Who should the Chicago Blackhawks select 2nd overall in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft?

[DisgruntledHawkFan]

Musto being full blown Iginla to me is hilarious. Like zero self awareness.

 

[scorehawks]

Other than perhaps Levshunov, Hawks will pick a NA skater at #2.

 

[HjamSandwich]

You've got to pick thinking we won't pick this high again for this rebuild.

Go for upside/star probability above all else.

 

[Wally1112pac]

Musto being full blown Iginla to me is hilarious. Like zero self awareness.

 

[dreadpirateroberts]

Wheeler's mailbag: Sennecke's rise, Iginla vs. Eiserman, Parekh's rankings, and more

With the draft order in shape, OHL and USHL championship series starting and the combine coming up, Wheeler answers your prospect questions.

theathletic.com

Who do you prefer as a prospect, Demidov or Michkov? — Bernard

Heading into this year, my answer was pretty firmly Michkov. And while it still might be, any gap I felt existed has shrunk to near zero if at all. I still think I’m partial to the offensive smarts and tactile game of Michkov, which is backed by a stronger statistical profile even going back to adjust for age. But I’m not sure I’m in the majority on that, as Michkov has some detractors in a way Demidov hasn’t ever really had. Demidov’s the more well-rounded player and his hands and puck skill might even get a higher grade, which is really saying something considering Michkov’s the most talented individual drafted prospect in the sport at the moment.

I think both have first-line, star-level projections, both could be a team’s leading scorer, and both are among the more productive players from a counting stats standpoint throughout the prime of their careers. The case for Demidov is that he’s more of a winning player.

 

[Styles]

This is one of the first years that I don't really have a strong opinion for any certain player. I can understand a case for about 5-6 of these players in the poll.

 

[hawksfan50]

Iginla makes more sense than Demidov as a winger partner for Bedard..It is logicalkybobvious we would be too small if it is Bedard and Denidov.


So the only forward options here are either the big 2C complement Lindstrom or the 1LW complement for the Bedard kine in Iginla.

We cannot be too small with Nazar Kantserov,Moore and Lardis..

Havin Hayescnobody projects as a 1LW so just think about it..We cannot be a "smalk" team up front...too many smalk guys ALREADY.

This is not to say we shoukd draft big guyscthat cannot skate..Both Iginla and Lindstrom can pull awY from checkers with their speed and power mox.They also can win board battles...

This is what we need up front

Missing right now.

If you make the case forca RD with pick #2 the it seems Levshunov is the consensus pick..A nice toolbox of size strength and skating and shot ...but I wonder if he realkybis a #1franchise dman to go that high ...In any case with the Hawks he will never get the chance to be a 1st pairing dman force more nhl seasons because $9.5 is locked in that spot even if he is not upto the role.

The only solution for that is to move Seth Jones to forward..but Hawks management is too stupid to understand this solution...OR they refuse to do it and that blocks Levshunov from er reaching his alkegrd ceiling as a #1D.

If hevis only going to be a 2RD...sure better than Connor Barfy...but you can get 2RD guys via trade ot ufaor later in the draft..Do not waste tge #2pick on only a 2RD..It makes no sense.

LD is crowded via the pipeline ...so it should make no sense to add a KD ..unless they pkan to pkay EdM at RD ...He did pkay RD half the tine he was in Mississisauga...less so after they traded him..

If so (EdM pkays his off side( then drafting Sam Dickinson as a LD makes sense.

Option of Vlasic or Dickinson being a 1LD and the other as a 2LD..butvyhat gives 2 shutdown dmen though Dickinson has better offensive upside and talent.

Besides you cannot go wrong picking a London Knights guy.

It woukd make the LD of the Hawks fixed as tge best Left side D in the NHL..so I can see doing that.Or even making EdN 3LD I that case and that leftxside D wil lbe magnificent.

