Published by hockeybuzz.com, 8-23-2018
This is the second of a two-part profile on 2018 Sabres fourth round draft pick (94th-overall,) Matej Pekar.
Part 1 can be found by clicking here.
After listening to Muskegon Lumberjack coaches talk about forward Matej Pekar's unrelenting work ethic and style of play, one might get the impression that he's all work, no play and is a really dull young man. To the contrary, Pekar seems like he's enjoying life in America as a teenage hockey player both on and off the ice and it shines through during interviews.
At his post draft presser an extremely giddy and smiling Pekar told the gathered media "I probably sound a little bit stupid, but I'm so happy to be here I don't know what to say." After he got hammered with a hard check by first-overall pick Rasmus Dahlin at development camp, Pekar told the local press with a smile of almost disbelief, and maybe a touch of pride, that he never saw Dahlin hit someone so hard.
And during the three on three tournament Pekar played his dogged style against 2017 Sabres first rounder Casey Mittelstadt who didn't take kindly to it. With a gadfly grin he told the media, "that’s my shot to kind of piss him off, get in his head and try to win the game for the team. It’s way more fun when you see Casey getting pissed at you."
There's an honesty about Pekar in how he plays the game and, seemingly, how he goes about life. On the ice he knows who he is and get's at it. Off the ice he has a very engaging personality and a smile that says he knows what to take seriously and what not to. It's something that shone through at Sabres Development Camp and turned him into a fan favorite. Sure, on the ice he oozes character, loves to play the game hard, and getting under an opponent's skin brings a broad smile to his face. That engaging smile may have been a product of a job well done and/or is the product of passing through difficult thresholds at a young age where he tasted failure and worked hard to overcome them.
Then again, maybe his father Joseph Pekar has something to do with his son's sunny disposition.
Make no mistake, Pekar got his work ethic from his father. "That's how he raised me. He always pushed me to work hard," he said. But when I asked him if he got his sense of humor from his father he was quick to reply, "100%."
At the draft presser Pekar told the story of the Sabres meeting Joseph while he was wearing his "funny Detroit Red Wings pants." Those "funny pants" were actually pajama bottoms that he'd bought while visiting his son. "He was here for a visit a year ago," Pekar told me, "and we saw them in some shop and he said, 'I have to buy them. For five bucks. I'm gonna buy them.'
"He used to wear them everywhere including business meetings," said Pekar chuckling the entire time he told the story and added that after Buffalo drafted him, Joseph's bosses said that they'd get him some Sabres towels.
"He's like that all the time," said Pekar. "People that know him well expect things like that from him."
Joseph should take pride in knowing that the son he raised worked hard at his game and ended up being selected in the NHL Draft while never losing that magnetic personality. It also had to be a very proud moment to have a connection to former Sabre and Czech legend, Dominik Hasek, who's hometown is only about 85 miles from them. Pekar lit up when I asked if he'd ever watched old videos of Hasek at the 1998 Nagano Olympics where the future Hall of Famer lead the Czech Republic to gold.
"Not only do I watch it, I've seen it a lot of times," said Pekar and even noted the trade of Hasek from the Chicago Blackhawks to Buffalo. He's also very familiar with another Czech legend, Jaromir Jagr and has followed him closely as well even pointing out, with a laugh, that Jagr, "liked to stick his butt out just to protect the puck."
With Pekar it's not so much that what he says, but it's how he says it. There's joy and humor for him in those comedic moments and it comes through (even over the phone) whether he's talking about his dad's "funny pants" or how Jagr "stuck his butt out."
When I talked to him on a Sunday, it was his day to be away from hockey and I asked him what he was going to do. Pekar said he was going to play a pickup game of basketball with his friends "to just get some...active rest," before stopping for a second and chuckling a bit at the term he just used. After that he said maybe he and his friends would go to the movies. Before I could ask what movie he might see or what kind of movies he liked, he said, "we don't go there for the movie, we just go there for the popcorn" and laughed.
The sheer joy of indulging in that slice of Americana really came through when he said "the last time we went there I ate a bucket [of popcorn] and fell asleep half-way through the movie" causing an eruption of laughter on both ends of the phone line.
Pekar's zest for life and positivity will be tested again this season as there's a lot of work ahead of him. The 18 yr old left winger will be venturing into new territory for Muskegon as the Lumberjacks will be looking at him as a scorer and to him for leadership. He knows that the coaching staff will put him in a position to score, but that "he has to score the goals" and he also said he's honored to be considered a leader, likes to be a leader and feels that he can lead both on and off the ice.
Pekar certainly has the on-ice character and work-ethic to succeed and the more he and the team succeed, the more his personality will blossom. The Sabres certainly could use players with on-ice attributes like that while the Buffalo media and fan base could use an influx of positivity and humor. It's a good combination and hopefully we'll see Pekar talking about him pissing off star NHL players and/or scoring goals in post-game interviews for the Sabres somewhere down the road.
Showing posts with label 2018 NHL Draft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2018 NHL Draft. Show all posts
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Thursday, August 23, 2018
Sabres find plenty of character, and a character, in Matej Pekar. Pt. 1
Published by hockeybuzz.com 8-21-2018
When Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula talked about "adding discipline, structure, communication and character" to the organization after firing general manager Tim Murray in 2017, he emphasized "we have to have character." Jason Botterill, the man he hired to replace Murray, is also a firm believer in character as a foundational building block. Prior to his first draft as a GM, Botterill talked with the hosts of The Instigators on his approach to selecting players that particular word came up numerous times.
"Let's be honest," he told the hosts back in 2017, "there's an element of luck (to the draft) but there also needs to be a structure to it. That's why it's so key, finding certain elements in the character aspect. You're picking a player when they're 17 or 18 yrs. old, they're not a finished product. There's much for them to do. Their drive off the ice, their willingness to improve their game in the weight room or on the ice. These are key attributes.
"You're not going to be perfect," he continued, "maybe they're not always going to be the most high-end guys, but you've got to find those character guys who are going to be willing to put the work in."
It took Botterill a year to get his scouting staff in place and 2018 looks to be a banner draft, especially when you have a defenseman like Rasmus Dahlin, who combines high-end skill and high character, at the top. Fourth round pick Matej (pronounced, meh-tay) Pekar from the Muskegon Lumberjacks of the USHL may not have the high-end skills of a Dahlin, but the 94th-overall selection has that character Botterill was looking for. And what we've come to find out since his selection, he's also a bit of a character as well.
At his post-draft presser, Botterill said of Pekar, "What we like about him is his tenacity, his ability to skate, his ability to get on the forecheck.
"Our guys talked about his style of play, relentless on the forecheck, getting after it," continued Botterill to the gathered media. "He's underdeveloped from a physical standpoint but everything we've heard from behind the scenes is that he's working very hard at that and that will continue to develop over the next little bit."
New Lumberjacks head coach Mike Hamilton was "behind the scenes" last year as an assistant in Muskegon and when I talked to him last week her relayed the same thing to me about Pekar via a phone conversation. He called the 18 yr. old left-winger a "meat and potatoes guy, with no ego to him who's going to show up to work every day."
Hamilton was just promoted to head coach after being a part-time assistant coach with the Lumberjacks for the last five years. A native of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan just north of Detroit, Hamilton spent years coaching youth hockey with the HoneyBaked youth hockey program on the east side of the state and also played for Minnesota State University. Hamilton's connections with the Lumberjacks run deep. His son Trevor, who just signed with the Grand Rapids Griffins of the American Hockey League, also played at Muskegon and Hamilton had played junior hockey under John LaFontaine, the coach he replaced. He was involved with Dan Israel's purchase of the team.
LaFontaine had done some nice work in Muskegon coaching them to a 70-43-7 mark over his two seasons there which included setting a franchise record for most points in a season in 2016-17. Andrei Svechnikov, the second-overall pick in the 2018 NHL Draft, lead that record setting team with 29 goals and 58 points in 48 games while on his way to being named USHL rookie of the year. LaFontaine's team added another ROY honor the following season when Pekar was named the league's top rookie. Unfortunately, Muskegon was ousted in the first round in both of those seasons and LaFontaine was replaced by Hamilton.
Hamilton had nothing but high praise for LaFontaine, telling me that his predecessor "may have sacrificed some wins for [player] development, but he did his players great things by developing them and teaching them the right way to play the game." A total of five Lumberjacks were taken at the 2018 NHL Draft lead by Svechinkov, who played for Barrie of the OHL last season. Pekar was joined by team mates Jachym Kondelik (111th, NSH,) Mikael Hakkarainen (139th, CHI) and Emilio Pettersen (167th, CGY.)
Both Hamilton and LaFontaine were effusive in their praise of Pekar's work ethic and willingness to do whatever it took for team success. LaFontaine called him "the ultimate team player" with "a passion and work ethic that's above the charts." Hamilton said, "when there was ice, he was always first on the ice, last off it on a daily basis" and that Pekar "works and pushes and wants more and wants to get better. Wanting more instruction, wanting more video, wanting more analysis" calling him a "phenomenal young man" and adding that, "when people would call, it was almost as if we were giving them a line of B.S. because there's not a lot of bad things to say about Matej."
The coaches pointed to Pekar's difficult journey from the Czech Republic to NHL Draft as a driving force to his overall disposition. Pekar came to North America at the age of 14, played travel hockey with Tier-2 level Jimmy Johns jumped up the U-16 Tier-1 Elite Hockey League with the Oakland Jr. Grizzlies before getting drafted by the Chicago Steele in the third round (46th) of the USHL Draft. After not making the team out of camp, Pekar was traded to the Lumberjacks for Cole Kodsi who was a 16th round pick of the Lumberjacks.
"I didn't even make the 30-man roster (in Chicago,)" Pekar told me. "Fortunately they traded me to Muskegon which was even better for me."
LaFontaine pointed to Pekar and his hockey journey as someone who's "appreciative of what he's got," one who "stays humble, stays working, maybe because he didn't have everything handed to him and seemed to appreciate every step of the way."
When Pekar joined LaFontaine and the Lumberjacks he didn't know what to expect. "I was super nervous because I didn't make the Chicago team," he said. "I just tried to work hard and play the way I could play and try to prove myself to the coaches."
Pekar did make the team and started out at left wing on the second and third lines during exhibition games and played the first game of the season on the third line. Prior to the second game he got the opportunity to skate with the top line because of some lobbying on the part of a couple team mates. "The guys told me that Jachym (Kondelik) asked the coach if he could try putting two Czechs together to see how it works," he said.
"I would say two team mates," recalled LaFontaine. "At the time on our first line was a fellow countryman (Kondelik,) he was in his second year for us and our leading scorer Anthony Del Gaizo. They played together a week or two and they asked if they could try Matej on the line.
"Once we moved [Pekar] there, he never left the top line."
Pekar willfully and gratefully did a lot of the dirty work on that line going into the corners and fishing out the puck despite being a lengthy, skinny, somewhat scrawny kid who got pushed off the puck a lot. At least early on. But he was never afraid nor discouraged. According to LaFontaine said Pekar worked at it and figured out how play in those tight areas. That maneuvering lead to 40 assists which was tops amongst rookies and third in the league while his linemate Del Gaizo lead the league with 40 goals.
"He was a surprise for our whole staff last year in regards to how many points he really did put up ," said Hamilton of Pekar. "We knew he was a good player, but on a team that was that deep in high-end talent, we were absolutely surprised with a rookie coming in and putting up as many points as he did."
Pekar finished the season with 54 points which tied him amongst rookies with projected 2019 top overall pick, Jack Hughes.
After playing set-up man for the first 29 games of the season with 20 assists and only five goals, Pekar began to gain more confidence shooting and scoring while also continuing to rack up assists. He upped his goal-total to nine in the last 27 games of the season and could have had more according to the coaches saying he was unselfish to the point where he'd pass up an opportunity of his own to set up a team mate. Maybe passing up a little too many.
"During the middle of the season he was passing up too many opportunities to score himself," said LaFontaine. "He was playing with older players and he just wanted to please them. They got on his case and as coaches we told him it's time to be a little more selfish and he started putting the puck in the net which was great to see."
When asked if it was difficult for Pekar to make that transition into more of a scorer, LaFontaine said that it took a while for him to build up confidence. According to the coach, Pekar knew he was passing up shots, he just didn't have any confidence at all in his shooting ability but he worked at it. "He didn't want to let his linemates down," said the LaFontaine, "so like he's accustomed to doing, he put extra time in the weaknesses of his game, which was finishing, and by the end of the year it began to turn into a strength."
When Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula talked about "adding discipline, structure, communication and character" to the organization after firing general manager Tim Murray in 2017, he emphasized "we have to have character." Jason Botterill, the man he hired to replace Murray, is also a firm believer in character as a foundational building block. Prior to his first draft as a GM, Botterill talked with the hosts of The Instigators on his approach to selecting players that particular word came up numerous times.
"Let's be honest," he told the hosts back in 2017, "there's an element of luck (to the draft) but there also needs to be a structure to it. That's why it's so key, finding certain elements in the character aspect. You're picking a player when they're 17 or 18 yrs. old, they're not a finished product. There's much for them to do. Their drive off the ice, their willingness to improve their game in the weight room or on the ice. These are key attributes.
"You're not going to be perfect," he continued, "maybe they're not always going to be the most high-end guys, but you've got to find those character guys who are going to be willing to put the work in."
It took Botterill a year to get his scouting staff in place and 2018 looks to be a banner draft, especially when you have a defenseman like Rasmus Dahlin, who combines high-end skill and high character, at the top. Fourth round pick Matej (pronounced, meh-tay) Pekar from the Muskegon Lumberjacks of the USHL may not have the high-end skills of a Dahlin, but the 94th-overall selection has that character Botterill was looking for. And what we've come to find out since his selection, he's also a bit of a character as well.
At his post-draft presser, Botterill said of Pekar, "What we like about him is his tenacity, his ability to skate, his ability to get on the forecheck.
"Our guys talked about his style of play, relentless on the forecheck, getting after it," continued Botterill to the gathered media. "He's underdeveloped from a physical standpoint but everything we've heard from behind the scenes is that he's working very hard at that and that will continue to develop over the next little bit."
New Lumberjacks head coach Mike Hamilton was "behind the scenes" last year as an assistant in Muskegon and when I talked to him last week her relayed the same thing to me about Pekar via a phone conversation. He called the 18 yr. old left-winger a "meat and potatoes guy, with no ego to him who's going to show up to work every day."
Hamilton was just promoted to head coach after being a part-time assistant coach with the Lumberjacks for the last five years. A native of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan just north of Detroit, Hamilton spent years coaching youth hockey with the HoneyBaked youth hockey program on the east side of the state and also played for Minnesota State University. Hamilton's connections with the Lumberjacks run deep. His son Trevor, who just signed with the Grand Rapids Griffins of the American Hockey League, also played at Muskegon and Hamilton had played junior hockey under John LaFontaine, the coach he replaced. He was involved with Dan Israel's purchase of the team.
LaFontaine had done some nice work in Muskegon coaching them to a 70-43-7 mark over his two seasons there which included setting a franchise record for most points in a season in 2016-17. Andrei Svechnikov, the second-overall pick in the 2018 NHL Draft, lead that record setting team with 29 goals and 58 points in 48 games while on his way to being named USHL rookie of the year. LaFontaine's team added another ROY honor the following season when Pekar was named the league's top rookie. Unfortunately, Muskegon was ousted in the first round in both of those seasons and LaFontaine was replaced by Hamilton.
Hamilton had nothing but high praise for LaFontaine, telling me that his predecessor "may have sacrificed some wins for [player] development, but he did his players great things by developing them and teaching them the right way to play the game." A total of five Lumberjacks were taken at the 2018 NHL Draft lead by Svechinkov, who played for Barrie of the OHL last season. Pekar was joined by team mates Jachym Kondelik (111th, NSH,) Mikael Hakkarainen (139th, CHI) and Emilio Pettersen (167th, CGY.)
Both Hamilton and LaFontaine were effusive in their praise of Pekar's work ethic and willingness to do whatever it took for team success. LaFontaine called him "the ultimate team player" with "a passion and work ethic that's above the charts." Hamilton said, "when there was ice, he was always first on the ice, last off it on a daily basis" and that Pekar "works and pushes and wants more and wants to get better. Wanting more instruction, wanting more video, wanting more analysis" calling him a "phenomenal young man" and adding that, "when people would call, it was almost as if we were giving them a line of B.S. because there's not a lot of bad things to say about Matej."
The coaches pointed to Pekar's difficult journey from the Czech Republic to NHL Draft as a driving force to his overall disposition. Pekar came to North America at the age of 14, played travel hockey with Tier-2 level Jimmy Johns jumped up the U-16 Tier-1 Elite Hockey League with the Oakland Jr. Grizzlies before getting drafted by the Chicago Steele in the third round (46th) of the USHL Draft. After not making the team out of camp, Pekar was traded to the Lumberjacks for Cole Kodsi who was a 16th round pick of the Lumberjacks.
