Pinto is entering the top line because Norris is injured on LTIR. I like Pinto but I am not convinced that he will be a high scoring top 6 center; however, I hope he will be.
I don't follow the BSens as closely as others, but at least superficially speaking Crookshank is 3-4 years older than Ostapchuk, so one of them is more physically developed with not much ceiling left, so it's a bit of an apple to orange comparison. Ostapchuk was drafted higher (although with Dorion drafting it's hard to place too much importance on this), was good enough to make Team Canada at the juniors and do well there. Having said that, Crookshank did lose a lot of time to injury (this makes him a true Senator!), missing an entire year, which has affected his development and timelines significantly.
Ostapchuk played world Junior twice. It's rare that a guy plays world Junior twice for us or the Americans and doesn't go on to a decent NHL career.
They aren’t comparable players at all.
They don't need any more left hand shots on D & both Dickson & Silayev are left shot D. They need a right shot D & that leaves Levshunov who I think will likely be taken before Ott picks unless the draft lottery moves them up. That would leave Yakemchuk & Parkh & I have already explained why I would take Yakemchuk over Parekh since IMO he is more of the same of what we already have, but if they select him I would be fine with it given we need a top pairing RD. The reason they should take need in this draft is because it will fill a huge hole for them & Yakemchuk is more of the kind of player the Sens need on D more so then another small soft RD.
When was he benched? I mean, he wasn't used in OT, but he didn't miss a shift as far as I could tell, though Greig did get moved onto Stu's line and Joseph took his place.
I didn’t see very much of him and Kubalik in the third. And last game I don’t know if he got a third period shift
He had 6 shifts in the 3rd, last one was with 2.5 minutes left
I agree with most of what you said except the hot take; O needs more time to develop in the AHL.
A perfect draft for me would be getting the top pick in the lottery and taking Celebrini, followed by a second pick in the first round which might allow us to pick a higher rated prospect who drops down to us.
Results are in: we could have drafted Silayev, Dickinson or Parehk at #7. Time will tell if we made the optimal choice. I don't see Yakemchuk as a big reach so I am not unhappy having him as a prospect; however, we could have had one of the three above instead. We shall see how prescient our scouts are.
I doubt that Yakemchuk plays on the Ottawa Senators during the next 2 seasons; I expect him to arrive for the 2026-27 season after gaining experience playing against men in the AHL prior to that. A "substantial role" will happen sometime after his first season, sometime after the 2026-27 season. He will not be a "bust" then.
To be fair, I think the chances we don’t need a RD in three years are slim to none. Jensen is going to age out, Zub will be 32 and JBD probably won’t be around, and if he is, he’ll be a bottom pairing guy.
