William Eklund
- Thread starter Eye of Ra
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Also, I am REALLY rooting for the sharks to take mini Eklund. The Sedins completely transformed vancouver and made them a competitive team for a decade. prior to drafting the twins, Van had missed the PO's 4 years in a row. After they came into the leauge, Van made the PO's 10 of 12 years including a finals appearance. I love the idea of the brothers on the same line with Celly in the middle. And from all I've read, he's the real deal. slim and on the smaller end like his bro, but that can be built up over time, but the work ethic and skill seems very legit. Wouldn't surpise me at all if the sharks pick him in the 8-10th overall range, where I expect them to end up. If they are in the top 4, they will grab one of the big 4, but otherwise its EK all the way!
TheBigDrunkPanda
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Most points while being on the worst team in the league makes even more impressive
The Nemesis
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William and Viktor are 4 years apart and will have never played on the same team. The Sedins are literally the same age and have been together their entire lives. Invoking their name as a comparison or aspiration doesn't really track because the situation isn't nearly similar enough beyond "are related"
matt trick
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TheBigDrunkPanda
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Well he’s being compared to William, but I doubt the sharks would get that lucky to draft him he’s projecting as a top tier first rounder
That's fair, but "are related" matters. Im sure they messed around together as kids and it's likely not by chance that both may end up top 10 NHL picks. It's more like the Tkachuks. Obviously, they arent perfectly parallel situations, but nevertheless, having brothers on the same team (line) is exciting, and Watching Ek's development and knowing they have the same upbringing and a built in obvious mentor for Viktor has value.
yeah, something in the 6-10 range. I figure thats pretty close to where the sharks are likely to draft. I think top 4 and getting one of the big prizes would be very exciting, but I don't think its gunna happen. The team is too good to finish that low, barring a lottery win.
The Nemesis
Semper Tyrannus
I realize this is because of that tweet, and I'm not saying this to single you out or go "lol, what a dumb comparison that should reflect poorly on you for invoking it. Feel shame." as much as it is about the tweet author and the tweet itself, but that is a weird and pretty pointless measure of anything and I'm surprised that it's gotten any legs instead of immediately being laughed off as a desperate attempt by someone to get social media engagement. It's honestly the first time I've ever seen anyone use draft class as a filtering criteria for single-season performance in any situation besides rookie year results.
Eklund is 7th in career scoring among that draft, so it's not like this is him rising out of the depths to outpace a multitude of other players who have been better than him before. He's also 4th in PPG (min 10 career points) based on however recent HockeyDB's draft year career #s are, with 2 of the 3 guys ahead of him being selected further enough down the draft that it strongly disqualifies any real comparison about their perceived worth at the draft (those two are Wyatt Johnston and Logan Stankoven. The only close pick ahead of Eklund is Dylan Guenther, who's #1 on this PPG board)
"Guy who is one of the best offensive players from his draft is having the best offensive quarter seasons among his draft cohort" is sort of a "well...yeah? And?" compliment because it's not necessarily unexpected or unusual.
If by the end of this season he has had such a better year than teh rest of them that he's moved into #1 for the career scoring lead for his draft year, then it begins to be worth keeping an eye on. If he were to seize the #1 spot for career points out of the 21 draft and hang onto it for the life of that draft pool, then that's an accomplishment. But having the best 20+ game stretch out of a group of players that includes like maybe half a dozen legitimate threats to his output (including d-men, which is an apples-to-oranges comparison) is kinda meaningless.
For now, you can't convince me that the tweet author didn't purposely frame that statement in a way that makes it seem like he's purposely hoping people misunderstand it to mean "is the highest scoring member of his draft class for their careers-to-date." because that sounds more impressive and sensible to care about.
That kind of goes without saying once "are related" is on the table (with the understanding that relations that are any more indirect than cousins would not be worth pointing out). There just aren't that many instances of siblings playing across borders in national competition aside from maybe some old school defections, which would be more likely to see the sibling in an 80s-iron-curtain country punished for the defection by having their roster spot stripped than it would be to have them line up against one another, and that fun setup where the Reichel brothers gave us a bunch of Czech/Germany games against one another because non-NHL brother Martin (father of current NHLer Lukas) went and played for Germany.
Jargon
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The Nemesis
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Historically speaking, brothers on the same team has rarely had any sort of strong, identifiable benefit to them in terms of performance as most cases of brothers playing well together can be driven just as much by them being in their primes and excellent players in their own rights as it can the familiarity of having their sibling lined up beside them. The Staals were demonstrably good players without each other and were still good together. The Bures only had one season together which was marred by injuries but they were both good/great players in their own right apart. The Statsnys were great together but at least Peter was always a great player regardless and the decline after their split had as much to do with the erosion of skill and durability as it did their separation.