"I didn't even make the 30-man roster (in Chicago,)" Pekar told me. "Fortunately they traded me to Muskegon which was even better for me."
LaFontaine pointed to Pekar and his hockey journey as someone who's "appreciative of what he's got," one who "stays humble, stays working, maybe because he didn't have everything handed to him and seemed to appreciate every step of the way."
When Pekar joined LaFontaine and the Lumberjacks he didn't know what to expect. "I was super nervous because I didn't make the Chicago team," he said. "I just tried to work hard and play the way I could play and try to prove myself to the coaches."
Pekar did make the team and started out at left wing on the second and third lines during exhibition games and played the first game of the season on the third line. Prior to the second game he got the opportunity to skate with the top line because of some lobbying on the part of a couple team mates. "The guys told me that Jachym (Kondelik) asked the coach if he could try putting two Czechs together to see how it works," he said.
"I would say two team mates," recalled LaFontaine. "At the time on our first line was a fellow countryman (Kondelik,) he was in his second year for us and our leading scorer Anthony Del Gaizo. They played together a week or two and they asked if they could try Matej on the line.
"Once we moved [Pekar] there, he never left the top line."
Pekar willfully and gratefully did a lot of the dirty work on that line going into the corners and fishing out the puck despite being a lengthy, skinny, somewhat scrawny kid who got pushed off the puck a lot. At least early on. But he was never afraid nor discouraged. According to LaFontaine said Pekar worked at it and figured out how play in those tight areas. That maneuvering lead to 40 assists which was tops amongst rookies and third in the league while his linemate Del Gaizo lead the league with 40 goals.
"He was a surprise for our whole staff last year in regards to how many points he really did put up ," said Hamilton of Pekar. "We knew he was a good player, but on a team that was that deep in high-end talent, we were absolutely surprised with a rookie coming in and putting up as many points as he did."
Pekar finished the season with 54 points which tied him amongst rookies with projected 2019 top overall pick, Jack Hughes.
After playing set-up man for the first 29 games of the season with 20 assists and only five goals, Pekar began to gain more confidence shooting and scoring while also continuing to rack up assists. He upped his goal-total to nine in the last 27 games of the season and could have had more according to the coaches saying he was unselfish to the point where he'd pass up an opportunity of his own to set up a team mate. Maybe passing up a little too many.
"During the middle of the season he was passing up too many opportunities to score himself," said LaFontaine. "He was playing with older players and he just wanted to please them. They got on his case and as coaches we told him it's time to be a little more selfish and he started putting the puck in the net which was great to see."
When asked if it was difficult for Pekar to make that transition into more of a scorer, LaFontaine said that it took a while for him to build up confidence. According to the coach, Pekar knew he was passing up shots, he just didn't have any confidence at all in his shooting ability but he worked at it. "He didn't want to let his linemates down," said the LaFontaine, "so like he's accustomed to doing, he put extra time in the weaknesses of his game, which was finishing, and by the end of the year it began to turn into a strength."
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
A look back at the 2017-18 Buffalo Sabres season--April
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 8-19-2018
The Buffalo Sabres finished off the month of March with an impressive 7-4 win over the Nashville Predators but perhaps they thought the season was over. As the calendar turned to April only four games remained in a season that had started bad and never got much better and they ended the season on a four-game losing streak.
By game 79 the Sabres were at the bottom of the league three points behind the Ottawa Senators and the only question remained was, who would finish last. After opening the month with a 5-2 loss at Toronto, Buffalo headed home to face the Senators in a battle for the basement. The Sabres proceeded to lose that one 4-2 and their fate was sealed. For the third time in five seasons the Buffalo Sabres would finish in last place although this one, unlike the other two, wasn't choreographed.
General Manager Jason Botterill wasn't all that happy with the results either. Throughout the season there were signs of frustration and at a Saturday matinee in February against the Los Angeles Kings he took those frustrations out on a taco bar at KeyBank Center. He was seething at the end of season presser as the mess he had on his hands was much worse than he'd anticipated.
The biggest thing for him was trying to change a losing culture. One of the leaders of his Sabres last year was center Ryan O'Reilly who confessed at locker cleanout day that he "lost his love for the game multiple times" during the season and that he felt the team was "stuck in this mindset of being OK with losing."
At his end of season presser Botterill just laid it out to the gathered media. "Right now we have a losing culture," he said. "We haven't won here and it's up to [head coach] Phil [Housley] and I to change that."
One of the biggest problems with perpetual losing is the development of younger player and Botterill used Casey Mittelstadt as an example. The 19 yr. old first round pick (2017, eighth-overall) had just signed with the Sabres out of the University of Minnesota and acquitted himself quite well in the six games he played for Buffalo. Mittelstadt scored his first NHL goal and added four assists but it was the culture around him that concerned Botterill.
"Everyone talks about NHL experience, how valuable NHL experience is," he said at the presser. "But it goes both ways. It was great that Casey Mittelstadt got his first National Hockey League goal. That's a positive experience. But, off the top of my head, I think he lost five out of six games since he was up here. There are things about NHL experience that he has to change and make sure that he doesn't fall into that trap."
That trap was an unforeseen season that somewhat rivaled the tank years. Some numbers:
NHL finish/points (League-leader/points)
--2017-18: 31st/62...(NSH/117)
--2014-15: 30th/54...(NYR/113)
--2013-14: 30th/52...(BOS/117)
Goals for
--2017-18: 2.41 (31st)...(TBL, 3.54)
--2014-15: 1.87 (30th)...(TBL, 3.16)
--2013-14: 1.83 (30th)...(ANA, 3.21)
Goals-against
--2017-18: 3.39 (29th)...(LAK, 2.46)
--2014-15: 3.28 (29th)...(MTL, 2.24)
--2013-14: 2.96 (25th)...(LAK, 2.05)
Goal Differential
--2017-18: -81 (31st)...(TBL, +60)
--2014-15 -113 (30th)...(NYR, +60)
--2013-14: -91 (30th)...(BOS, +84)
Yes, it was ugly, but as we saw with Mittelstadt and the series of events that lead him to signing in Buffalo, there was light at the end of the tunnel. That light got a lot brighter on April 28, 2018.
Although Botterill never came out and said who he was going to pick with the No. 1 selection of the 2018 NHL Draft, there was no doubt that Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin would be the choice.
At the end of the day, an incredibly dreadful season produced the best odds to win the lottery and after missing out on the first overall selection two times prior the Sabres got to the top. Botterill left the season with a sour taste in his mouth but by the end of the month had a lot to look forward to as his young core was getting stronger with Mittelstadt and Dahlin joining second-overall picks Jack Eichel (2015) and Sam Reinhart (2014) plus defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen (2013, eighth) as the future of the team.
The Buffalo Sabres finished off the month of March with an impressive 7-4 win over the Nashville Predators but perhaps they thought the season was over. As the calendar turned to April only four games remained in a season that had started bad and never got much better and they ended the season on a four-game losing streak.
By game 79 the Sabres were at the bottom of the league three points behind the Ottawa Senators and the only question remained was, who would finish last. After opening the month with a 5-2 loss at Toronto, Buffalo headed home to face the Senators in a battle for the basement. The Sabres proceeded to lose that one 4-2 and their fate was sealed. For the third time in five seasons the Buffalo Sabres would finish in last place although this one, unlike the other two, wasn't choreographed.
General Manager Jason Botterill wasn't all that happy with the results either. Throughout the season there were signs of frustration and at a Saturday matinee in February against the Los Angeles Kings he took those frustrations out on a taco bar at KeyBank Center. He was seething at the end of season presser as the mess he had on his hands was much worse than he'd anticipated.
The biggest thing for him was trying to change a losing culture. One of the leaders of his Sabres last year was center Ryan O'Reilly who confessed at locker cleanout day that he "lost his love for the game multiple times" during the season and that he felt the team was "stuck in this mindset of being OK with losing."
At his end of season presser Botterill just laid it out to the gathered media. "Right now we have a losing culture," he said. "We haven't won here and it's up to [head coach] Phil [Housley] and I to change that."
One of the biggest problems with perpetual losing is the development of younger player and Botterill used Casey Mittelstadt as an example. The 19 yr. old first round pick (2017, eighth-overall) had just signed with the Sabres out of the University of Minnesota and acquitted himself quite well in the six games he played for Buffalo. Mittelstadt scored his first NHL goal and added four assists but it was the culture around him that concerned Botterill.
"Everyone talks about NHL experience, how valuable NHL experience is," he said at the presser. "But it goes both ways. It was great that Casey Mittelstadt got his first National Hockey League goal. That's a positive experience. But, off the top of my head, I think he lost five out of six games since he was up here. There are things about NHL experience that he has to change and make sure that he doesn't fall into that trap."
That trap was an unforeseen season that somewhat rivaled the tank years. Some numbers:
NHL finish/points (League-leader/points)
--2017-18: 31st/62...(NSH/117)
--2014-15: 30th/54...(NYR/113)
--2013-14: 30th/52...(BOS/117)
Goals for
--2017-18: 2.41 (31st)...(TBL, 3.54)
--2014-15: 1.87 (30th)...(TBL, 3.16)
--2013-14: 1.83 (30th)...(ANA, 3.21)
Goals-against
--2017-18: 3.39 (29th)...(LAK, 2.46)
--2014-15: 3.28 (29th)...(MTL, 2.24)
--2013-14: 2.96 (25th)...(LAK, 2.05)
Goal Differential
--2017-18: -81 (31st)...(TBL, +60)
--2014-15 -113 (30th)...(NYR, +60)
--2013-14: -91 (30th)...(BOS, +84)
Yes, it was ugly, but as we saw with Mittelstadt and the series of events that lead him to signing in Buffalo, there was light at the end of the tunnel. That light got a lot brighter on April 28, 2018.
Although Botterill never came out and said who he was going to pick with the No. 1 selection of the 2018 NHL Draft, there was no doubt that Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin would be the choice.
At the end of the day, an incredibly dreadful season produced the best odds to win the lottery and after missing out on the first overall selection two times prior the Sabres got to the top. Botterill left the season with a sour taste in his mouth but by the end of the month had a lot to look forward to as his young core was getting stronger with Mittelstadt and Dahlin joining second-overall picks Jack Eichel (2015) and Sam Reinhart (2014) plus defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen (2013, eighth) as the future of the team.
Friday, July 6, 2018
A Sabrecentric recap plus a little food for thought on this Fourth of July
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 7-4-2018
The Buffalo Sabres opted to follow a defense-heavy/Swede-heavy 2018 NHL Draft by jumping into development camp earlier than normal. Sabres D-Camp was usually scheduled after the Fourth of July but this year it was moved up to the last weekend in June, which happened to butt up against the start of free agency. That, along with the trade of Ryan O'Reilly made for a very busy week.
Some things may have been missed in the process so what better time to play a little ketchup today as we munch on our All-American burgers and enjoy fireworks.
A quick recap of the draft had the Sabres and GM Jason Botterill taking five defensemen out of six picks, three of them being from Sweden and one with Swedish heritage. The parade of Swedes was lead by first overall pick D, Rasmus Dahlin followed later by the picks of defensemen Linus Lindstrand Cronholm (4th round) and William Worge Kreu (7th.) Hulking defenseman Mattias Samuelsson (2nd) was born in the U.S. and played in the USHL for the National Development Program. He is the son of former NHL d-man Kjell Samuelsson who was born in Sweden.
The Sabres selected Czech-native Matej Pekar, a center who played in the USHL, with the first pick of the fourth round and with their first pick in the seventh round they took defenseman Miska Kukkonen out of Finland.
Interesting to note that for the second year in a row under Botterill, the Sabres did not select a player from the Canadian Hockey League. Botterill's reasoning was that for later round picks, players attending college or playing overseas allows for more development time. "In a scenario where you have an extended period of four years (as opposed to two years for CHL players,)" he said at the draft, "in most situations for Europeans or college players it allows you more opportunity to develop."
All six of those draft picks were on the ice last week for D-camp.
One thing we were able to see at camp right off the bat was just how great a skater Dahlin is. For those of us who couldn't make it out to HarborCenter, there were tweets galore showing Dahlin almost effortlessly glide through drills. We also had the opportunity to see Dahlin level Pekar with a check after the feisty Czech was said to have delivered a cheap shot to the franchise defenseman.
Here's a quick shot of that hit thanks to Highlight Haven:
Sabres development camp is what the name says it is as it's mainly about teaching young players how to be professionals and getting them acclimated to the work involved at the professional level. Players from five different draft classes with Eric Cornel being the farthest reaching (2014, 44th-overall.) But it isn't all about drills as they do have some competitive fun as the camp closes with the annual French Connection 3-on-3 Tournament.
Four teams with nine players each played a round-robin to determine seeding for the semi-finals with the winner of the semi-final rounds playing for the championship.
The tournament was streamed live via sabres.com.
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 7-4-2018
For the second year in a row, Casey Mittelstadt (2017, 8th) and his Team Martin (White) won the tournament. Mittelstadt must have learned something from the previous year as his team hit the win column until the final round robin game. They dismissed of Team Robert (Gray) in the semi-final and Team Perreault (Navy) in the finals.
Mittelstadt was the star of the show but it wasn't without some peril as Pekar hounded the hell out of him in their round-robin match. It got to the point where sticks were raised between the two and with a lot of in your face intensity. Pekar's focus on Mittelstadt frustrated the talented center but come the semi finals, Pekar laid off (perhaps at the insistence of management) and Mittelstadt was allowed to more fully play his game.
Pekar drew comparisons to Boston Bruins forward Brad Marchand who's known as "The little ball of hate" as he's got a gadfly-like intensity that annoys the hell out of people. In addition to that, Pekar did have his moment of revenge against Dahlin in the tournament's first game as he smoked the defenseman with a nifty deek at the right dot and proceeded to send a wicked wrister far-side.
Defenseman Brendan Guhle (2015, 51st) was drafted for his skating and athleticism and was a man amongst boys as he breezed across the ice in a display of skating that was awe-inspiring. His finish wasn't quite there but he showed the type of talents that have him on the cusp of full-time NHL duty.
Other notes:
--Goalie Hunter Shepard was a camp invite and wowed the crowd with a spectacular display of goaltending in Team Robert's second game. Although the 6'0' 205 lb. Minnesota-Duluth junior is a bit small by today's goalie standards he impressed to the point where an eye should be kept on him once he finishes his college career.
--Rasmus Asplund was the object of former GM Tim Murray's desire in the second round of the 2016 NHL Draft held in Buffalo. Since selecting him 33rd overall fans in Sabreland have been getting reports about a strong two-way player who's got a great feel for what's happening around him and that's what we saw 3-on-3.
--Winger Victor Olofsson (2014, 181st) was off the radar in Sabreland for three years until his breakout season in Sweden last year. His 29 goals lead the league and we had the opportunity to see his wicked shot during the 3-on-3. It's impressive.
--When the name Max Afinogenov is invoked, one thinks of a fast, dart-like skater who make a lot happen on the ice and that's what we saw with Vasily Glotov (2016, 190th.) Glotov was a wizard with his skating and had some finish, but did a lot of chopping with not a lot of chips flying.
--Undrafted left-winger Pascal Aquin was signed by the Rochester Americans in early May. The 6'1" 185 lb. native of Le Gardeur, Quebec was consistently in the mix throughout as he displayed plenty of speed and moves while also scoring the lone shootout goal in the Championship Game.
There were others who made a strong impression from goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (2017, 54th) to free agent signee Andrew Oglevie (2018, Notre Dame) to fellow free agent Lawrence Pilut (2018, SHL) to, of course Dahlin who simply wowed even without scoring much.
French Connection Tournament Highlights via sabres.com
*****
Botterill and the Sabres have had a busy off season dating back to early June when they relinquished the rights 2016 draft picks Vojtech Budik (130th,) Brandon Hagel (159th) and Buffalo native Austin Osmanski (189th.)
Buffalo signed three players from that 2016 draft class--Alexander Nylander (8th,) Asplund and Cliff Pu (69th)--to their entry-level deals while Casey Fitzgerald (86th) and Brett Murray (99th) are still in college with Philip Nyberg (129th) continuing his development playing in Sweden.
Also signed to his entry-level deal was Luukkonen.
Botterill and company also qualified six restricted free agents: Justin Bailey (2013, 52nd,) Nicholas Baptiste (2013, 69th,) Sean Malone (2013, 159th,) Sam Reinhart (2014, 2nd,) C.J. Smith (2017, FA) and Danny O'Regan (2012, 138th, SJS) who came over from the San Jose Sharks in the Evander Kane deal.