But BeCAUSE $9.5 blocks any other RD from being g a #1D or even justca1RD (tge supposed ceiling for Kevshunov or any other RD in this draft) it makes no sense to drFt a RD this high with the #2pick.

And please no smalk buuim..Dod we not learn any lesson from tge small pmd's Stan failed with?

Gimme the size and power ..Hawks need itvelse they remain small pansies who get pushed around.by Dallas et al..

Use your noggin.

 

[statswatcher]

I mean in terms of development.

if that’s what you meant, why did you say “iginla is almost a full year younger” instead of something like “demidov has one more year of development”? are you sure you didn’t make a basic factual error and then try to salvage it when confronted by making out like you meant something which is true but that you didn’t say at all?

Iginla makes more sense than Demidov as a winger partner for Bedard..It is logicalkybobvious we would be too small if it is Bedard and Denidov.


So the only forward options here are either the big 2C complement Lindstrom or the 1LW complement for the Bedard kine in Iginla.

We cannot be too small with Nazar Kantserov,Moore and Lardis..

Havin Hayescnobody projects as a 1LW so just think about it..We cannot be a "smalk" team up front...too many smalk guys ALREADY.

This is not to say we shoukd draft big guyscthat cannot skate..Both Iginla and Lindstrom can pull awY from checkers with their speed and power mox.They also can win board battles...

This is what we need up front

Missing right now.

If you make the case forca RD with pick #2 the it seems Levshunov is the consensus pick..A nice toolbox of size strength and skating and shot ...but I wonder if he realkybis a #1franchise dman to go that high ...In any case with the Hawks he will never get the chance to be a 1st pairing dman force more nhl seasons because $9.5 is locked in that spot even if he is not upto the role.

The only solution for that is to move Seth Jones to forward..but Hawks management is too stupid to understand this solution...OR they refuse to do it and that blocks Levshunov from er reaching his alkegrd ceiling as a #1D.

If hevis only going to be a 2RD...sure better than Connor Barfy...but you can get 2RD guys via trade ot ufaor later in the draft..Do not waste tge #2pick on only a 2RD..It makes no sense.

LD is crowded via the pipeline ...so it should make no sense to add a KD ..unless they pkan to pkay EdM at RD ...He did pkay RD half the tine he was in Mississisauga...less so after they traded him..

If so (EdM pkays his off side( then drafting Sam Dickinson as a LD makes sense.

Option of Vlasic or Dickinson being a 1LD and the other as a 2LD..butvyhat gives 2 shutdown dmen though Dickinson has better offensive upside and talent.

Besides you cannot go wrong picking a London Knights guy.

It woukd make the LD of the Hawks fixed as tge best Left side D in the NHL..so I can see doing that.Or even making EdN 3LD I that case and that leftxside D wil lbe magnificent.

But BeCAUSE $9.5 blocks any other RD from being g a #1D or even justca1RD (tge supposed ceiling for Kevshunov or any other RD in this draft) it makes no sense to drFt a RD this high with the #2pick.

And please no smalk buuim..Dod we not learn any lesson from tge small pmd's Stan failed with?

Gimme the size and power ..Hawks need itvelse they remain small pansies who get pushed around.by Dallas et al..

Use your noggin.

see, this is what happens when i am the only person to give fiddy credit when he makes a whole post without having a stroke or saying stupid things. how will our special boy with the genius brain ever grow if we don’t give him positive encouragement when he does well?

 

[Idionym]

While I haven't watched Demidov and Levshunov, from a roster-building standpoint I lean more Levshunov.

The two hardest pieces to find are the 1C and the 1D. We have our 1C, but we're still looking for the 1D. If Levshunov hits and becomes that 2-way 1D, our defense is more or less set. Finding top 6 wingers, 2C, etc. to put around Bedard is much easier than finding a 1D. Especially as we begin to ascend in the standings and aren't in position to pick top 3, it's much more advantageous to be searching for top-6 wingers and centers in the back half of the top 10/early teens than it is to be searching for a 1D.

