I am going to take most of the afternoon tomorrow and post the CSS reports for each of our picks including mine and I will include a few regional specific scouts too. I will give a specific break down of each pick and our overall draft later. I have been super busy training a new person. I have for the first time some video that I am getting help posting that has interviews with Dean (about 30 seconds) and Futa (a bit more on each pick) and then some vid with Dennis MacInnis of ISS on our picks.
Some funny and candid stuff with Dennis about a night in TO last year and then his opinion(s) on Kempe and McKeown with a little chiming in by Mr Big (Price).
To the question was there anyone that I saw as a sleeper pick in the later rounds well I would have to say that this draft there were solid pick ups all over the place and that McKeown going early in the 2nd is a good example of how scattershot this draft was in terms of where players landed.
Now that players like Josh Ho have been drafted I can honestly say that I have never met such a poor character kid and he has left a trail of people who see things the same way as I do behind him everywhere he has gone. I know he is young and full of beans but so is every other player waiting to be drafted and that kid is one for the books. He makes Pronger look timid and reserved.
There are a couple of other players this time around who have their problems that were taken earlier then they typically would have because of their high end potential but this is where we butter our bread. Each of our kids are high character salt of the earth types who meet a specific set of standards where their character personality and level of commitment are concerned. We passed on a few players who were ranked highly or more so than the player we took but I am willing to bet that our guys make the NHL way more often then a few players who have been judged only on their hockey skills and not on the person as well.
I had known that Kempe was our guy (even though I had us going after Lems in my pre draft) but I honestly thought that he would require our trading up to get. The fact that he fell to us is a pure gift from the hockey gods. Not that I think he is going to be a replacement for Kopi but he is yet another very skilled dedicated hard nosed player who should be able to make the NHL and be a good all around player when he does. Top 6 forwards like him are hard to come by so great that we picked him up.
I am all over the place and going to get some sleep and then try to make sense of things in the morning but overall it was a great day for us. Like most of us knew this draft wasn't loaded with elite level talented kids but it was chock full of very solid young hockey players if you knew where to look and of course we sure did.
I am going to look around to read your Holden nki and a few other posters takes on the draft and am looking forward to seeing each of your thoughts too.
Hey, TG looking forward to your stuff above everything else just to see how somebody in the industry does it. I did mine over at the prospects board, if anyone still wants to take a look
here's the link, it's better for me to link you guys than to stretch the thread out by copy/pasting beyond what's reasonable.
As far as how the draft turned out compared to my list. On the guys I was high on and the NHL wasn't: Barbashev fell out of the first round which was surprising to me, I was also much higher on Magyar than where he went. Goulet whom I've had as an early 2nd went completely undrafted which was a major surprise to me (I thought he'd go for sure in the mid-rounds, character concerns maybe?). I was also higher on Jenkins (despite being light, I thought had a very heady puck-moving aspect to his game), Nantel, and Emil Johansson they all went in the 7th round. Tkachyov and Hitchcock I expected to be late round picks, but nobody took a shot at them.
Conversely I had DeAngelo as low as 60 (initially wanted to ignore character concerns, but too much smoke, and even if it were not for character concerns I don't really have much interest in risky high octane defensemen, so I doubt he'd make it into my first round), and Ho-Sang as low as 70 (with Ho-Sang I didn't even bother to address character concerns, I just don't like the way he plays the game at all, individualism and junior star type of stuff). Schmaltz I had 45, smart player but questionable intensity IMO (not a biggie to be taken higher, but I value players who dig-in a bit more better). Goldobin I had at 41 (actually spoke pretty glowingly about him if he gets proper development I think he could be a very nice pick, but being pretty risk-averse I decided to rank him a bit lower). Other than that most picks seemed to go within the range (outside of the few players I haven't been able to see at all like Bergman and a couple of others, also picks after 90 where I imagine various rankings differentiate wildly from one to another as it is)
As far as the Kings go I absolutely loved Kempe and McKeown at the spots we were able to get them. Was meh on Amadio, and Marchment. Johnson and Dillon I haven't seen so I can't really comment. Mistele, Watson, Middleton, Lintuniemi I'm all OK with. Although I didn't really rank any of them in the top 120, they were in the group of about 30 players that I had to cut to bring the total number down from about 150 to 120. The fact that they'll be working with the Kings development staff probably raises their value in itself, who knows what happens to them if they go to the Islanders or some team like that (no offense to the Islanders but you get the point). I think both Lintuniemi and Middleton project as decently-sized stay-at-homers with decent poise and reads, in the sense that they aren't really going to hurt you if they have to handle the puck. Watson has natural goal-scoring instincts that are pretty rare, with a very nice positional sense in the offensive zone as to where he needs to go to find himself open with a scoring opportunity. With Watson he's small and I think he could stand to get a bit more involved in the play. Mistele I probably like the best out of those, he too has a great natural awareness of where to be and a good size. I think he really reads the play well whether it's making the play or getting into soft spots offensively. Just needs more confidence and getting used to a bigger role on the Plymouth team.