The Sabres did not qualify a trio lead by last year's starting goaltender. Robin Lehner was arbitration-eligible and was allowed to walk, He recently singed with the NY Islanders. Russian free agent Victor Antipin was released and after searching for a home in the NHL, will head back to the KHL. Scott Wilson wasn't qualified but the Sabres signed him to a two-year deal on July 1, the start of free agency.
*****
Speaking of free agency, Botterill went to work filling a few holes in the organization when he signed UFA goalie Carter Hutton to a team friendly three-year deal. Hutton was a starter for the St. Louis Blues last season. They also landed another goalie to take the reigns in Rochester as Scott Wedgewood signed a one-year, two-way deal with Buffalo.
Defenseman Brandon Hickey was signed to his entry-level deal on July 1 as well. Hickey came to Buffalo in a trade with the Arizona Coyotes that saw Hudson Fasching head to the desert.
Hickey was drafted by the Calgary Flames in the 3rd round (64th) of the 2014 NHL Entry Draft. The 6'2" 204 lb. puck-mover spent a full four years at Boston University which included playing with present Sabres Jack Eichel, Evan Rodrigues and O'Regan. During that time his rights were traded to Arizona as part of the Mike Smith deal.
The acquisition and signing of Hickey adds more depth to the prospect pool and a quality defenseman for the Rochester Americans.
*****
Botterill did some wheelin' and dealin' in addition to the Fasching/Hickey deal as he continued to mold the Sabres to his liking. Between the draft and the start of free agency, Botterill hooked up with his former team, the Pittsburgh Penguins, to land LW Conor Sheary along with D, Matt Hunwick.
Sheary was traded for to help fill a gaping hole at left wing for the Sabres while Hunwick may end up in Rochester.
But that trades and the moves before were small change compared to the blockbuster O'Reilly trade. Botterill moved O'Reilly, a player that just didn't seem to fit with where he wanted the team to go, to St. Louis for a lottery-protected first rounder, a second rounder, prospect Tage Thompson and veterans Patrick Berglund and Vladimir Sobotka.
The trade, which was consummated on July 1, firmly put Botterill's stamp on his club.
Have a Happy and Safe Fourth of July celebration.
The Buffalo Sabres opted to follow a defense-heavy/Swede-heavy 2018 NHL Draft by jumping into development camp earlier than normal. Sabres D-Camp was usually scheduled after the Fourth of July but this year it was moved up to the last weekend in June, which happened to butt up against the start of free agency. That, along with the trade of Ryan O'Reilly made for a very busy week.
Some things may have been missed in the process so what better time to play a little ketchup today as we munch on our All-American burgers and enjoy fireworks.
A quick recap of the draft had the Sabres and GM Jason Botterill taking five defensemen out of six picks, three of them being from Sweden and one with Swedish heritage. The parade of Swedes was lead by first overall pick D, Rasmus Dahlin followed later by the picks of defensemen Linus Lindstrand Cronholm (4th round) and William Worge Kreu (7th.) Hulking defenseman Mattias Samuelsson (2nd) was born in the U.S. and played in the USHL for the National Development Program. He is the son of former NHL d-man Kjell Samuelsson who was born in Sweden.
The Sabres selected Czech-native Matej Pekar, a center who played in the USHL, with the first pick of the fourth round and with their first pick in the seventh round they took defenseman Miska Kukkonen out of Finland.
Interesting to note that for the second year in a row under Botterill, the Sabres did not select a player from the Canadian Hockey League. Botterill's reasoning was that for later round picks, players attending college or playing overseas allows for more development time. "In a scenario where you have an extended period of four years (as opposed to two years for CHL players,)" he said at the draft, "in most situations for Europeans or college players it allows you more opportunity to develop."
All six of those draft picks were on the ice last week for D-camp.
One thing we were able to see at camp right off the bat was just how great a skater Dahlin is. For those of us who couldn't make it out to HarborCenter, there were tweets galore showing Dahlin almost effortlessly glide through drills. We also had the opportunity to see Dahlin level Pekar with a check after the feisty Czech was said to have delivered a cheap shot to the franchise defenseman.
Here's a quick shot of that hit thanks to Highlight Haven:
Sabres development camp is what the name says it is as it's mainly about teaching young players how to be professionals and getting them acclimated to the work involved at the professional level. Players from five different draft classes with Eric Cornel being the farthest reaching (2014, 44th-overall.) But it isn't all about drills as they do have some competitive fun as the camp closes with the annual French Connection 3-on-3 Tournament.
Four teams with nine players each played a round-robin to determine seeding for the semi-finals with the winner of the semi-final rounds playing for the championship.
The tournament was streamed live via sabres.com.
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 7-4-2018
For the second year in a row, Casey Mittelstadt (2017, 8th) and his Team Martin (White) won the tournament. Mittelstadt must have learned something from the previous year as his team hit the win column until the final round robin game. They dismissed of Team Robert (Gray) in the semi-final and Team Perreault (Navy) in the finals.
Mittelstadt was the star of the show but it wasn't without some peril as Pekar hounded the hell out of him in their round-robin match. It got to the point where sticks were raised between the two and with a lot of in your face intensity. Pekar's focus on Mittelstadt frustrated the talented center but come the semi finals, Pekar laid off (perhaps at the insistence of management) and Mittelstadt was allowed to more fully play his game.
Pekar drew comparisons to Boston Bruins forward Brad Marchand who's known as "The little ball of hate" as he's got a gadfly-like intensity that annoys the hell out of people. In addition to that, Pekar did have his moment of revenge against Dahlin in the tournament's first game as he smoked the defenseman with a nifty deek at the right dot and proceeded to send a wicked wrister far-side.
Defenseman Brendan Guhle (2015, 51st) was drafted for his skating and athleticism and was a man amongst boys as he breezed across the ice in a display of skating that was awe-inspiring. His finish wasn't quite there but he showed the type of talents that have him on the cusp of full-time NHL duty.
Other notes:
--Goalie Hunter Shepard was a camp invite and wowed the crowd with a spectacular display of goaltending in Team Robert's second game. Although the 6'0' 205 lb. Minnesota-Duluth junior is a bit small by today's goalie standards he impressed to the point where an eye should be kept on him once he finishes his college career.
--Rasmus Asplund was the object of former GM Tim Murray's desire in the second round of the 2016 NHL Draft held in Buffalo. Since selecting him 33rd overall fans in Sabreland have been getting reports about a strong two-way player who's got a great feel for what's happening around him and that's what we saw 3-on-3.
--Winger Victor Olofsson (2014, 181st) was off the radar in Sabreland for three years until his breakout season in Sweden last year. His 29 goals lead the league and we had the opportunity to see his wicked shot during the 3-on-3. It's impressive.
--When the name Max Afinogenov is invoked, one thinks of a fast, dart-like skater who make a lot happen on the ice and that's what we saw with Vasily Glotov (2016, 190th.) Glotov was a wizard with his skating and had some finish, but did a lot of chopping with not a lot of chips flying.
--Undrafted left-winger Pascal Aquin was signed by the Rochester Americans in early May. The 6'1" 185 lb. native of Le Gardeur, Quebec was consistently in the mix throughout as he displayed plenty of speed and moves while also scoring the lone shootout goal in the Championship Game.
There were others who made a strong impression from goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (2017, 54th) to free agent signee Andrew Oglevie (2018, Notre Dame) to fellow free agent Lawrence Pilut (2018, SHL) to, of course Dahlin who simply wowed even without scoring much.
French Connection Tournament Highlights via sabres.com
*****
Botterill and the Sabres have had a busy off season dating back to early June when they relinquished the rights 2016 draft picks Vojtech Budik (130th,) Brandon Hagel (159th) and Buffalo native Austin Osmanski (189th.)
Buffalo signed three players from that 2016 draft class--Alexander Nylander (8th,) Asplund and Cliff Pu (69th)--to their entry-level deals while Casey Fitzgerald (86th) and Brett Murray (99th) are still in college with Philip Nyberg (129th) continuing his development playing in Sweden.
Also signed to his entry-level deal was Luukkonen.
Botterill and company also qualified six restricted free agents: Justin Bailey (2013, 52nd,) Nicholas Baptiste (2013, 69th,) Sean Malone (2013, 159th,) Sam Reinhart (2014, 2nd,) C.J. Smith (2017, FA) and Danny O'Regan (2012, 138th, SJS) who came over from the San Jose Sharks in the Evander Kane deal.
The Sabres did not qualify a trio lead by last year's starting goaltender. Robin Lehner was arbitration-eligible and was allowed to walk, He recently singed with the NY Islanders. Russian free agent Victor Antipin was released and after searching for a home in the NHL, will head back to the KHL. Scott Wilson wasn't qualified but the Sabres signed him to a two-year deal on July 1, the start of free agency.
*****
Speaking of free agency, Botterill went to work filling a few holes in the organization when he signed UFA goalie Carter Hutton to a team friendly three-year deal. Hutton was a starter for the St. Louis Blues last season. They also landed another goalie to take the reigns in Rochester as Scott Wedgewood signed a one-year, two-way deal with Buffalo.
Defenseman Brandon Hickey was signed to his entry-level deal on July 1 as well. Hickey came to Buffalo in a trade with the Arizona Coyotes that saw Hudson Fasching head to the desert.
Hickey was drafted by the Calgary Flames in the 3rd round (64th) of the 2014 NHL Entry Draft. The 6'2" 204 lb. puck-mover spent a full four years at Boston University which included playing with present Sabres Jack Eichel, Evan Rodrigues and O'Regan. During that time his rights were traded to Arizona as part of the Mike Smith deal.
The acquisition and signing of Hickey adds more depth to the prospect pool and a quality defenseman for the Rochester Americans.
*****
Botterill did some wheelin' and dealin' in addition to the Fasching/Hickey deal as he continued to mold the Sabres to his liking. Between the draft and the start of free agency, Botterill hooked up with his former team, the Pittsburgh Penguins, to land LW Conor Sheary along with D, Matt Hunwick.
Sheary was traded for to help fill a gaping hole at left wing for the Sabres while Hunwick may end up in Rochester.
But that trades and the moves before were small change compared to the blockbuster O'Reilly trade. Botterill moved O'Reilly, a player that just didn't seem to fit with where he wanted the team to go, to St. Louis for a lottery-protected first rounder, a second rounder, prospect Tage Thompson and veterans Patrick Berglund and Vladimir Sobotka.
The trade, which was consummated on July 1, firmly put Botterill's stamp on his club.
Have a Happy and Safe Fourth of July celebration.
Sunday, July 1, 2018
Malmo's Martin Filander talks Sweden, player development and d-man Linus Lindstrand Cronholm
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 6-30-2018
The first thing I asked Malmo Redhawks assistant coach Martin Filander about defenseman Linus Lindstrand Cronholm was whether they spelled his last name with a 'K' or a 'C'. Not that it mattered too much, but the fact that there was some uncertainty showed that the fourth round draft pick by Buffalo was a bit obscure. At least to most hockey fans in North America. Filander replied with a chuckle, "for us it's a 'C' but I saw somewhere where it was a 'K' and I don't know where that came from." (A quick note, Cronholm said at Sabres development camp his family spelled it with a 'C' but the government spelled it with a 'K'.)
Filander was in a rather jovial mood when I talked to him this week as Sweden's soccer team just earned a berth in the World Cup Round of 16 with a 3-0 win over Mexico. That win coupled with a 2-0 loss by Germany sent Sweden to the next round while Germany, the defending champ, went home after the group stage for the first time in 80 years. Such a win for a nation of 10 million with less resources than most nations is huge and Filander was quick to point out that there's been an emphasis in Sweden to focus upon home grown talent and groom them for a future in sports or coaching or in the business world.
"In general, I think we know we can't afford to lose kids from sports," he told me, "we need to keep them in sports as long as possible and that way we get more sponsorship. Some of them will be the future leaders of our companies, some will be the future leaders of our teams as coaches and some of them will actually be the stars we need.
"That's kind of our mentality. Sometimes when we look at other countries with their enormous of talent and resources we may feel a little jealous about it," he continued, "but sometimes those countries might have the tendency to veer away from their path and try a new one if it doesn't work. We need to work with what we've got and actually develop everyone. It's a big difference in mentalities and possibilities."
The first thing I asked Malmo Redhawks assistant coach Martin Filander about defenseman Linus Lindstrand Cronholm was whether they spelled his last name with a 'K' or a 'C'. Not that it mattered too much, but the fact that there was some uncertainty showed that the fourth round draft pick by Buffalo was a bit obscure. At least to most hockey fans in North America. Filander replied with a chuckle, "for us it's a 'C' but I saw somewhere where it was a 'K' and I don't know where that came from." (A quick note, Cronholm said at Sabres development camp his family spelled it with a 'C' but the government spelled it with a 'K'.)
Filander was in a rather jovial mood when I talked to him this week as Sweden's soccer team just earned a berth in the World Cup Round of 16 with a 3-0 win over Mexico. That win coupled with a 2-0 loss by Germany sent Sweden to the next round while Germany, the defending champ, went home after the group stage for the first time in 80 years. Such a win for a nation of 10 million with less resources than most nations is huge and Filander was quick to point out that there's been an emphasis in Sweden to focus upon home grown talent and groom them for a future in sports or coaching or in the business world.
"In general, I think we know we can't afford to lose kids from sports," he told me, "we need to keep them in sports as long as possible and that way we get more sponsorship. Some of them will be the future leaders of our companies, some will be the future leaders of our teams as coaches and some of them will actually be the stars we need.
"That's kind of our mentality. Sometimes when we look at other countries with their enormous of talent and resources we may feel a little jealous about it," he continued, "but sometimes those countries might have the tendency to veer away from their path and try a new one if it doesn't work. We need to work with what we've got and actually develop everyone. It's a big difference in mentalities and possibilities."
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Day-2 of 2018 NHL Draft was a quirky one for the Buffalo Sabres.
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 6-24-2018
After the Buffalo Sabres added four more defensemen to the stable in the second day of the 2018 NHL Draft, the post-draft from the media scrum was not so much on the players picked as it was on how they got there.
Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin was selected first overall, as expected, but as we headed into Day-2 of the draft no one was sure where the Sabres would go. The first round had finished up with a group of players having first-round ratings falling to the second round and Buffalo ended up selecting one of them in Mattias Samuelsson, son of former NHL'er Kjell Samuelsson.
Samuelsson was a familiar name at the draft and as the Sabres moved down the rounds the names became more obscure eventually, even for draftniks. Buffalo was without a third round pick and with the first pick in the fourth round they selected USHL Rookie of the Year, center Matej Pekar, who would be the only forward taken by the Sabres in the draft this year.
Buffalo used their second fourth-rounder (from Minnesota) to select LHD, Linus Lindstrand Cronholm who's name, like last year's pick of Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (UPL) is being shortened with the acronym (LLC.) In the fifth round Buffalo stayed in Scandinavia to select Finnish RHD Miska Kukkonen and they ended their day with seventh round pick, LHD William Worge Kreu, their third Swede of the draft.
There's a lot to digest with Buffalo's selections which includes why GM Jason Botterill traded away the first pick in the sixth round this year to Toronto for their sixth-rounder in 2019. It was a move that left many scratching their head and added another area of intrigue in a Buffalo draft that was anything but conventional, especially when you consider that Botterill, a native of Canada, didn't select a player from the CHL for the second year in a row.
In trying to figure out what transpired yesterday, a good place to start would be with the team Botterill put together and how he allows them to do what they were hired to do. Last year the first time GM had to wing it with a staff from the previous regime as a May hire didn't allow any time to build his own. Botterill brought in Randy Sexton last season as assistant general manager and point-man for an amateur scouting staff directed by Ryan Jankowski.
At the conclusion of the draft Botterill told the gathered media, "there was an awkwardness last year," he said explaining that he was trying to get a feel for the people he had plus the uneasiness of the unknown with a new GM in charge. Botterill brought in Sexton, someone he'd worked with for seven years in Pittsburgh and Jankowski who, ironically in terms of this draft, was head scout then director of player personnel for Hockey Canada.
This year with his guys in place, he let them do their thing. "[As GM] you're part of amateur scouting, I follow it throughout the year, but it is a situation where you have to trust those people in those roles," he said. "If you dabble in it a little bit you almost mess it up a lot of times."
As point-man, Sexton took center stage at the post-draft media scrum and after being asked lightheartedly, "How's your Swedish," delved into some of the Sabres philosophy when it come to the draft.
"We don't draft by region. We don't draft by country," he said. "We scour the world for the best players that we can find that play a style that we want to play like going forward and then we work very diligently to learn as much as we can about them as human beings so that they map to our character criteria. We put them in the order that makes most sense based upon the highest probability to become a Sabre and we layer over a little bit of list management so that we can manage our list in a way that gets us the highest number of prospects at the highest part of the list we can get.
"This year it happened to fall that there were a lot of Swedes."
