Winners and losers from the 2017 NHL draft weekend
A shift in the hockey spectrum happened this weekend.
The NHL draft is behind us after a long two weeks of expansion draft transactions, trade rumors and consternation.
Before we turn our full attention to sleep NHL free agency, let’s award some winners and losers from draft weekend.
Winners
Swiss hockey
Seventy-three Swiss teens have ever been drafted in the NHL entry draft. Until Friday, only one Swiss-born player had gone in the top 10: Nino Niederreiter (fifth overall in 2010).
Now Nico Hischier is the first and only Swiss player taken first overall. It’s a heck of an accomplishment for him personally, but also for a country that’s churned out more quality NHL players than ever before over the last decade or so. And it set the tone for the rest of the European-based draft. Speaking of ...
Finland
Someone made the joke on Twitter yesterday that it seemed every teenager in Finland had been drafted. Canada (37 percent) and the United States (22 percent) obviously claimed the lion’s share of drafted players in 2017, but no country dominated the top three rounds like Finland this year.
Six players went in the first round alone (notably, Miro Heiskanen at No. 3), followed by another six in the second round. So many of them are quality players that will make marks on the league in a few years. Once known as a goalie factory, Finland is now becoming one of the world’s hockey hotbeds to rival North America and their Swedish rivals.
Antoine Morand and Maxime Comtois
Comtois fell out of the first round as expected to the Ducks at 50th overall. Ten spots later, Anaheim took his best friend: Antoine Morand.
Dallas Stars
No team maximized value with their top selections better than the Stars:
- They took the best defenseman in the draft, Heiskanen, at No. 3.
- They traded up to No. 26 to take Boston University’s Jake Oettinger, arguably the draft’s best goalie.
- They landed winger Jason Robertson, one of the draft’s best scorers, at the top of the second round.
Dallas, a contender before injuries killed their season, never expected to be in position to get those kinds of players at the 2017 draft. It was, and it executed flawlessly and injected new life into a middling system.
Los Angeles Kings
What a draft. Gabriel Vilardi at 11th overall is a steal; most projections had him going in at least the top five, if not third overall to Dallas.
Instead, something scared teams off. The only guess is his skating, which isn’t the best but also doesn’t negate what a powerfully creative center he is. He’ll be a stud in L.A.
Then the Kings took Jaret Anderson-Dolan, a quick, two-way forward many pundits like a lot. They also got good value late in the draft. L.A. came into the weekend with a meh system and left with some bright players.
Vegas Golden Knights
The best draft of any team. No question. Their three picks in the first round all bring something different but palpable to their position. Cody Glass is a Mark Scheifele in the making, a big playmaking center with great instincts and scoring ability. Nick Suzuki has some of the highest “hockey I.Q.” in the draft and emerged as a lethal scorer this year in the Ontario Hockey League. And Erik Brannstrom is, as NHL Network analyst Craig Button aptly put it, a bulldog. A hyper-aggressive offensive defenseman.
Then they took loads of skill and size and promise with their boat-load of picks on day two. Nicolas Hague, Jake Leschyshyn, Jonas Røndbjerg, Maxim Zhukov, Lucas Elvenes ... all players with high praise leading up to the draft. All heading to Vegas. Fortune favored them.
Honorable mentions: St. Louis picking up both Robert Thomas and Klim Kostin to end the first round was commendable ... The Hurricanes drafted a ton of players and diversified their forward group admirably ... Edmonton landed Kailer Yamamoto, possibly the steal of the draft if he pans out ... Nashville caught a falling Eeli Tolvanen in the first round ... New Jersey had a good draft overall besides Hischier ... the Canucks now have two excellent goalie prospects with Thatcher Demko and Michael DiPietro ... Minnesota spent their limited picks on high-skill guys, and did well ... San Jose picking up Sasha Chmelevski and Ivan Chekhovich might’ve been the savviest picks on day two.
Losers
Casey Mittelstadt
He got drafted in the top ten to a high-profile organization with some great young talent. So not a huge loss for this year’s “Mr. Hockey.”
But he was the first player to fall hard after a projected top-five spot, and it makes you wonder if scouts just don’t like him or if we’re all missing something.
Boston Bruins
Boston left some tantalizing names on the board in the first two rounds; Urho Vaakanainen might be a solid defenseman for years, but at 18th I’d rather have seen them take someone more dynamic like Pierre-Olivier Joseph or Henri Jokiharju. They took Jack Studnicka in the second round when Joni Ikonen and Morand were still available.
Boston played the draft safely when they didn’t need to.
Anyone expecting trades or anything interesting to happen on Day 2
I forget which GM said this, but it rang true: maybe NHL front offices were just exhausted after a long, arduous two weeks of expansion drafting. Chatter was abundant, but nobody pulled any triggers outside of Calgary acquiring Travis Hamonic. Which only serves to prove the same old lesson: the moment you expect the NHL to do something exciting, nothing will happen.
Oh, and if you planned to take Saturday off for NHL movement fireworks I’m truly sorry. That was the most clinical day of drafting I’ve ever seen.
New York Rangers
They acquired the seventh overall pick from Arizona in a trade this week and used it on Lias Andersson, a good player but someone better slotted in the late teens or early 20s. They left dynamic talent (for this draft class, anyway) on the board there for a guy who might end up as a decent middle-six player.
They then took a risk on Filip Chytil at 21. He’s one of the youngest players in the draft and no sure thing. “No sure thing” also applies to Yamamoto, who went to Edmonton in the next pick. Guess my preference.
Detroit Red Wings
They had an ocean of draft picks and rarely did anything interesting with them. The first red-flag was taking Michael Rasmussen at ninth overall instead of Vilardi. Neither are 200-foot players at this point, but Rasmussen’s 5-on-5 numbers indicate he might be much more one-dimensional going forward. He’s their top center prospect now, but if they had drafted both then Vilardi would be far ahead of him. I didn’t get it.
Detroit spent Day 2 taking a bunch of different players with different skill-sets, but none that stand out as impressive selections. This might be a decent base to your rebuild, but other teams (New Jersey, Los Angeles) came away with better rebuild returns than Detroit.
Canadian junior hockey
For the second straight year it felt like NHL teams preferred to take players with NCAA commitments over players already in or headed to the OHL, QMJHL or WHL. I couldn’t tell you why, but it bodes well for the state of college hockey for sure.
Dishonorable mentions: Reporters who tried to get Nolan Patrick to say bad things about Nico to start a rivalry. The two are clearly good buds. Nolan gave Nico a hug after he was picked first ... The Penguins had an entirely unremarkable draft, but they won the Cup, so who cares ... Ottawa had an unremarkable draft, as well ... The Flames managed to have a meh draft AND trade away like half of their next few drafts for one player this weekend ... Eeli Tolvanen fell hard in the draft after Boston College rejected his application ... Pity Blackhawks writers who have to spell Andrei Altybarmakyan’s name in a few years.