we took in the 2nd along with McDonnell were all flyers. This is the quality we need out of our picks in these rounds.
We do our homework and pick the right players, it’ll go a long way in having a contender in 25-26 and a top contender in 26-27.
We can’t go into these seasons having to trade our way into contention as we did in 2018 and this year.
I’m getting ahead of myself here a bit, but once the trade deadline opens up, assets we need to acquire have to be with three and four years down the road in mind.
We’ll need to have a strong draft next year as well as this year. The best chance to have that strong draft is to have multiple high picks. When we move out veterans for picks, for me, I make it a priority that we acquire multiple 2nds for the ‘24 OHL draft. I’d love to see us go into the ‘24 draft with 3x2nds.
Sure you need to have a strong 19 year old group in a contending year but that has to be supported by a strong 18 year old group as well. Not having a strong 18 year old group this year forced us to trade more than we should have in order to contend.