Dahlin was the first of six Swedes taken by NHL teams in the first round and there were 28 taken overall which equaled record highs set in 2009 and 2014. In those two years, defenseman Victor Hedman (TBL,) who just won the Norris Trophy and LW, Gabriel Landeskog (COL,) respectively, were taken with the second-overall pick. Dahlin was taken first overall following Mats Sundin (1989, TOR) as the only two Swedes to be selected with the top pick in the draft.
In all, NHL teams took 247 Swedes during the last 10 drafts with the nation of just over 10 million people (as of 2018 census) pumping out the most players, by far, of any other European country. For Botterill it's not a surprise.
"You look around at the success they've had at the international game, and in the NHL," he said. "So many Swedish defensemen have stepped in and played extremely well. They've done an outstanding job as a country from the development process, especially on the back end [with] the mobility [and] how a lot of NHL teams are now. Swedish players played [that style] growing up."
"We have the SHL and we put the young guys in the senior hockey league pretty quickly," said the 18 yr. old Dahlin, who's been competing against men for nearly two full seasons. "You learn to play against men. That's probably one of the things that helped me so much. I needed to compete every single shift in all situations out there because I was not the strong guy everyone else was, so it helped me out a lot."
Dahlin was the top pick and there were 18 other Swedes selected before the draft reached the top of the fourth round and Buffalo at pick No. 94. The Sabres selected Pekar, a USHL product who will be attending Miami (OH) University, before heading back to Scandinavia for their final three selections. With Samuelsson also heading to college (Western Michigan University) and the three picks from overseas, for the second year in a row the Sabres, even with Jankowski on board, did not select a player from Canadian Junior.
Strange? Maybe. Until we get to the reasoning behind it.
As laid out, the Sabres had their list. Samuelsson for them was the definitive pick at No. 32 and it's hard to argue with the fourth round selection of Pekar, who was named the 2017-18 USHL Rookie of the Year with 54 points (14+40) in 56 games.
After that it almost looked as if the CHL was shunned by Buffalo. But that wasn't the case. When asked if it was a coincidence or whether or not it's something they shy away from, Botterill stated that when it comes to mid-latter round picks, "the fact that you control [CHL] rights for only two years, you have to make a quicker decision on that.
"In a scenario where you have an extended period of four years, in most situations for Europeans or college players," he continued, "it allows you more opportunity to develop."
Sexton said simply that, having worked with Botterill seven years, "there was never a strong desire either way to select CHL players or not select them.
"It's just the luck of the draw."
A case in point for the extended development period can be seen in 2014 seventh round pick (181st,) Victor Olofsson. The smaller 5'11" 172 lb. winger took three years to find his game amongst pros before breaking out last season and winning the Borje Salming Trophy for most goals (27) in the league. The Sabres signed him to his entry-level deal in April.
Center Sean Malone is another example. The West Seneca, NY native was taken in the sixth round (159th) of the 2013 draft and spent four seasons at Harvard. He signed with the club last year, had a real strong rookie campaign in Rochester to the point where he is being looked at as a possibility for Buffalo's opening night roster this coming season.
Most in the hockey world will say that the training and coaching players receive from the time they're young until their draft eligible and beyond puts many on a fairly equal footing, pure talent not withstanding. Drive and desire are huge aspects for the Sabres (in addition to talent) as is the overall makeup of prospects as human beings.
Buffalo's Swedish scout Jan-Axel Alavaara has been with the club for two years (although he'll be moving on to take a position with Germany's Alder-Mannaheim.) In an interview with an overseas website concerning Dahlin, Alavaara delved into his work as a scout. " We have met and discussed 120 players. That's how scouting goes," he said using Google translate. "Everyone has different opinions and you will come up with who you want to bet [on]. Rasmus is a high profile guy, but there are some out there in the world who are great hockey players."
"We assess the entire package," continued Alavaara. "You talk to parents, with friends, with coaches, with everyone. As hockey looks like today, you really do not have any weaknesses at all as players. You have to keep an eye on everything around."
That would include a player like Samuelsson, the son of a NHL player, who was graded in the mid-lower first round of the draft but was still there at No. 32 to start Day-2.
According to Sexton, the Sabres had "lots of calls about trading that pick" but decided to go with the big (6'4" 218 lb.) left-handed defenseman from the USHL. "He was a player that we clearly had a high desired to have in Buffalo," said Sexton of Samuelsson, "and as a result there was no interest in trading away that opportunity."
Bloodlines played a role in the desire to keep pick No. 32 to select Samuelsson, according to Sexton. "The biggest [part] bloodlines can play besides natural talent is the true and deep understanding of what it takes to play at the NHL level," he said. "And I don't mean that lightly
"It's very difficult to play in our league," he continued, "and I've always believed that player who grew up in a hockey family, who's had a family member that has played and has gone through the difficult path it takes to get [to] and stay in the NHL, has a competitive advantage over some of the other players.
"In Mattias' case, he does have a clear understanding. In getting to know him through the interview process, we were struck by his maturity, we were struck by his strength of character, we were struck by his leadership and we were clearly struck by his true understanding of what it takes, and the commitment it takes to not only get to the NHL-level, but to stay and excel at he NHL-level."
And they'll have four years to determine if/how he fits into their plans.
This is year-two of the Botterill regime in Buffalo and it's his first draft with his scouting department in place. The 2018 NHL Draft for Buffalo will go down as a somewhat quirky one, especially with the rarely, if ever, seen trading of a top pick in the sixth round for a blind sixth-rounder the following year. To set the record straight on that, Botterill said that the team felt as if the player(s) they wanted at that spot would still be there at the top of the seventh round and therefore opted to land another pick in next year's draft.
Sabres development camp starts this coming week so most, if not all the players selected by Buffalo will be in attendance. Perhaps there will be more questions surrounding this quirky draft and how they came to find and select LLC, Kukkonen and Worge Kreu.
The Sabres went heavy with defensemen yet still have glaring holes in the pipeline in goal and on the wings which should be addressed, at least somewhat, during free agency. Buffalo selected four defensemen, also signd defenseman Lawrence Pilut out of the SHL and traded for soon to be UFA Brandon Hickey, who just completed his fourth and final season at Boston University and was a team mate of Jack Eichel's for a year.
One could assume that the prospect pool on defense is well stocked right now but we still might be left to wonder what would happen next year if the highest rated players on their board at the time of their selection happened to be defensemen?
Jason Botterill via Sabres.com
After the Buffalo Sabres added four more defensemen to the stable in the second day of the 2018 NHL Draft, the post-draft from the media scrum was not so much on the players picked as it was on how they got there.
Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin was selected first overall, as expected, but as we headed into Day-2 of the draft no one was sure where the Sabres would go. The first round had finished up with a group of players having first-round ratings falling to the second round and Buffalo ended up selecting one of them in Mattias Samuelsson, son of former NHL'er Kjell Samuelsson.
Samuelsson was a familiar name at the draft and as the Sabres moved down the rounds the names became more obscure eventually, even for draftniks. Buffalo was without a third round pick and with the first pick in the fourth round they selected USHL Rookie of the Year, center Matej Pekar, who would be the only forward taken by the Sabres in the draft this year.
Buffalo used their second fourth-rounder (from Minnesota) to select LHD, Linus Lindstrand Cronholm who's name, like last year's pick of Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (UPL) is being shortened with the acronym (LLC.) In the fifth round Buffalo stayed in Scandinavia to select Finnish RHD Miska Kukkonen and they ended their day with seventh round pick, LHD William Worge Kreu, their third Swede of the draft.
There's a lot to digest with Buffalo's selections which includes why GM Jason Botterill traded away the first pick in the sixth round this year to Toronto for their sixth-rounder in 2019. It was a move that left many scratching their head and added another area of intrigue in a Buffalo draft that was anything but conventional, especially when you consider that Botterill, a native of Canada, didn't select a player from the CHL for the second year in a row.
In trying to figure out what transpired yesterday, a good place to start would be with the team Botterill put together and how he allows them to do what they were hired to do. Last year the first time GM had to wing it with a staff from the previous regime as a May hire didn't allow any time to build his own. Botterill brought in Randy Sexton last season as assistant general manager and point-man for an amateur scouting staff directed by Ryan Jankowski.
At the conclusion of the draft Botterill told the gathered media, "there was an awkwardness last year," he said explaining that he was trying to get a feel for the people he had plus the uneasiness of the unknown with a new GM in charge. Botterill brought in Sexton, someone he'd worked with for seven years in Pittsburgh and Jankowski who, ironically in terms of this draft, was head scout then director of player personnel for Hockey Canada.
This year with his guys in place, he let them do their thing. "[As GM] you're part of amateur scouting, I follow it throughout the year, but it is a situation where you have to trust those people in those roles," he said. "If you dabble in it a little bit you almost mess it up a lot of times."
As point-man, Sexton took center stage at the post-draft media scrum and after being asked lightheartedly, "How's your Swedish," delved into some of the Sabres philosophy when it come to the draft.
"We don't draft by region. We don't draft by country," he said. "We scour the world for the best players that we can find that play a style that we want to play like going forward and then we work very diligently to learn as much as we can about them as human beings so that they map to our character criteria. We put them in the order that makes most sense based upon the highest probability to become a Sabre and we layer over a little bit of list management so that we can manage our list in a way that gets us the highest number of prospects at the highest part of the list we can get.
"This year it happened to fall that there were a lot of Swedes."
Dahlin was the first of six Swedes taken by NHL teams in the first round and there were 28 taken overall which equaled record highs set in 2009 and 2014. In those two years, defenseman Victor Hedman (TBL,) who just won the Norris Trophy and LW, Gabriel Landeskog (COL,) respectively, were taken with the second-overall pick. Dahlin was taken first overall following Mats Sundin (1989, TOR) as the only two Swedes to be selected with the top pick in the draft.
In all, NHL teams took 247 Swedes during the last 10 drafts with the nation of just over 10 million people (as of 2018 census) pumping out the most players, by far, of any other European country. For Botterill it's not a surprise.
"You look around at the success they've had at the international game, and in the NHL," he said. "So many Swedish defensemen have stepped in and played extremely well. They've done an outstanding job as a country from the development process, especially on the back end [with] the mobility [and] how a lot of NHL teams are now. Swedish players played [that style] growing up."
"We have the SHL and we put the young guys in the senior hockey league pretty quickly," said the 18 yr. old Dahlin, who's been competing against men for nearly two full seasons. "You learn to play against men. That's probably one of the things that helped me so much. I needed to compete every single shift in all situations out there because I was not the strong guy everyone else was, so it helped me out a lot."
Dahlin was the top pick and there were 18 other Swedes selected before the draft reached the top of the fourth round and Buffalo at pick No. 94. The Sabres selected Pekar, a USHL product who will be attending Miami (OH) University, before heading back to Scandinavia for their final three selections. With Samuelsson also heading to college (Western Michigan University) and the three picks from overseas, for the second year in a row the Sabres, even with Jankowski on board, did not select a player from Canadian Junior.
Strange? Maybe. Until we get to the reasoning behind it.
As laid out, the Sabres had their list. Samuelsson for them was the definitive pick at No. 32 and it's hard to argue with the fourth round selection of Pekar, who was named the 2017-18 USHL Rookie of the Year with 54 points (14+40) in 56 games.
After that it almost looked as if the CHL was shunned by Buffalo. But that wasn't the case. When asked if it was a coincidence or whether or not it's something they shy away from, Botterill stated that when it comes to mid-latter round picks, "the fact that you control [CHL] rights for only two years, you have to make a quicker decision on that.
"In a scenario where you have an extended period of four years, in most situations for Europeans or college players," he continued, "it allows you more opportunity to develop."
Sexton said simply that, having worked with Botterill seven years, "there was never a strong desire either way to select CHL players or not select them.
"It's just the luck of the draw."
A case in point for the extended development period can be seen in 2014 seventh round pick (181st,) Victor Olofsson. The smaller 5'11" 172 lb. winger took three years to find his game amongst pros before breaking out last season and winning the Borje Salming Trophy for most goals (27) in the league. The Sabres signed him to his entry-level deal in April.
Center Sean Malone is another example. The West Seneca, NY native was taken in the sixth round (159th) of the 2013 draft and spent four seasons at Harvard. He signed with the club last year, had a real strong rookie campaign in Rochester to the point where he is being looked at as a possibility for Buffalo's opening night roster this coming season.
Most in the hockey world will say that the training and coaching players receive from the time they're young until their draft eligible and beyond puts many on a fairly equal footing, pure talent not withstanding. Drive and desire are huge aspects for the Sabres (in addition to talent) as is the overall makeup of prospects as human beings.
Buffalo's Swedish scout Jan-Axel Alavaara has been with the club for two years (although he'll be moving on to take a position with Germany's Alder-Mannaheim.) In an interview with an overseas website concerning Dahlin, Alavaara delved into his work as a scout. " We have met and discussed 120 players. That's how scouting goes," he said using Google translate. "Everyone has different opinions and you will come up with who you want to bet [on]. Rasmus is a high profile guy, but there are some out there in the world who are great hockey players."
"We assess the entire package," continued Alavaara. "You talk to parents, with friends, with coaches, with everyone. As hockey looks like today, you really do not have any weaknesses at all as players. You have to keep an eye on everything around."
That would include a player like Samuelsson, the son of a NHL player, who was graded in the mid-lower first round of the draft but was still there at No. 32 to start Day-2.
According to Sexton, the Sabres had "lots of calls about trading that pick" but decided to go with the big (6'4" 218 lb.) left-handed defenseman from the USHL. "He was a player that we clearly had a high desired to have in Buffalo," said Sexton of Samuelsson, "and as a result there was no interest in trading away that opportunity."
Bloodlines played a role in the desire to keep pick No. 32 to select Samuelsson, according to Sexton. "The biggest [part] bloodlines can play besides natural talent is the true and deep understanding of what it takes to play at the NHL level," he said. "And I don't mean that lightly
"It's very difficult to play in our league," he continued, "and I've always believed that player who grew up in a hockey family, who's had a family member that has played and has gone through the difficult path it takes to get [to] and stay in the NHL, has a competitive advantage over some of the other players.
"In Mattias' case, he does have a clear understanding. In getting to know him through the interview process, we were struck by his maturity, we were struck by his strength of character, we were struck by his leadership and we were clearly struck by his true understanding of what it takes, and the commitment it takes to not only get to the NHL-level, but to stay and excel at he NHL-level."
And they'll have four years to determine if/how he fits into their plans.
This is year-two of the Botterill regime in Buffalo and it's his first draft with his scouting department in place. The 2018 NHL Draft for Buffalo will go down as a somewhat quirky one, especially with the rarely, if ever, seen trading of a top pick in the sixth round for a blind sixth-rounder the following year. To set the record straight on that, Botterill said that the team felt as if the player(s) they wanted at that spot would still be there at the top of the seventh round and therefore opted to land another pick in next year's draft.
Sabres development camp starts this coming week so most, if not all the players selected by Buffalo will be in attendance. Perhaps there will be more questions surrounding this quirky draft and how they came to find and select LLC, Kukkonen and Worge Kreu.
The Sabres went heavy with defensemen yet still have glaring holes in the pipeline in goal and on the wings which should be addressed, at least somewhat, during free agency. Buffalo selected four defensemen, also signd defenseman Lawrence Pilut out of the SHL and traded for soon to be UFA Brandon Hickey, who just completed his fourth and final season at Boston University and was a team mate of Jack Eichel's for a year.
One could assume that the prospect pool on defense is well stocked right now but we still might be left to wonder what would happen next year if the highest rated players on their board at the time of their selection happened to be defensemen?
Jason Botterill via Sabres.com
Randy Sexton via Sabres.com
Sunday, June 24, 2018
On Rasmus Dahlin and the first round of the 2018 NHL Draft.
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 6-23-2018
To no one's surprise, Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin was selected first overall by the Buffalo Sabres last night to kick off a rather uneventful 2018 NHL Draft.
The 6'3" 185 lb. defenseman brings his franchise-changing game to a Sabres team that has struggled the last several years. Buffalo embarked on a rebuild, purposely dove to the bottom of the league two-years running, started on the road to respect then fell to last place last season. The NHL Draft Lottery was unkind to the Sabres in 2014 and 2105 as their last-place finished netted them the second overall pick but they year it smiled upon them as they won the rights to draft Dahlin.
The superlatives thrown at Dahlin and his game have been endless, yet warranted. He's an extremely gifted skater with a very high hockey IQ that lets him see things on the ice as if it were in slow motion. His highlight reels almost inevitably included rushes through a maze of players on the opposition who can't get the puck from him. Not on the highlight film is his game-to-game play from the back end where scouts have touted how well he starts the transition game from his own end through laser precision passes to the forwards.