I'm not saying that the team shouldn't consider Viktor as a possible pick if he's in range when they're up, just that there is no real reason to consider the fact that he's related to someone already on the team as grounds to assume he'll work out for the Sharks any better than anyone else or that the Sharks will be able to get more out of him because magic sibling powers will provide underlying boosts to his level of play. Nor should it drive or influence any consideration of where in the lineup he would play.
- Jul 25, 2007
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I'll go the other way. We shouldn't pick Mini-Eklund.
We already have an Eklund. If we pick another Eklund, we now have four players at 6'0" or smaller in the top 6, and two of them play the exact same game (the Eklunds). Moreover, Eklund is seemingly able to play top line minutes with Celebrini assuming they both keep getting better, but he's not going to be a perennial all-star franchise player - he's potentially part of the core, but not the guy. We need a the guy and we should draft someone who either could be the guy at their position, or at least brings something different than one of our already existing top 6.
I don't think that if you could clone Eklund and add him to our team, that our top line would be Eklund-Celebrini-Eklund.
If we're picking 5-10, that means we should be looking at e.g. Jackson Smith, who isn't Schaefer but absolutely could be a #1 some day and might be comparable to a Dickinson by end of year, or e.g. Caleb Desnoyers, who won't be a 1C but might be a very strong complimentary winger or 2C/3C on our team in the future but not in the same exact way that W. Eklund is. Other names could be Carter Bear (if he's going to grow), Mrtka, or other risers that we start spotting in January.
Eklund, if he hits his ceiling, will be an awesome core player, but not one that you'd want two of, in my opinion.
We already have an Eklund. If we pick another Eklund, we now have four players at 6'0" or smaller in the top 6, and two of them play the exact same game (the Eklunds). Moreover, Eklund is seemingly able to play top line minutes with Celebrini assuming they both keep getting better, but he's not going to be a perennial all-star franchise player - he's potentially part of the core, but not the guy. We need a the guy and we should draft someone who either could be the guy at their position, or at least brings something different than one of our already existing top 6.
I don't think that if you could clone Eklund and add him to our team, that our top line would be Eklund-Celebrini-Eklund.
If we're picking 5-10, that means we should be looking at e.g. Jackson Smith, who isn't Schaefer but absolutely could be a #1 some day and might be comparable to a Dickinson by end of year, or e.g. Caleb Desnoyers, who won't be a 1C but might be a very strong complimentary winger or 2C/3C on our team in the future but not in the same exact way that W. Eklund is. Other names could be Carter Bear (if he's going to grow), Mrtka, or other risers that we start spotting in January.
Eklund, if he hits his ceiling, will be an awesome core player, but not one that you'd want two of, in my opinion.
Celly4Celebrini
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Wait, if I understand correctly, you are arguing that having a second player just like william eklund is a bad thing? If I could get a player of his ilk guaranteed at #7, I would take it every day.
Looking at players picked 7th, there are better ones (Q Hughes, Keller...) but there are also many worse ones (Lias Andersoon, Alex Holtz...). Our Eklund is, I would say, in the 60-70th percentile for his draft position. I would take that....
I also think its interesting to see what happens with the bigger prospects in the system right now. Bystedt (6'3"), Haltunnen (6'3"), Musty (6'2"), Lund (6'2"). Cherny (6'3")...
So while Ekky is little at 5'11", its not the like cupboard is bare of higher end big guys up front. And size matters, but not as much as skill, heart, and work ethic.
Alaskanice
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MackAttack71
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ChompChomp
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- Jul 25, 2007
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Don't put words in my mouth, please. I am not "arguing that having a second player just like william eklund is a bad thing."
I am arguing that if we have a 5-10th pick, I would prefer us to pick a different player profile that also has similarly high upside but of a different type.
The most pressing need we have is in our defensive pipeline, where we only really have one player who has a chance at top pairing D. I vastly prefer a defenseman with top pairing upside to a clone of Eklund.
Picking similar prospect profiles over and over again is what got us a terrible pipeline in 2022. I would prefer to avoid that.
TheBigDrunkPanda
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It seems like this years first round is center heavy so a top end winger might’ve viewed as a more valuable pick up. Hopefully he doesn’t end up with the ducks
Juxtaposer
Outro: Divina Comedia
Lmao imagine taking Arvidsson, Nyquist, and Carlsson over Eklund.
The Nemesis
Semper Tyrannus
that's not wrong. But if this is the sort of dumb decision making one can expect from their team selection, who's to say they don't repeat it when the Olympics come around?
