Caulfield: As if we need any more lessons in not drafting players who play bottom six when they're in junior. Even if he tops out at Zach Aston-Reese or whatever his highest ceiling is, I'm always going to make a frowny face at just unbelievably unimaginative picks. There's no excuse. There's 50 guys at that point in the draft that I'd take a chance on. And even if you say, "well, that's was our U.S. guy's pick...so, it's not like you're gonna take Yegor Savikov or some such..." ok fine...Patrick Moynihan on that same team wasn't gone yet, Aidan McDonough is in the same league and everyone knew who that was, I had Parker Ford as a 3rd round guy or so that year, same with Jami Krannila...and this isn't even retrospect pulls, it's out there. I said this at the time, the situation hasn't improved.
Nickl is the defense version of Judd. He's not a very good skater. He's not very skilled. He has average hockey sense. He's pretty tough to play against. Nickl specifically isn't super athletic. So his physicality doesn't translate into anything that makes it interesting before there's a limitation on that. Looking at his ice time, it must be playoff time in Sweden because he went from playing 17, 18 minutes down to 4. So, you kind of know where you stand there. I don't know, at times, it looks like he's a sentient marionette puppet...it's like, there's intent, and then there's the action, and then someone from above pulls the strings and makes it go a little bit out of control, and then his body takes over again and gets him back on his feet...it's bizarre. I don't think this is a player either.