As an 18 yr. old, his defense needs a little work but he has all the tools which includes great stickwork, excellent body positioning and angles plus great turns to defend an on-rushing player. He's pretty strong in front of the net and has been known to lay out some pretty good hits, but will need to bulk up a tad to be able to handle the best and strongest that the world has to offer at the NHL level.
What has come across so surprisingly during this whole process, however, is how maturely Dahlin has handled the media crush. His poise off the ice is equal to his poise on the ice and he fields questions as if he's been doing this for years. Dahlin was asked by the Sabres Brian Duff last night if he was an emotional guy to which Dahlin responded, "Yeah. I pretty much keep it inside." With a rather calm demeanor, a shrug and a little smile he continued saying, "Yeah, I'm super emotional right now, actually."
You couldn't tell.
Perhaps Jourdon LaBarber put it best when he wrote, "Dahlin's humility off the ice seems ironic, considering his play on the ice is anything but humble."
The Dahlin-era in Buffalo has begun.
*****
There were a record 14 defensemen taken off the board in the first round yesterday. Which was expected. It was a real good crop with all of them having the puck-moving traits that make for the defenseman d jour in the NHL today. The run on defensemen after Dahlin was selected first overall somewhat surprisingly began when Quinn Hughes was taken No. 7 by the Vancouver Canucks.
Hughes and fellow d-man Adam Boqvist (No. 8) were expected to go a little higher as many of the draft analysts rated them in the top five or six of this class.
At a draft where there was pretty much a consensus top-four featuring Dahlin and RW Andrei Svechnikov at Nos. 1 and 2 plus wingers Brady Tkachuk and Filip Zadina flip-flopping between Nos. 3 and 4, the Montreal Canadiens, in a very NFL-like move, opted to take center Jesper Kotkaniemi with the third-overall pick.
The Habs have been at the epicenter of trade rumors surrounding Buffalo center Ryan O'Reilly. With a dearth of talent down the middle, Montreal was said to be going after O'Reilly with some implying that the third-overall pick could possibly be involved. But the Canadiens kept it and much like NFL teams do when trying to land a franchise quarterback with their first pick, took the best center on the board.
Quality centers are hard to come by in the NHL. It's not that Kotkaniemi doesn't have top-six or even top-line potential, but it seemed to be somewhat of a reach for the Habs as they drafted for a position of need.
The same might be said for the Arizona Coyotes who drafted center Barrett Hayton who was generally considered amongst a group in the 11-20 range. They recently traded for Montreal's Alex Galchenyuk who they look to as a center despite the Habs punting that notion when trading him. 'Yotes GM John Chayka is a huge analytics fan so maybe he saw some numbers that jumped out at him, bur for all intents and purposes, Arizona's pick of Hayton at No. 5 was the surprise of the top-five.
Tkachuk went No. 4 to the Ottawa Senators who may need to top end defensemen if Erik Karlsson bolts via free agency next season. However, the took a player that was clearly the best player available. Dropping to No. 6 was Zadina who many thought was a top-three pick.
Heading down the draft all the names that one would associate with their pre-draft rankings made it into the picks until the Columbus Blue Jackets selected center Liam Foudy with the 18th-overall selection. The Philadelphia Flyers followed by picking another center in Jay O'Brien who was ranked in the lower second round then the Los Angeles Kings selected a center in Rasmus Kupari who dropped a few spots compared to his ranking.
Defenseman Ryan Merkely, who has top-10 or even top-five talent but had been the subject of reports concerning off ice maturity issues, was selected by the San Jose' Sharks with the 21st pick. He'll join a franchise in San Jose just re-signed a very talented winger in Evander Kane who's known for some off-ice issues of his own.
After some rankings/draft stability things began to get a bit out of whack leaving defenseman Rasmus Sandin, who had a top-20 ranking, there for the Toronto Maple Leafs at No. 29.
The biggest drop came at the expense of center Joseph Veleno who was ranked consistently in that 11-15 range before falling to the Red Wings at No. 30. Detroit used the pick they got from the expansion Vegas Golden Knights to select Veleno, which is rather ironic in itself. The Wings were the model organization as they made the playoffs 25 straight years, which included three Stanley Cups, but sent forward Tomas Tatar to the Knights for their 2018 first rounder as Vegas was bolstering their lineup for a playoff run that would take them to the Cup finals.
Finishing off the first round was the Stanley Cup Champion Washington Capitals who selected Russian defensemen Alexander Alexeyev.
Cheers to you, Ovie!
*****
Rounds 2-7 begin today at 11 am as Buffalo is once again ready to start the draft.
The Sabres have plenty of options there which includes selecting from a number of players who had first-round rankings but dropped. Forwards Noel Serron and centers Akil Thomas and Ryan Mcleod were all ranked in the top-16 North American Skaters by Central Scouting while defenseman Jared McIsaac was ranked 13th and fellow d-man Bode Wilde came in at No. 17.
Having projected first round talent in those numbers dropping to Buffalo gives them plenty of options which includes a trade-down. The Sabres do not have a third round pick thanks to last summer's trade with the Minnesota Wild and won't have another selection after No. 32 until pick 94. As mentioned in a previous blog, that's a prime area to land a goalie, which the Sabres system could really use.
I look to the Montreal Canadiens as a trade partner in that scenario. The Habs have four picks in the second round this year and perhaps they'd be interested in moving from No. 35 up to No. 32. Although they probably wouldn't give up pick 38 in the process, perhaps one of their late rounders (Nos. 56 or 62) could be had.
Perhaps Wilde, a 6'2" 198 lb. right-handed defenseman from the US National Program, could be the pick. He's an excellent skater with a great shot who could help fill a RHD void in the system but like other high-end offensive d-prospects, needs some work in his own end.
To no one's surprise, Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin was selected first overall by the Buffalo Sabres last night to kick off a rather uneventful 2018 NHL Draft.
The 6'3" 185 lb. defenseman brings his franchise-changing game to a Sabres team that has struggled the last several years. Buffalo embarked on a rebuild, purposely dove to the bottom of the league two-years running, started on the road to respect then fell to last place last season. The NHL Draft Lottery was unkind to the Sabres in 2014 and 2105 as their last-place finished netted them the second overall pick but they year it smiled upon them as they won the rights to draft Dahlin.
The superlatives thrown at Dahlin and his game have been endless, yet warranted. He's an extremely gifted skater with a very high hockey IQ that lets him see things on the ice as if it were in slow motion. His highlight reels almost inevitably included rushes through a maze of players on the opposition who can't get the puck from him. Not on the highlight film is his game-to-game play from the back end where scouts have touted how well he starts the transition game from his own end through laser precision passes to the forwards.
As an 18 yr. old, his defense needs a little work but he has all the tools which includes great stickwork, excellent body positioning and angles plus great turns to defend an on-rushing player. He's pretty strong in front of the net and has been known to lay out some pretty good hits, but will need to bulk up a tad to be able to handle the best and strongest that the world has to offer at the NHL level.
What has come across so surprisingly during this whole process, however, is how maturely Dahlin has handled the media crush. His poise off the ice is equal to his poise on the ice and he fields questions as if he's been doing this for years. Dahlin was asked by the Sabres Brian Duff last night if he was an emotional guy to which Dahlin responded, "Yeah. I pretty much keep it inside." With a rather calm demeanor, a shrug and a little smile he continued saying, "Yeah, I'm super emotional right now, actually."
You couldn't tell.
Perhaps Jourdon LaBarber put it best when he wrote, "Dahlin's humility off the ice seems ironic, considering his play on the ice is anything but humble."
The Dahlin-era in Buffalo has begun.
*****
There were a record 14 defensemen taken off the board in the first round yesterday. Which was expected. It was a real good crop with all of them having the puck-moving traits that make for the defenseman d jour in the NHL today. The run on defensemen after Dahlin was selected first overall somewhat surprisingly began when Quinn Hughes was taken No. 7 by the Vancouver Canucks.
Hughes and fellow d-man Adam Boqvist (No. 8) were expected to go a little higher as many of the draft analysts rated them in the top five or six of this class.
At a draft where there was pretty much a consensus top-four featuring Dahlin and RW Andrei Svechnikov at Nos. 1 and 2 plus wingers Brady Tkachuk and Filip Zadina flip-flopping between Nos. 3 and 4, the Montreal Canadiens, in a very NFL-like move, opted to take center Jesper Kotkaniemi with the third-overall pick.
The Habs have been at the epicenter of trade rumors surrounding Buffalo center Ryan O'Reilly. With a dearth of talent down the middle, Montreal was said to be going after O'Reilly with some implying that the third-overall pick could possibly be involved. But the Canadiens kept it and much like NFL teams do when trying to land a franchise quarterback with their first pick, took the best center on the board.
Quality centers are hard to come by in the NHL. It's not that Kotkaniemi doesn't have top-six or even top-line potential, but it seemed to be somewhat of a reach for the Habs as they drafted for a position of need.
The same might be said for the Arizona Coyotes who drafted center Barrett Hayton who was generally considered amongst a group in the 11-20 range. They recently traded for Montreal's Alex Galchenyuk who they look to as a center despite the Habs punting that notion when trading him. 'Yotes GM John Chayka is a huge analytics fan so maybe he saw some numbers that jumped out at him, bur for all intents and purposes, Arizona's pick of Hayton at No. 5 was the surprise of the top-five.
Tkachuk went No. 4 to the Ottawa Senators who may need to top end defensemen if Erik Karlsson bolts via free agency next season. However, the took a player that was clearly the best player available. Dropping to No. 6 was Zadina who many thought was a top-three pick.
Heading down the draft all the names that one would associate with their pre-draft rankings made it into the picks until the Columbus Blue Jackets selected center Liam Foudy with the 18th-overall selection. The Philadelphia Flyers followed by picking another center in Jay O'Brien who was ranked in the lower second round then the Los Angeles Kings selected a center in Rasmus Kupari who dropped a few spots compared to his ranking.
Defenseman Ryan Merkely, who has top-10 or even top-five talent but had been the subject of reports concerning off ice maturity issues, was selected by the San Jose' Sharks with the 21st pick. He'll join a franchise in San Jose just re-signed a very talented winger in Evander Kane who's known for some off-ice issues of his own.
After some rankings/draft stability things began to get a bit out of whack leaving defenseman Rasmus Sandin, who had a top-20 ranking, there for the Toronto Maple Leafs at No. 29.
The biggest drop came at the expense of center Joseph Veleno who was ranked consistently in that 11-15 range before falling to the Red Wings at No. 30. Detroit used the pick they got from the expansion Vegas Golden Knights to select Veleno, which is rather ironic in itself. The Wings were the model organization as they made the playoffs 25 straight years, which included three Stanley Cups, but sent forward Tomas Tatar to the Knights for their 2018 first rounder as Vegas was bolstering their lineup for a playoff run that would take them to the Cup finals.
Finishing off the first round was the Stanley Cup Champion Washington Capitals who selected Russian defensemen Alexander Alexeyev.
Cheers to you, Ovie!
*****
Rounds 2-7 begin today at 11 am as Buffalo is once again ready to start the draft.
The Sabres have plenty of options there which includes selecting from a number of players who had first-round rankings but dropped. Forwards Noel Serron and centers Akil Thomas and Ryan Mcleod were all ranked in the top-16 North American Skaters by Central Scouting while defenseman Jared McIsaac was ranked 13th and fellow d-man Bode Wilde came in at No. 17.
Having projected first round talent in those numbers dropping to Buffalo gives them plenty of options which includes a trade-down. The Sabres do not have a third round pick thanks to last summer's trade with the Minnesota Wild and won't have another selection after No. 32 until pick 94. As mentioned in a previous blog, that's a prime area to land a goalie, which the Sabres system could really use.
I look to the Montreal Canadiens as a trade partner in that scenario. The Habs have four picks in the second round this year and perhaps they'd be interested in moving from No. 35 up to No. 32. Although they probably wouldn't give up pick 38 in the process, perhaps one of their late rounders (Nos. 56 or 62) could be had.
Perhaps Wilde, a 6'2" 198 lb. right-handed defenseman from the US National Program, could be the pick. He's an excellent skater with a great shot who could help fill a RHD void in the system but like other high-end offensive d-prospects, needs some work in his own end.
Saturday, June 23, 2018
Dahlin-Day in Buffalo plus 7 forward prospects to keep an eye on
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 6-22-2018
It's a beautiful day, and it will be an even better night once GM Jason Botterill and the Buffalo Sabres entourage head up to the podium in Dallas, TX to select Rasmus Dahlin first-overall in the 2018 NHL Draft.
For the organization, it's the opportunity to put seven years of rebuilding angst, anger and frustration in the rear view mirror and start heading towards the future. It was a stretch that hopefully will be forgotten soon and like a bad relationship that went on way too long, time will have healed all wounds with the pain and apathy of those years reduced to an unpleasant memory.
Forgive me for waxing poetic. I know I've been there before when we thought we said goodbye to the tank years with the 2015 draft-day makeover highlighted by the selection of Jack Eichel second overall. It didn't work, and with the trades that former GM Tim Murray made to augment Eichel and 2014 second-overall pick Sam Reinhart being moved on from, it's Botterill's gig and things seem to be going very well for him.
In the last two blogs we looked at a very thin prospect pool in goal, which will be taxed even further as the Sabres will not qualify RFA starting goalie Robin Lehner, and a pretty thin collection of defensemen. Luckily for Buffalo they won the lottery and the selection of Dahlin will not only help the d-corps fall into place, the Sabres also have the option of keeping their top d-prospect, Brendan Guhle in Rochester at least for some of the season.
The forward group has been much maligned for their lack of top-level talent and overall speed. While the latter is true from a physical standpoint, they may have been more the victim of playing the game slower. Most forwards on the Sabres last season had NHL skating ability, but the mess that was the team, which included a rookie coach in Phil Housley wouldn't allow for playing the game at a faster pace.
That will change beginning this season as the forward group should see an influx of both speed and talent, albeit those two traits being mutually exclusive in some of the players that will be in Buffalo next season. Who will be a part of the opening day roster is still up in the air beginning with Ryan O'Reilly and stretching down to Zemgus Girgensons and Johan Larsson.
For as much grief as Murray got for his trades, and it's warranted as all three of his big-time acquisitions may be gone after only three years, his drafting was pretty solid. That includes the aforementioned Guhle (2015, second round) plus D, Will Borgen (2015, fourth round) and a few players that are apart of our Top-7 forwards to keep an eye on.
Having said that, the top forward prospect that has all of Sabreland quite excited is a 2017 pick from Botterill's first draft as a GM.
C, Casey Mittelstadt (2017, 8th-overall)
How many times have you heard "I can't believe he dropped to us there" when talking about a prospect at the draft. Such was the case with Mittelstadt as many viewed him as a top-five pick but the Sabres were able to land him at No. 8.
The 2017 Mr. Hockey winner from Eden Prairie High School in Minnesota joined the NCAA's Minnesota Golden Gophers for one season before signing his entry-level deal with the Sabres in March. He played in six games for Buffalo registering his first NHL goal and adding four assists.
There's a lot to be excited about when it comes to Mittelstadt and what he has to offer. He's got size (6'0" 199 lbs.) and plenty of skill (11 goals and 30 points in 34 games as a freshman for the Gophers) to go along with his excellent skating ability. Although he isn't the fastest he's pretty quick to areas and his hockey sense allows him to play the game at a faster pace. Mittelstadt faced a lot of rugged defensive hockey in the BIG 10 last season and had plenty of gumption to get where he needed to go, which were often the dirty areas of the ice, and find the player in open space.
Where he plays next year in Buffalo is wholly dependent upon O'Reilly. Should they trade the veteran center, Mittelstadt will be looked to as the team's No. 2 center but should O'Reilly stay, it's likely that he'll be moved to third-line center. Although I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of him getting time on the wing in that scenario.
The Sabres will be adding two high-end prospects this season in Dahlin and Mittelstadt. It's a duo that has those of us in Sabreland pretty excited.
C, Sean Malone (2013, 159th)
Is Malone the No. 2 forward prospect for Buffalo? No, not by any stretch, but this isn't about ranking prospects, its about prospects to keep an eye on and he looks like he'll be knocking on the door of the NHL this coming season.
The West Seneca, NY native was more that a token local pick when the Sabres snagged him in the sixth round of the 2013 NHL Draft. The solid 6' 0" 190 lb two-way center left Nichols High School and embarked on a collegiate career at Harvard. While with the Crimson he scored 42 goals and 99 points in 115 games which included a 18-goal, 42-point breakout in his senior season. Malone got a one game taste of the NHL at the end of the 2017-17 season and spent last year in Rochester.
After adjusting to the speed of the pro game, Malone ramped up his game to the point where he said he felt like himself. That player he's talking about plays a 200' game with a lot of speed and determination. Although he doesn't have the skill-level to crack the top-six or even top-nine, once he gets up to speed at the NHL level, Malone has the ability to be a stalwart and clutch faceoff guy in a fourth-line checking role.