If they take Demidov and he turns out to be a star then obviously it's not the end of the world, but I just think that having our 1C and 1D positions set for the next 15 years it much better place to be than having your 1C and 1W.

 

[Kevin Musto]

Musto being full blown Iginla to me is hilarious. Like zero self awareness.

No idea what you're insinuating. Aware of what?

if that’s what you meant, why did you say “iginla is almost a full year younger”

Not what I said. Not sure why you're intentionally misquoting me.

 

[belfour30]

I'll be happy either way. There isn't a wrong answer between Demidov and Levshunov.

 

[ello]

Levshunov plays a position of need for like virtually every team - that's why he's mainly why he's ranked so high, imo. All his tools sound great on paper, but the toolbox is just meh every time I've watched him play.

I have a gut feeling that in like 8 years fans who didn't follow this draft will look back and wonder how the hell Buium didn't go top 3-5, especially considering how productive he was this year.

 

[deytookerjaabs]

What's odd to me is the debate after Demidov. He's at two on a lot of rankings so that's fair. But Levshunov is not really seen much at #2 but he's all over the place on the rest of rankings. Most have a number a players before him after Demidov.

Yet there's seems to be a consensus among many that these two are the choice, is it the Russian factor, or?

 

[Kevin Musto]

What's odd to me is the debate after Demidov. He's at two on a lot of rankings so that's fair. But Levshunov is not really seen much at #2 but he's all over the place on the rest of rankings. Most have a number a players before him after Demidov.

Yet there's seems to be a consensus among many that these two are the choice, is it the Russian factor, or?

There is no actual consensus

 

[bwanajamba]

What's odd to me is the debate after Demidov. He's at two on a lot of rankings so that's fair. But Levshunov is not really seen much at #2 but he's all over the place on the rest of rankings. Most have a number a players before him after Demidov.

Yet there's seems to be a consensus among many that these two are the choice, is it the Russian factor, or?

I think it's basically that Demidov is seen as the clear #2 forward and Levshunov as RHD has a leg up for both the Blackhawks and Ducks who have strong LHD situations, so he is being mocked as the first D off the board a lot even if he's not universally ranked the #1 D

 

[TLEH]

I think I'm ready to tap into my Musto era. Watch out fellas.

Also debuting a new profile picture for the first time in 9 years.

 

[pvr]

I think I'm ready to tap into my Musto era. Watch out fellas.

Also debuting a new profile picture for the first time in 9 years.

Instant classic!!!

 

[WarriorofTime]

I mean in terms of development.

Demidov has an extra year of development due to his age.

Like let's say Demidov was in the WHL. Iginla was drafted in the 2021 Bantam Draft. Demidov would have been class of 2020.

Yakemchuk is like that. He was drafted class of 2020, the same time as Connor Bedard, Zach Benson, etc. He's played one full season more of WHL hockey than Tij Iginla.

Does that make sense?

Gotcha..

Putting aside that is not what you originally said, I think the whole "extra year of development" is usually pretty flimsy because it's not really relevant. For one, we don't know the exact time someone started playing and even if we did I don't think it really matters at this point if someone is in "year 12" or "year 13" of hockey.

The relative age effect, players have two different cutoffs. The January 1 - December 31 cutoff for junior hockey purposes and the September 16 - September 15 cutoff for NHL draft purposes. Players in the late birthday (September 16 - December 31) are in one group for junior hockey purposes and another for draft purposes. Essentially, the end of the line for juniors, but the beginning of the line for NHL draft. This is where the "extra year" comes into play.

But also consider how not every player's paths are even identical to begin with. Sure if two kids both played on the Toronto Marlboros AAA team in the GTHL and then got drafted into the OHL, one kid had the "extra year" before their draft year. You can give it some credence for purposes of junior stats and the like, but I dunno how relevant it is for NHL drafting teams. Consider Levshunov, a late '05, but his path was very different from Dickinson, playing as an underage player (late 16 year old on a team of 17 year olds) on the Belarus U18 team, then USHL, then NCAA compared to that GTHL -> OHL path, that it's hard to really draw anything from it.

