Attack will be making 3 import choices.
Rafik Varosyan and Max Bleicher will be playing in Europe next season
Still haven't seen a report on Bleicher in German hockey news as to where he's going to end up, but as a National Team regular I'm sure lots of pro clubs will be interested even on a development contract.
This has got to be the biggest area in need of improvement from management - imports ought to be upgrades and the good teams make use of those slots. The team has had one (!!) import in the last five seasons play multiple years in Owen Sound in Petrovsky.
And looking at the last decade it's pretty bleak:
- Bleicher and Varosyan both lasted a season, both looked like OHLers to me but fell out of favour.
- Matejicek turned into a decent OHLer but it wasn't in Owen Sound;
- Schweingruber lasted until Christmas and was a non-factor;
- Petrovsky a pretty close to a star level player and NHL draft pick, even if he stagnated, he was excellent value;
- Machacek arguably overperformed given his first season but still was decent, not great (also drafted that season was Julian Straub, from Bleicher's EV Fuessen, who reported but didn't make the team);
- Manuel Alberg lasted a season and was a non-factor;
- Vasili Filyayev, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, actually showed up to camp but was nowhere near good enough;
- Maxim Sushko was terrific, turned into an NHL prospect and was great all three seasons in Owen Sound;
- 2015 no selection was made as the team had two star imports in Sharipzyanov and Palmu (and were part of the last era where this team was anything like a real contender).
So a lot of room for improvement!
I'm curious how they choose to use those picks. It's a crowded roster as it stands. Do you try and get two players with picks 1 and 2 and maybe take a swing for the fences pick at 3 or a guy who may come next year? Anybody they pick is going to have to be an immediate player to jump in this year as they are pushing somebody else off the roster essentially. With how volatile the import draft can be, I find it tough to draft and slot in three new imports all at once. I think optimistically, if they can find two players out of the three picks, that's a win. Import Draft is coming up pretty quickly so we won't have to wait too long to find out.
Maybe I'm on the -too skeptical- side of the team's import strategy (basically throw darts at the board and bet on talent), but have a hard time seeing there being enough good players available to integrate three foreign kids all at once. Doesn't seem like the team has the resources to fully support these kids (given they struggled, and got lucky, to find Varosyan a Russian speaking billet, as just one example).
If I'm the team, definitely try and make the best two picks you can, and then shoot for the stars on a high end kid that isn't coming in the hopes that maybe an NHL team sends them down the line with the new era CHL. Maybe target two kids from the same country so that they aren't linguistically isolated.
As we've been speculating since Sykora was picked at the draft, his USHL team has two high end import eligible 2008 birthdays that would absolutely play on this roster. If they can get Murnieks and he reports, that would be a dream scenario I think and anything else, even just a roster player from pick 2, would be gravy.