LW, C.J. Smith (2017, FA)
Smith is another player who isn't top-three amongst the prospect rankings, but one we should keep an eye on heading into the season.
The Sabres have no left wingers to speak of and the U-Mass Lowell product showed plenty of skill and speed to be considered for the openings on Buffalo's left side. At 5'11" 185 lbs. Smith doesn't have ideal NHL size, but he proved last season he could hang with the big boys at the pro level. Smith tied for second on the Amerks with 17 goals and was third on the team in scoring with 44 points, which tied him for 10th amongst rookies in the AHL.
In addition to his skills on offense, Smith plays a solid two-way game and is strong on the defensive side of the equation. What he has to offer at the NHL level is still unknown but he has a nice foundation with which to build upon, quite possibly in a third-line left wing role for the Sabres.
LW, Alexander Nylander (2016, 8th)
What was said about Smith's opportunity on the left side in Buffalo is also true for Nylander. So why is an eighth-overall pick behind a free agent who plays the same position? It's how the two seem to have approached the game in Rochester. As a free agent, Smith had a lot to prove whereas Nylander comes off as a player who's been in prima donna mode.
Nylander may have had the highest skill-level at the 2016 NHL Draft but the knock on him was that he disappeared, something we've seen in Rochester the last two seasons. In 116 games for the Amerks he's scored only 18 goals and 55 points. Put that up against what Smith has done in less than half the games.
Having said that, it's still a bit too early to give up on him. Nylander is an extremely gifted hockey player who has all the tools to take a spot in the top-six. But until he gets his head on straight, he's looking more like a bust than he is an NHL player.
C, Rasmus Asplund (2016, 33rd)
There has been a lot of anticipation with Asplund and when he would finally arrive in North America and the reason for it was his exceptional play at the pro level in his native Sweden.
Asplund won't wow you with his stats (8+20 in 50 games for Färjestad BK last season) but he does everything else extremely well. "He's quick and shifty, using his speed and turning ability to gaine time and space," reported The Draft Analyst, and he plays a full 200' game. Asplund is not afraid of the dirty areas on the ice and has a high compete-level.
Should he continue to develop properly, Asplund has all the attributes of a top-end, third-line center.
RW, Nicholas Baptiste (2013, 69th)
The right side of Buffalo's forward group is pretty full right now with Reinhart, Kyle Okposo and Jason Pominville in the top nine and Baptiste hasn't had much time, if any, on the left side. That makes for a pretty tough road to hoe for him.
At this point in his career, the 22 yr. old Baptiste is out of waiver options so if the Sabres want to keep him, he'll need to stay in Buffalo or they risk losing him. It's been a pretty choppy ride for Baptiste thus far in his pro career as he's spent most of it in Rochester. His AHL stats are decent (38+31 in 121 games) and he's managed seven goals (plus four assists) in 47 NHL games. But he just hasn't been able to break through quite yet.
We've seen spurts of what Baptiste can be as he has plenty of speed and can score from all areas using a wide array of shots. It's consistency that's lacking in his game, which is typical of young player and if he ever gets that ironed out, because of the speed and skill he has, Baptiste could be a force in the top-nine or even top-six.
He's got a lot riding on this season and it would behoove him to have a great camp and bust his way into the top nine.
RW, Victor Oloffson (2014, 181st)
Although there hasn't been much anticipation about Olofsson making his North American debut prior to last season, the numbers he put up in 2017-18 certainly raised some eyebrows.
Olofsson was a beast in Sweden with Frolunda as he lead the SHL with 27 goals while finishing with 43 points. It took the 5'11" 172 lb. sniper three full seasons to break out in Sweden's top league but did so in style as he finished with the Håkan Loob Trophy for most goals scored in the season.
Frolunda used him in the circle on the powerplay where Olofsson unleashed a deadly shot and there's no doubt that he's one of the most skilled shooters in the Sabres prospect pool. Can he find his place in Rochester playing on the smaller North American rink is one of the questions with Olofsson as is how he'll be able to keep his smaller frame out of trouble with the bigger, stronger, heavier competition in the AHL.
That said, having an influx of talent like his should bring good things for the Amerks and hopefully , Buffalo as well.
It's a beautiful day, and it will be an even better night once GM Jason Botterill and the Buffalo Sabres entourage head up to the podium in Dallas, TX to select Rasmus Dahlin first-overall in the 2018 NHL Draft.
For the organization, it's the opportunity to put seven years of rebuilding angst, anger and frustration in the rear view mirror and start heading towards the future. It was a stretch that hopefully will be forgotten soon and like a bad relationship that went on way too long, time will have healed all wounds with the pain and apathy of those years reduced to an unpleasant memory.
Forgive me for waxing poetic. I know I've been there before when we thought we said goodbye to the tank years with the 2015 draft-day makeover highlighted by the selection of Jack Eichel second overall. It didn't work, and with the trades that former GM Tim Murray made to augment Eichel and 2014 second-overall pick Sam Reinhart being moved on from, it's Botterill's gig and things seem to be going very well for him.
In the last two blogs we looked at a very thin prospect pool in goal, which will be taxed even further as the Sabres will not qualify RFA starting goalie Robin Lehner, and a pretty thin collection of defensemen. Luckily for Buffalo they won the lottery and the selection of Dahlin will not only help the d-corps fall into place, the Sabres also have the option of keeping their top d-prospect, Brendan Guhle in Rochester at least for some of the season.
The forward group has been much maligned for their lack of top-level talent and overall speed. While the latter is true from a physical standpoint, they may have been more the victim of playing the game slower. Most forwards on the Sabres last season had NHL skating ability, but the mess that was the team, which included a rookie coach in Phil Housley wouldn't allow for playing the game at a faster pace.
That will change beginning this season as the forward group should see an influx of both speed and talent, albeit those two traits being mutually exclusive in some of the players that will be in Buffalo next season. Who will be a part of the opening day roster is still up in the air beginning with Ryan O'Reilly and stretching down to Zemgus Girgensons and Johan Larsson.
For as much grief as Murray got for his trades, and it's warranted as all three of his big-time acquisitions may be gone after only three years, his drafting was pretty solid. That includes the aforementioned Guhle (2015, second round) plus D, Will Borgen (2015, fourth round) and a few players that are apart of our Top-7 forwards to keep an eye on.
Having said that, the top forward prospect that has all of Sabreland quite excited is a 2017 pick from Botterill's first draft as a GM.
C, Casey Mittelstadt (2017, 8th-overall)
How many times have you heard "I can't believe he dropped to us there" when talking about a prospect at the draft. Such was the case with Mittelstadt as many viewed him as a top-five pick but the Sabres were able to land him at No. 8.
The 2017 Mr. Hockey winner from Eden Prairie High School in Minnesota joined the NCAA's Minnesota Golden Gophers for one season before signing his entry-level deal with the Sabres in March. He played in six games for Buffalo registering his first NHL goal and adding four assists.
There's a lot to be excited about when it comes to Mittelstadt and what he has to offer. He's got size (6'0" 199 lbs.) and plenty of skill (11 goals and 30 points in 34 games as a freshman for the Gophers) to go along with his excellent skating ability. Although he isn't the fastest he's pretty quick to areas and his hockey sense allows him to play the game at a faster pace. Mittelstadt faced a lot of rugged defensive hockey in the BIG 10 last season and had plenty of gumption to get where he needed to go, which were often the dirty areas of the ice, and find the player in open space.
Where he plays next year in Buffalo is wholly dependent upon O'Reilly. Should they trade the veteran center, Mittelstadt will be looked to as the team's No. 2 center but should O'Reilly stay, it's likely that he'll be moved to third-line center. Although I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of him getting time on the wing in that scenario.
The Sabres will be adding two high-end prospects this season in Dahlin and Mittelstadt. It's a duo that has those of us in Sabreland pretty excited.
C, Sean Malone (2013, 159th)
Is Malone the No. 2 forward prospect for Buffalo? No, not by any stretch, but this isn't about ranking prospects, its about prospects to keep an eye on and he looks like he'll be knocking on the door of the NHL this coming season.
The West Seneca, NY native was more that a token local pick when the Sabres snagged him in the sixth round of the 2013 NHL Draft. The solid 6' 0" 190 lb two-way center left Nichols High School and embarked on a collegiate career at Harvard. While with the Crimson he scored 42 goals and 99 points in 115 games which included a 18-goal, 42-point breakout in his senior season. Malone got a one game taste of the NHL at the end of the 2017-17 season and spent last year in Rochester.
After adjusting to the speed of the pro game, Malone ramped up his game to the point where he said he felt like himself. That player he's talking about plays a 200' game with a lot of speed and determination. Although he doesn't have the skill-level to crack the top-six or even top-nine, once he gets up to speed at the NHL level, Malone has the ability to be a stalwart and clutch faceoff guy in a fourth-line checking role.
LW, C.J. Smith (2017, FA)
Smith is another player who isn't top-three amongst the prospect rankings, but one we should keep an eye on heading into the season.
The Sabres have no left wingers to speak of and the U-Mass Lowell product showed plenty of skill and speed to be considered for the openings on Buffalo's left side. At 5'11" 185 lbs. Smith doesn't have ideal NHL size, but he proved last season he could hang with the big boys at the pro level. Smith tied for second on the Amerks with 17 goals and was third on the team in scoring with 44 points, which tied him for 10th amongst rookies in the AHL.
In addition to his skills on offense, Smith plays a solid two-way game and is strong on the defensive side of the equation. What he has to offer at the NHL level is still unknown but he has a nice foundation with which to build upon, quite possibly in a third-line left wing role for the Sabres.
LW, Alexander Nylander (2016, 8th)
What was said about Smith's opportunity on the left side in Buffalo is also true for Nylander. So why is an eighth-overall pick behind a free agent who plays the same position? It's how the two seem to have approached the game in Rochester. As a free agent, Smith had a lot to prove whereas Nylander comes off as a player who's been in prima donna mode.
Nylander may have had the highest skill-level at the 2016 NHL Draft but the knock on him was that he disappeared, something we've seen in Rochester the last two seasons. In 116 games for the Amerks he's scored only 18 goals and 55 points. Put that up against what Smith has done in less than half the games.
Having said that, it's still a bit too early to give up on him. Nylander is an extremely gifted hockey player who has all the tools to take a spot in the top-six. But until he gets his head on straight, he's looking more like a bust than he is an NHL player.
C, Rasmus Asplund (2016, 33rd)
There has been a lot of anticipation with Asplund and when he would finally arrive in North America and the reason for it was his exceptional play at the pro level in his native Sweden.
Asplund won't wow you with his stats (8+20 in 50 games for Färjestad BK last season) but he does everything else extremely well. "He's quick and shifty, using his speed and turning ability to gaine time and space," reported The Draft Analyst, and he plays a full 200' game. Asplund is not afraid of the dirty areas on the ice and has a high compete-level.
Should he continue to develop properly, Asplund has all the attributes of a top-end, third-line center.
RW, Nicholas Baptiste (2013, 69th)
The right side of Buffalo's forward group is pretty full right now with Reinhart, Kyle Okposo and Jason Pominville in the top nine and Baptiste hasn't had much time, if any, on the left side. That makes for a pretty tough road to hoe for him.
At this point in his career, the 22 yr. old Baptiste is out of waiver options so if the Sabres want to keep him, he'll need to stay in Buffalo or they risk losing him. It's been a pretty choppy ride for Baptiste thus far in his pro career as he's spent most of it in Rochester. His AHL stats are decent (38+31 in 121 games) and he's managed seven goals (plus four assists) in 47 NHL games. But he just hasn't been able to break through quite yet.
We've seen spurts of what Baptiste can be as he has plenty of speed and can score from all areas using a wide array of shots. It's consistency that's lacking in his game, which is typical of young player and if he ever gets that ironed out, because of the speed and skill he has, Baptiste could be a force in the top-nine or even top-six.
He's got a lot riding on this season and it would behoove him to have a great camp and bust his way into the top nine.
RW, Victor Oloffson (2014, 181st)
Although there hasn't been much anticipation about Olofsson making his North American debut prior to last season, the numbers he put up in 2017-18 certainly raised some eyebrows.
Olofsson was a beast in Sweden with Frolunda as he lead the SHL with 27 goals while finishing with 43 points. It took the 5'11" 172 lb. sniper three full seasons to break out in Sweden's top league but did so in style as he finished with the Håkan Loob Trophy for most goals scored in the season.
Frolunda used him in the circle on the powerplay where Olofsson unleashed a deadly shot and there's no doubt that he's one of the most skilled shooters in the Sabres prospect pool. Can he find his place in Rochester playing on the smaller North American rink is one of the questions with Olofsson as is how he'll be able to keep his smaller frame out of trouble with the bigger, stronger, heavier competition in the AHL.
That said, having an influx of talent like his should bring good things for the Amerks and hopefully , Buffalo as well.
Thursday, June 21, 2018
Sabres will need to be sharp to land an NHL-caliber goalie propect
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 6-20-2018
The Buffalo Sabres have the No. 1 overall pick in this year's NHL Entry Draft and they have the top pick No. 32, which starts the second round. It's with almost 100% certainty that they'll select defenseman Rasmus Dahlin with the top pick and you could say that it's with nearly a 100% certainty that they'll take a skater with their second pick.
Barring any changes Buffalo will be waiting until pick No. 94 at the top of the fourth round to make their selection. The Sabres traded away their third round pick (No. 63) this year to the Minnesota Wild in a trade that also sent Marcus Foligno and Tyler Ennis to the Wild for Marco Scandella and Jason Pominville. Buffalo also received Minnesota's fourth-rounder this year (No. 117) as a part of the deal.
Being so high in the draft while not having a third-rounder means the Buffalo does not have a pick in a prime area to take one of the better goalies in the draft.
Thoughts on where to draft goaltenders has changed throughout the years. Rick DiPietro was the No. 1 pick in the 2000 NHL Draft and the only other goalie picked first was Marc-Andre Fleury (2002.) Kari Lehtonen was taken second-ovearll in 2001 and Carey Price fifth-overall in 2005. There were four goalies taken in the first round in 2006 and after that the most selected in the first round was two which happened three times (2008, 2010, 2012.)
Jack Campbell was selected 11th overall in 2010 and represents the highest slot amongst goalies taken since 2006 when Jonathan Bernier was also selected at No. 11. From 2007-17 there have been only eight goalies taken in the first round and in the last five years it's happened only twice.
With the game changing more towards speed and offense, teams are focusing on the skaters much more in the first round while waiting until the second or third rounds to snag a goalie prospect. There have been 71 goalies taken in the second and third rounds since 2007 with the highest total being nine in 2012. The next highest number was eight in 2016 and on five other occasions, seven goalies were taken in those rounds.
The Sabres philosophy on where to draft goalies has also changed. The success of Ryan Miller, who was drafted fifth-overall (138) in 1999 gave GM Darcy Regier a reason to wait until the latter rounds to pick a goalie. Only Jonas Enroth (2006, 46th) was selected with a pick higher than the fourth round. Enroth played in 152 NHL games. Regier drafted six other goalies before he was fired in 2013 with the highest being Ghyslain Rousseau in the fourth round (2000, 111th) and of that group, only Linus Ullmark (2012, 163rd) has hit double digits in NHL games played.
Of note, the Sabres also drafted Cal Petersen in the fifth round (129th) of the 2013 draft but he signed with the LA Kings.
Tim Murray actually broke the trend of drafting goalies late in the draft for Buffalo when he selected Jonas Johansson with the 61st pick in the 2014 draft. He would not select another goalie in the following two drafts and was fired in 2017.
After taking over the reigns as GM last season, Jason Botterill selected Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (whom the team just signed to an entry-level deal) with the 54th pick. He was the second goalie off the board and was one of seven total selected in the second and third rounds.
Right now, the Sabres prospect pool in net consists of Ullmark, who will be with the Sabres in a not yet fully defined role, Johansson who will be in Rochester in a not yet fully defined role and Luukkonen, who's expected to spend at least one year (probably two) in his native Finland playing at the pro-level there. There's nobody from the system to man the net in Cincinnati this year and no one between the 22 yr. old Johansson and the 19 yr. old Luukkonen.
The Sabres will once again be looking for outside help in net and for the foreseeable future will need to ride with a very thin prospect pool. Having them without a pick in a prime area at the draft to land a goalie prospect will extend that thin pool out another year.
Regardless of that fact, neither Buffalo nor any other team, has their goalie positions at all three levels filled by homegrown picks. Botterill will once again be in the market for an AHL goalie and will need to find two for the ECHL. And by the looks of it, he'll probably be looking to fill an open spot in Buffalo should they move on from Robin Lehner.