As an example, Zeev Buium (December '05) played on the 05 USNTDP team, Cole Hutson (June '06) played on the '06 USNTDP team. So Buium is a 'year ahead'.. but so what? NHL teams don't draft based on how much WJC eligiblity you have left, but how good of a player you are today and how good they think you'll be going forward. Is Hutson gonna have a big leg up that Buium needs to overcome in terms of current level of play from a perceived longer development runway? Probably not. Sure you can look at relative age effect and consider how someone relatively younger has more runway, but since they are all 18 as of September 15, 2024 and first time eligibles are all born within that 365 day window of each other... and by that point, they're old enough that there isn't *much* of a relative age effect left, I don't think it makes a big difference.

If NHL draft eligibility followed the same criteria as junior eligibility, the draft does unfold differently. Demidov, Levshunov, Buium, Yakemchuk would all be in last draft, while Carlsson, Fantilli, Reinbacher, Michkov, Danielson all wouldn't be because they'd be in the prior draft as late 04s. How would they have compared to the remaining 05s from the '23 Draft, who knows. It's also naive to think players aren't approaching their "draft year" differently, regardless of whether it's their 2nd or 3rd year in the OHL.

I imagine in general if such were the case, drafts (especially going deeper) would look a lot more like the junior hockey distributions of being dominated by the early birthday months (see Gladwell's study on this), which proves consistent year after year. So as it is, the early birthdays have a big advantage up through getting into junior hockey, the late birthdays have the advantage of that "extra year" until the NHL Draft. So that kind of leaves the summer birthdays, who are towards the middle of the junior year cycle, so not really getting a big advantage and at the very end of the NHL Draft cycle. People will definitely talk up and get excited when a summer birthday kid is doing well because of how "young" they are for their draft. Tij Iginla fits that bill. For what it's worth, so did Korchinski and Bedard... but I wouldn't make too big a deal out of it. As I've said earlier, by the time they're 18, they're generally old enough for the relative age effect to have run its course (not surprisingly, it has the biggest benefit the younger someone is, and the reason it matters a lot by junior time is all the compounding effects of being a top player from a young age).

So sure, there's a bit more runway with someone with a summer birthday at the end of their draft, but it's likely extremely minimal and marginal and scouts have to look a little more closely to really determine who may have the biggest potential for growth in terms of how they project.

 

[Beukeboom Fan]

Levshunov plays a position of need for like virtually every team - that's why he's mainly why he's ranked so high, imo. All his tools sound great on paper, but the toolbox is just meh every time I've watched him play.

I have a gut feeling that in like 8 years fans who didn't follow this draft will look back and wonder how the hell Buium didn't go top 3-5, especially considering how productive he was this year.

Bolded statement makes me nervous as hell about Leshunov. Of all sports - in hockey the measurables matter the least when trying to convert tools into actual production.

 

[Hawkaholic]

If it's not Demidov, I'd be more than happy with Dickinson. I don't care what anyone says, the dude is going to be damn good. Still think he's the best Dman available.

 

[dreadpirateroberts]

 

[EddieTheEagle]

I'll take a Kucherov...

 

[feichter33]

7 round mock/simulate your own available here:

FC Hockey

nhlentrydraft.com

Let's start to see some lists!!

 

[statswatcher]

Not what I said. Not sure why you're intentionally misquoting me.

guess i added in the “almost” because my brain felt bad and had to make you somehow less wrong and embarrassing.

 

[Blackhawks]

It really doesn’t matter if this team wants to draft based on need or based on best player the answer is Demidov, we have a horrendous offence with only one top line player and what 2-3(including Bedard) top 6 at best if you wanna compare to contenders?