If the Sabres draft a goaltender and they hope that he at the very least fills the pipeline at the minor league level, they'll need to be pretty sharp. On average, seven goalies have been taken prior to round four over the last 11 years.
Kris Baker of the Athletic Buffalo, called this crop of goalies "average at best" in his draft preview. Baker has been following the draft and Sabres prospects for over a decade through his site sabresprospects.com for over a decade and was tapped by the Athletic to do the same for them.
Baker might be reaching a bit when he lists Czech goaltending prospect Jakub Skarek as a possibility for Buffalo at pick 94 this year. Skarek, who's ranked highly at a number of sites, has the size at 6'3" 192 lbs. that fits the way the NHL is trending and, according to Baker, "checks a lot of boxes for a solid goaltending prospect."
Skarek "[has the] ability to cover a lot of net when dropping to make a butterfly save," continued Baker, "[has] high goalie IQ that allows him to read and anticipate, and extremely sharp reflexes."
After that Baker sees Djurgarden IF goalie Olof Lindbom as a possibility with Buffalo's second fourth-rounder at No. 117. Lindbom also has size (6'2" 185 lbs.) and has a strong lower body that allows him to use "powerful pushes with both legs that get him post-to-post with ease."
It should be noted that the goalie rankings are pretty much all over the place this year outside of a couple of names leading the pack. QMJHL products Oliver Rodrigue and Kevin Mandolese are ranked as the top two goalies by International Scouting Services while NHL's Central Scouting has both of them atop their rankings of North American Goalies. (CSS has Skarek ranked No. 2 amongst European goalies.)
Ryan Jankowski was hired by Botterill last July to head the amateur scouting department and he'll have his work cut out for him past pick-32. The goalies in that sweet spot of the second and third rounds will be gone (barring a trade) and he'll be left with a lower graded pool of "average at best" goalie prospects to choose from.
On the flip side, however, of all the positions in the crap shoot that is the NHL Draft, goaltender is the toughest one to try and figure out. First and foremost goalies are a rare breed spending nearly all of their time alone in net with their thoughts and second, they have the longest incubation period. A lot can happen between a goalie being drafted at 18 and being ready for regular pro duty in their early 20's.
The certainty with which the Sabres will draft Dahlin at the top of the draft is the complete opposite of drafting a goalie, especially in the latter rounds. Jankowski and company will need to be pretty sharp to nail the latter.
The Buffalo Sabres have the No. 1 overall pick in this year's NHL Entry Draft and they have the top pick No. 32, which starts the second round. It's with almost 100% certainty that they'll select defenseman Rasmus Dahlin with the top pick and you could say that it's with nearly a 100% certainty that they'll take a skater with their second pick.
Barring any changes Buffalo will be waiting until pick No. 94 at the top of the fourth round to make their selection. The Sabres traded away their third round pick (No. 63) this year to the Minnesota Wild in a trade that also sent Marcus Foligno and Tyler Ennis to the Wild for Marco Scandella and Jason Pominville. Buffalo also received Minnesota's fourth-rounder this year (No. 117) as a part of the deal.
Being so high in the draft while not having a third-rounder means the Buffalo does not have a pick in a prime area to take one of the better goalies in the draft.
Thoughts on where to draft goaltenders has changed throughout the years. Rick DiPietro was the No. 1 pick in the 2000 NHL Draft and the only other goalie picked first was Marc-Andre Fleury (2002.) Kari Lehtonen was taken second-ovearll in 2001 and Carey Price fifth-overall in 2005. There were four goalies taken in the first round in 2006 and after that the most selected in the first round was two which happened three times (2008, 2010, 2012.)
Jack Campbell was selected 11th overall in 2010 and represents the highest slot amongst goalies taken since 2006 when Jonathan Bernier was also selected at No. 11. From 2007-17 there have been only eight goalies taken in the first round and in the last five years it's happened only twice.
With the game changing more towards speed and offense, teams are focusing on the skaters much more in the first round while waiting until the second or third rounds to snag a goalie prospect. There have been 71 goalies taken in the second and third rounds since 2007 with the highest total being nine in 2012. The next highest number was eight in 2016 and on five other occasions, seven goalies were taken in those rounds.
The Sabres philosophy on where to draft goalies has also changed. The success of Ryan Miller, who was drafted fifth-overall (138) in 1999 gave GM Darcy Regier a reason to wait until the latter rounds to pick a goalie. Only Jonas Enroth (2006, 46th) was selected with a pick higher than the fourth round. Enroth played in 152 NHL games. Regier drafted six other goalies before he was fired in 2013 with the highest being Ghyslain Rousseau in the fourth round (2000, 111th) and of that group, only Linus Ullmark (2012, 163rd) has hit double digits in NHL games played.
Of note, the Sabres also drafted Cal Petersen in the fifth round (129th) of the 2013 draft but he signed with the LA Kings.
Tim Murray actually broke the trend of drafting goalies late in the draft for Buffalo when he selected Jonas Johansson with the 61st pick in the 2014 draft. He would not select another goalie in the following two drafts and was fired in 2017.
After taking over the reigns as GM last season, Jason Botterill selected Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (whom the team just signed to an entry-level deal) with the 54th pick. He was the second goalie off the board and was one of seven total selected in the second and third rounds.
Right now, the Sabres prospect pool in net consists of Ullmark, who will be with the Sabres in a not yet fully defined role, Johansson who will be in Rochester in a not yet fully defined role and Luukkonen, who's expected to spend at least one year (probably two) in his native Finland playing at the pro-level there. There's nobody from the system to man the net in Cincinnati this year and no one between the 22 yr. old Johansson and the 19 yr. old Luukkonen.
The Sabres will once again be looking for outside help in net and for the foreseeable future will need to ride with a very thin prospect pool. Having them without a pick in a prime area at the draft to land a goalie prospect will extend that thin pool out another year.
Regardless of that fact, neither Buffalo nor any other team, has their goalie positions at all three levels filled by homegrown picks. Botterill will once again be in the market for an AHL goalie and will need to find two for the ECHL. And by the looks of it, he'll probably be looking to fill an open spot in Buffalo should they move on from Robin Lehner.
If the Sabres draft a goaltender and they hope that he at the very least fills the pipeline at the minor league level, they'll need to be pretty sharp. On average, seven goalies have been taken prior to round four over the last 11 years.
Kris Baker of the Athletic Buffalo, called this crop of goalies "average at best" in his draft preview. Baker has been following the draft and Sabres prospects for over a decade through his site sabresprospects.com for over a decade and was tapped by the Athletic to do the same for them.
Baker might be reaching a bit when he lists Czech goaltending prospect Jakub Skarek as a possibility for Buffalo at pick 94 this year. Skarek, who's ranked highly at a number of sites, has the size at 6'3" 192 lbs. that fits the way the NHL is trending and, according to Baker, "checks a lot of boxes for a solid goaltending prospect."
Skarek "[has the] ability to cover a lot of net when dropping to make a butterfly save," continued Baker, "[has] high goalie IQ that allows him to read and anticipate, and extremely sharp reflexes."
After that Baker sees Djurgarden IF goalie Olof Lindbom as a possibility with Buffalo's second fourth-rounder at No. 117. Lindbom also has size (6'2" 185 lbs.) and has a strong lower body that allows him to use "powerful pushes with both legs that get him post-to-post with ease."
It should be noted that the goalie rankings are pretty much all over the place this year outside of a couple of names leading the pack. QMJHL products Oliver Rodrigue and Kevin Mandolese are ranked as the top two goalies by International Scouting Services while NHL's Central Scouting has both of them atop their rankings of North American Goalies. (CSS has Skarek ranked No. 2 amongst European goalies.)
Ryan Jankowski was hired by Botterill last July to head the amateur scouting department and he'll have his work cut out for him past pick-32. The goalies in that sweet spot of the second and third rounds will be gone (barring a trade) and he'll be left with a lower graded pool of "average at best" goalie prospects to choose from.
On the flip side, however, of all the positions in the crap shoot that is the NHL Draft, goaltender is the toughest one to try and figure out. First and foremost goalies are a rare breed spending nearly all of their time alone in net with their thoughts and second, they have the longest incubation period. A lot can happen between a goalie being drafted at 18 and being ready for regular pro duty in their early 20's.
The certainty with which the Sabres will draft Dahlin at the top of the draft is the complete opposite of drafting a goalie, especially in the latter rounds. Jankowski and company will need to be pretty sharp to nail the latter.
Dahlin helps Buffalo's thin, but slowly improving prospect pool on defense
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 6-21-2018
While going through past blogs prior to the NHL Entry Draft, I came across a piece from 2015 just prior to the draft. In it we looked at the defense core depth and it was extremely thin at the time.
The 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs showcased a Norris Trophy defenseman in the Chicago Blackhawks' Duncan Keith and a future Norris winner in then 24 yr. old Tampa Bay Lightning d-man, Victor Hedman (who just won the trophy last night.) The duo put on a clinic in the finals that year.
At the time Keith was 31 yrs. old and the elder statesmen of a group of high-quality d-men featuring Norris Trophy winner PK Subban, who was with the Montreal Canadiens, and fellow Norris winner Erik Karlsson (OTT) who lead a group of 25 yr. olds that included Drew Doughty (LAK,) Alex Pietrangelo (STL) and Roman Josi (NSH.) After Hedman there was another wave of d-men just cutting their teeth in Oliver-Ekman Larsson (ARI,) Torey Krug and Dougie Hamilton (BOS,) Olli Matta (PIT) and 19 yr. old stud Aaron Ekblad (FLA.)
The Sabres at the time were coming off a scorched-earth rebuild that left their team mostly barren on the back-end. At the time just before the 2015 NHL Draft, the Sabres had young players with promise in 23 yr. old Mark Pysyk, 20 yr. olds Rasmus Ristolainen and Nikita Zadorov and...that's about it. The pipeline had Jake McCabe and Chad Ruhwedel at the top followed by Brady Austin, who played five NHL games and Jerome Leduc, who never saw the NHL ice. Anthony Florentino and Brycen Martin, both of whom are in the minors, rounded out the group.
Since that piece was done, the Sabres traded Zadorov and Pysyk and allowed Ruhwedel to walk. Buffalo's depth on defense struggled for the last three seasons as players drafted beginning in 2015 began making their way up through the system and GM's tried to fill holes with minor-league vets and free agent signings.
The Sabres did well in landing coveted college free agent Casey Nelson in 2016 and SHL Defenseman of the year, Lawrence Pilut last month. They also signed Victor Antipin out of the KHL in 2017 but that didn't work out so well. Antipin had a rough season that ended with him being carted off on a stretcher with four games to go. Buffalo GM Jason Botterill recently said that, contrary to some reports, Antipin has not signed a KHL contract and is looking to come back to the NHL.
As dreary as the last few years have been on defense, there is light at the end of the tunnel and the drafting of defenseman Rasmus Dahlin will shove this slow moving train even closer to the bright light of tomorrow. Dahlin is considered a franchise defenseman (some say generational) and will immediately be plugged into the lineup in a top-four role. What that does for the depth chart can't be understated as those on the big club will begin to fall into roles to suit them while those in the pipeline can continue to develop at lower levels.
There are still big holes on the back-end from Buffalo on down, but make no mistake, the selection of Dahlin allows for the organization to build quality depth, something that's desperately needed.
Barring any trades, the Sabres lineup on defense looks to have Dahlin, Rasmus Ristolainen, Marco Scandella, Zach Bogosian, Jake McCabe, Casey Nelson and Nathan Beaulieu right now with the possibility that their top d-prospect could be in the mix.
Although semantics will have Dahlin as the Sabres top prospect from the time he's drafted until opening day, why bother putting him there for this exercise? We'll start with the idea that he'll be with the Sabres beginning October 4 against the Boston Bruins and look at these tree as Buffalo's top d-prospects right now.
LHD, Brendan Guhle (2015, 51st-overall)
Guhle began his first pro season with the Rochester Americans and spent plenty of time playing top-pairing minutes in all situations. There's a lot to like about the 6'2" 196 lb. native of Edmonton, Alberta and Sabres fans are still wondering how he dropped to Buffalo at pick No. 51. Guhle is very athletic and skates extremely well, has exceptional on-ice vision and moves the puck seemingly with ease, all of which was on display in Rochester to start the season.
However, Guhle did hit some speed bumps along the way. After a short, two-game call-up in January he was sent back to Rochester and suffered a lower body injury. He would be recalled again for an extended 16-game stint in Buffalo where he struggled a bit before being sent down to Rochester for the AHL playoffs at the end of the NHL regular seaosn. In the latter part of that call-up he suffered an upper-body injury that cause him to miss an April 2 game against Toronto. He seemed well after that but had a miserable performance as the Amerks were swept by the Syracuse Crunch (TBL) in the first round of the Calder Cup playoffs.
What happened to Guhle, when it happened and how much it affected him is still somewhat of a mystery but his playoff performance against a very fast and talented Crunch team left the organization with question marks. Maybe he's not quite ready to join the Sabres on the opening night roster and will need a little more seasoning before he and the team can feel comfortable with him up in Buffalo.
Having Dahlin in the top-six is huge for the organization as they can do what Botterill wants to do with all of his prospects, let them fully develop before bringing them up. If Guhle has an outstanding camp and makes the opening night roster, fine. If he doesn't he can get more seasoning in Rochester. It's a win/win for player and team.
LHD, Lawrence Pilut (FA, 2018)
This could be a huge signing for Buffalo as Botterill and Co. were able to land the SHL's 2018 Defenseman of the Year. The 22 yr. old Pilut has been playing in Sweden's top professional league for the last four years and had a breakout 2017-18 campaign with 38 points which lead all SHL defensemen.
Pilut is an offensive-minded defenseman who skates well and has a good shot which you'll see in the highlights that are out there but here's what his coach, Johan Lindbom also had to say about his defenseman. "Larry (as the team called him) was very talented at a young age," said Lindbom. "Maybe a little too small from the beginning but he's a fighter. He takes his hockey very seriously. He practices very hard and that's what makes him successful.
"He's not the toughest, he's not the strongest in front of the net but he reads the play really well."
Lindbom and his staff were keen on honing the defensive aspects of Pilut's game as the 5'11" 179 lb. rearguard never saw a play he didn't want to jump into, and that's what he'll need to work on in North America, especially with the smaller rink.
Were it a year or two ago, Pilut could have been considered a candidate to make the Sabres if he had a strong camp. Right now, with the addition of Dahlin and having Guhle with a full pro season under his belt, Pilut slips nicely into the No. 2 d-prospect spot.
RHD, William Borgen (2015, 92nd)
There was a lot of fear rippling through Sabreland wondering whether or not the Sabres would be able to sign the St. Cloud State University standout. Buffalo fans had already been jilted by Jimmy Vesey and Cal Petersen, both college prospects who finished school and opted for free agency.
Borgen, however, chose to sign with Buffalo after his junior season in college. The 6'2" 189 lb. native of Moorehead, MN finished his career with five goals and 36 assists in 106 games for the Huskies and came in for a brief eight-game cup of coffee on an amateur tryout with the Rochester Americans this season.
Other than his NHL-ready frame, one of the things that stands out with Borgen is that he's a righty, something severely lacking in the Sabres d-prospect pool right now. He's also a defensive defenseman but don't let that lead you into believing he's some pylon on the back end as he has excellent skating ability.
Borgen was tabbed for the 2016 US World Junior squad and was also selected for the 2018 Olympic team, though he never dressed. He's projected to be a long-term project player that will continue to hone his defense while trying to find some of the scoring touch he had in high school. With Dahlin Guhle and possibly Pilut paving the way the next few years, Borgen will have all the time he needs to develop properly.
While going through past blogs prior to the NHL Entry Draft, I came across a piece from 2015 just prior to the draft. In it we looked at the defense core depth and it was extremely thin at the time.
The 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs showcased a Norris Trophy defenseman in the Chicago Blackhawks' Duncan Keith and a future Norris winner in then 24 yr. old Tampa Bay Lightning d-man, Victor Hedman (who just won the trophy last night.) The duo put on a clinic in the finals that year.
At the time Keith was 31 yrs. old and the elder statesmen of a group of high-quality d-men featuring Norris Trophy winner PK Subban, who was with the Montreal Canadiens, and fellow Norris winner Erik Karlsson (OTT) who lead a group of 25 yr. olds that included Drew Doughty (LAK,) Alex Pietrangelo (STL) and Roman Josi (NSH.) After Hedman there was another wave of d-men just cutting their teeth in Oliver-Ekman Larsson (ARI,) Torey Krug and Dougie Hamilton (BOS,) Olli Matta (PIT) and 19 yr. old stud Aaron Ekblad (FLA.)
The Sabres at the time were coming off a scorched-earth rebuild that left their team mostly barren on the back-end. At the time just before the 2015 NHL Draft, the Sabres had young players with promise in 23 yr. old Mark Pysyk, 20 yr. olds Rasmus Ristolainen and Nikita Zadorov and...that's about it. The pipeline had Jake McCabe and Chad Ruhwedel at the top followed by Brady Austin, who played five NHL games and Jerome Leduc, who never saw the NHL ice. Anthony Florentino and Brycen Martin, both of whom are in the minors, rounded out the group.
Since that piece was done, the Sabres traded Zadorov and Pysyk and allowed Ruhwedel to walk. Buffalo's depth on defense struggled for the last three seasons as players drafted beginning in 2015 began making their way up through the system and GM's tried to fill holes with minor-league vets and free agent signings.
The Sabres did well in landing coveted college free agent Casey Nelson in 2016 and SHL Defenseman of the year, Lawrence Pilut last month. They also signed Victor Antipin out of the KHL in 2017 but that didn't work out so well. Antipin had a rough season that ended with him being carted off on a stretcher with four games to go. Buffalo GM Jason Botterill recently said that, contrary to some reports, Antipin has not signed a KHL contract and is looking to come back to the NHL.
As dreary as the last few years have been on defense, there is light at the end of the tunnel and the drafting of defenseman Rasmus Dahlin will shove this slow moving train even closer to the bright light of tomorrow. Dahlin is considered a franchise defenseman (some say generational) and will immediately be plugged into the lineup in a top-four role. What that does for the depth chart can't be understated as those on the big club will begin to fall into roles to suit them while those in the pipeline can continue to develop at lower levels.
There are still big holes on the back-end from Buffalo on down, but make no mistake, the selection of Dahlin allows for the organization to build quality depth, something that's desperately needed.
Barring any trades, the Sabres lineup on defense looks to have Dahlin, Rasmus Ristolainen, Marco Scandella, Zach Bogosian, Jake McCabe, Casey Nelson and Nathan Beaulieu right now with the possibility that their top d-prospect could be in the mix.
Although semantics will have Dahlin as the Sabres top prospect from the time he's drafted until opening day, why bother putting him there for this exercise? We'll start with the idea that he'll be with the Sabres beginning October 4 against the Boston Bruins and look at these tree as Buffalo's top d-prospects right now.
LHD, Brendan Guhle (2015, 51st-overall)
Guhle began his first pro season with the Rochester Americans and spent plenty of time playing top-pairing minutes in all situations. There's a lot to like about the 6'2" 196 lb. native of Edmonton, Alberta and Sabres fans are still wondering how he dropped to Buffalo at pick No. 51. Guhle is very athletic and skates extremely well, has exceptional on-ice vision and moves the puck seemingly with ease, all of which was on display in Rochester to start the season.
However, Guhle did hit some speed bumps along the way. After a short, two-game call-up in January he was sent back to Rochester and suffered a lower body injury. He would be recalled again for an extended 16-game stint in Buffalo where he struggled a bit before being sent down to Rochester for the AHL playoffs at the end of the NHL regular seaosn. In the latter part of that call-up he suffered an upper-body injury that cause him to miss an April 2 game against Toronto. He seemed well after that but had a miserable performance as the Amerks were swept by the Syracuse Crunch (TBL) in the first round of the Calder Cup playoffs.
What happened to Guhle, when it happened and how much it affected him is still somewhat of a mystery but his playoff performance against a very fast and talented Crunch team left the organization with question marks. Maybe he's not quite ready to join the Sabres on the opening night roster and will need a little more seasoning before he and the team can feel comfortable with him up in Buffalo.
Having Dahlin in the top-six is huge for the organization as they can do what Botterill wants to do with all of his prospects, let them fully develop before bringing them up. If Guhle has an outstanding camp and makes the opening night roster, fine. If he doesn't he can get more seasoning in Rochester. It's a win/win for player and team.
LHD, Lawrence Pilut (FA, 2018)
This could be a huge signing for Buffalo as Botterill and Co. were able to land the SHL's 2018 Defenseman of the Year. The 22 yr. old Pilut has been playing in Sweden's top professional league for the last four years and had a breakout 2017-18 campaign with 38 points which lead all SHL defensemen.
Pilut is an offensive-minded defenseman who skates well and has a good shot which you'll see in the highlights that are out there but here's what his coach, Johan Lindbom also had to say about his defenseman. "Larry (as the team called him) was very talented at a young age," said Lindbom. "Maybe a little too small from the beginning but he's a fighter. He takes his hockey very seriously. He practices very hard and that's what makes him successful.
"He's not the toughest, he's not the strongest in front of the net but he reads the play really well."
Lindbom and his staff were keen on honing the defensive aspects of Pilut's game as the 5'11" 179 lb. rearguard never saw a play he didn't want to jump into, and that's what he'll need to work on in North America, especially with the smaller rink.
Were it a year or two ago, Pilut could have been considered a candidate to make the Sabres if he had a strong camp. Right now, with the addition of Dahlin and having Guhle with a full pro season under his belt, Pilut slips nicely into the No. 2 d-prospect spot.
RHD, William Borgen (2015, 92nd)
There was a lot of fear rippling through Sabreland wondering whether or not the Sabres would be able to sign the St. Cloud State University standout. Buffalo fans had already been jilted by Jimmy Vesey and Cal Petersen, both college prospects who finished school and opted for free agency.
Borgen, however, chose to sign with Buffalo after his junior season in college. The 6'2" 189 lb. native of Moorehead, MN finished his career with five goals and 36 assists in 106 games for the Huskies and came in for a brief eight-game cup of coffee on an amateur tryout with the Rochester Americans this season.
Other than his NHL-ready frame, one of the things that stands out with Borgen is that he's a righty, something severely lacking in the Sabres d-prospect pool right now. He's also a defensive defenseman but don't let that lead you into believing he's some pylon on the back end as he has excellent skating ability.
Borgen was tabbed for the 2016 US World Junior squad and was also selected for the 2018 Olympic team, though he never dressed. He's projected to be a long-term project player that will continue to hone his defense while trying to find some of the scoring touch he had in high school. With Dahlin Guhle and possibly Pilut paving the way the next few years, Borgen will have all the time he needs to develop properly.
Sunday, June 17, 2018
Picks 1-32. Full 2018 NHL Mock Draft
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 6-16-2018
The 2018 NHL Entry Draft will be held in Dallas, TX June 22-23 and the Buffalo Sabres have the first-overall pick. Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin is the man and don't let anyone try to tell you anything different. The Carolina Hurricanes made a huge jump at the draft and will select second-overall. It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that the 'Canes will select winger Andrei Svechnikov.
Most believe that the draft begins at No. 3 with the Montreal Canadiens. There's a lot going on in Montreal as GM Marc Bergevin is looking to land a No. 1 center. Unfortunately for them there's a great winger available in in Filip Zadina and another one in Brady Tkachuk with the former very close to being NHL ready if he isn't already there. After those two there's an array of defensemen available in all shapes and sizes.
The draft starts with Dahlin and is followed by the next tier of Svechinkov and Zadina. The next group begins with Tkachuk and stretches down to about No. 8 or 9 with the following 10-20 picks very close. After that there's said to be a large group that goes deep well into the second round where all are very similarly graded.
For Sabres fans in particular, it seems as if there will be some action at or around the draft and the name that at the for is Ryan O'Reilly. It would seem as if his time on Buffalo is done with both he and the Sabres presumably ready to move on. O'Reilly is a top-six center and is a very valuable commodity right now, especially to a team like the Canadiens who do not have a top-six center like him.
Could O'Reilly be traded for the third-overall pick in this year's draft? Maybe. But we didn't go there as we slowly released this mock draft five picks at a time. It's a straight up mock.
Enjoy.
The 2018 NHL Entry Draft will be held in Dallas, TX June 22-23 and the Buffalo Sabres have the first-overall pick. Swedish defenseman Rasmus Dahlin is the man and don't let anyone try to tell you anything different. The Carolina Hurricanes made a huge jump at the draft and will select second-overall. It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that the 'Canes will select winger Andrei Svechnikov.
Most believe that the draft begins at No. 3 with the Montreal Canadiens. There's a lot going on in Montreal as GM Marc Bergevin is looking to land a No. 1 center. Unfortunately for them there's a great winger available in in Filip Zadina and another one in Brady Tkachuk with the former very close to being NHL ready if he isn't already there. After those two there's an array of defensemen available in all shapes and sizes.
The draft starts with Dahlin and is followed by the next tier of Svechinkov and Zadina. The next group begins with Tkachuk and stretches down to about No. 8 or 9 with the following 10-20 picks very close. After that there's said to be a large group that goes deep well into the second round where all are very similarly graded.
For Sabres fans in particular, it seems as if there will be some action at or around the draft and the name that at the for is Ryan O'Reilly. It would seem as if his time on Buffalo is done with both he and the Sabres presumably ready to move on. O'Reilly is a top-six center and is a very valuable commodity right now, especially to a team like the Canadiens who do not have a top-six center like him.
Could O'Reilly be traded for the third-overall pick in this year's draft? Maybe. But we didn't go there as we slowly released this mock draft five picks at a time. It's a straight up mock.
Enjoy.
2018 NHL Mock Draft Picks 31-32
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 6-15-2018
31. Washington Capitals--C, Akil Thomas. The cool thing about having 31 teams and releasing a mock draft five teams at a time beginning at the top, is that it leaves the Stanley Cup Champions with their own section. Even in a couple years when Seattle (presumably) expands the league to 32 teams, the last two teams standing will have their own blog using this format.
However, for this year it's about the Caps, and with pick No. 32 belonging to the Buffalo Sabres, a dip into the next round as the Sabres lead off with the first pick in round two.
There were a lot of hockey fans that were happy Washington finally won the Stanley Cup and there were various reasons. There were fans in Washington finally saw their hockey team win a championship after 44 years of frustration, and there was a large contingent who just couldn't stand an expansion team winning the Cup in their first season, despite how driven the Vegas Golden Knights was to even make it to the finals and there were some who wanted to see the greatest goal scorer of his generation, Alex Ovechkin, finally reach the promised land. Some, like myself, were real happy to see a coach like Barry Trotz finally win one as well.
Talent won out in this series as the Golden Knights just couldn't match what the Caps had to offer. Goalie Marc-Andre Fleury and company put forth a valiant effort, but the best and most skillful players inevitably break through no matter how unreal a defense and goaltending can be. Credit to the Knights as they kept it tight throughout the series with hard work and some skill of their own, but the momentum that carried them to the finals, although not fully depleted, was not quite enough to overcome the definitive talent discrepancy the Capitals had over Vegas.
Props to the Golden Knights for a great year, to Washington for the championship win and to Capitals greats Rod Langway, Olaf Kolzig, Mike Gartner and Peter Bondra, all of them who were amongst the best at their positions at one time, with Hall of Fame nods to Langway and Gartner, but never reached the promised land.
With the post-Cup parties over and the parade a thing of the past, it's time to move forward and the Caps are jumping right into post season mode with the draft next Friday. Waiting for them at No. 31 is 6'0" 170 lb. Niagara Ice Dogs (OHL) center, Akil Thomas, a highly skilled playmaker whom nearly every draftnik believes should be more selfish. Thomas has the brains and a junkyard dog competitiveness to go along with his skill package and if he fills out his frame in a few years while adding strength, he could be an upper-level, two-way center.
32. Buffalo Sabres. LW, Blake McLaughlin. Although I said this three years ago, I truly hope that the Sabres won't be in this position again. After drafting Jack Eichel second-overall in 2015 it was believed that Buffalo had bottomed out. But they didn't. It ended up being a bounce and they fell right to the bottom again. Something just hasn't been right in Sabreland but the future looks bright, especially since this drop tot the bottom netted them a franchise d-prospect.
However, the Sabres aren't done by any stretch of the imagination and still need to do a ton of work to fill the prospect pool with quality players. It's a tough call between three players for the Sabres and they really cant' go wrong with any of these USHL products. Defenseman K'Andre Miller is a big defenseman who can skate well, has soft hands and a great shot but will be on a long development curve. A sentimental pick would be Jack Drury nephew of former Sabres centerman Chris Drury who's an AGM with the NY Rangers. Drury checks off all the boxes his uncle did with things like compete-level and drive and he also tallied 24 goals and 65 points in in 56 games for the Waterloo Blackhawks.
Waiting for the Sabres at No. 32 is McLaughlin, a player on par with the others but one who also fills a position of need at left wing.
The scoop on the Chicago Steel product is that he flies up and down the ice on a slender 6'0" 157 lb. frame. Sure that's skinny, but he'll have plenty of time to fill out said frame in the proper way as he heads to the University of Minnesota this year.
McLaughlin is a pleasure to watch skating and can beat a defenseman a number of ways. He had 52 points (23+29) in 54 games for the Steel while also tallying three goals and seven points in seven game in the playoffs. He has the vision and a quick release shot that can be deadly. Add 20 lbs. to his frame and he'd probably go somewhere in the middle of the first round. If he can add that weight and not have it affect any part of his game, he should be a real good find in the second round.
31. Washington Capitals--C, Akil Thomas. The cool thing about having 31 teams and releasing a mock draft five teams at a time beginning at the top, is that it leaves the Stanley Cup Champions with their own section. Even in a couple years when Seattle (presumably) expands the league to 32 teams, the last two teams standing will have their own blog using this format.
However, for this year it's about the Caps, and with pick No. 32 belonging to the Buffalo Sabres, a dip into the next round as the Sabres lead off with the first pick in round two.
There were a lot of hockey fans that were happy Washington finally won the Stanley Cup and there were various reasons. There were fans in Washington finally saw their hockey team win a championship after 44 years of frustration, and there was a large contingent who just couldn't stand an expansion team winning the Cup in their first season, despite how driven the Vegas Golden Knights was to even make it to the finals and there were some who wanted to see the greatest goal scorer of his generation, Alex Ovechkin, finally reach the promised land. Some, like myself, were real happy to see a coach like Barry Trotz finally win one as well.
Talent won out in this series as the Golden Knights just couldn't match what the Caps had to offer. Goalie Marc-Andre Fleury and company put forth a valiant effort, but the best and most skillful players inevitably break through no matter how unreal a defense and goaltending can be. Credit to the Knights as they kept it tight throughout the series with hard work and some skill of their own, but the momentum that carried them to the finals, although not fully depleted, was not quite enough to overcome the definitive talent discrepancy the Capitals had over Vegas.
Props to the Golden Knights for a great year, to Washington for the championship win and to Capitals greats Rod Langway, Olaf Kolzig, Mike Gartner and Peter Bondra, all of them who were amongst the best at their positions at one time, with Hall of Fame nods to Langway and Gartner, but never reached the promised land.
With the post-Cup parties over and the parade a thing of the past, it's time to move forward and the Caps are jumping right into post season mode with the draft next Friday. Waiting for them at No. 31 is 6'0" 170 lb. Niagara Ice Dogs (OHL) center, Akil Thomas, a highly skilled playmaker whom nearly every draftnik believes should be more selfish. Thomas has the brains and a junkyard dog competitiveness to go along with his skill package and if he fills out his frame in a few years while adding strength, he could be an upper-level, two-way center.
32. Buffalo Sabres. LW, Blake McLaughlin. Although I said this three years ago, I truly hope that the Sabres won't be in this position again. After drafting Jack Eichel second-overall in 2015 it was believed that Buffalo had bottomed out. But they didn't. It ended up being a bounce and they fell right to the bottom again. Something just hasn't been right in Sabreland but the future looks bright, especially since this drop tot the bottom netted them a franchise d-prospect.
However, the Sabres aren't done by any stretch of the imagination and still need to do a ton of work to fill the prospect pool with quality players. It's a tough call between three players for the Sabres and they really cant' go wrong with any of these USHL products. Defenseman K'Andre Miller is a big defenseman who can skate well, has soft hands and a great shot but will be on a long development curve. A sentimental pick would be Jack Drury nephew of former Sabres centerman Chris Drury who's an AGM with the NY Rangers. Drury checks off all the boxes his uncle did with things like compete-level and drive and he also tallied 24 goals and 65 points in in 56 games for the Waterloo Blackhawks.
Waiting for the Sabres at No. 32 is McLaughlin, a player on par with the others but one who also fills a position of need at left wing.
The scoop on the Chicago Steel product is that he flies up and down the ice on a slender 6'0" 157 lb. frame. Sure that's skinny, but he'll have plenty of time to fill out said frame in the proper way as he heads to the University of Minnesota this year.
McLaughlin is a pleasure to watch skating and can beat a defenseman a number of ways. He had 52 points (23+29) in 54 games for the Steel while also tallying three goals and seven points in seven game in the playoffs. He has the vision and a quick release shot that can be deadly. Add 20 lbs. to his frame and he'd probably go somewhere in the middle of the first round. If he can add that weight and not have it affect any part of his game, he should be a real good find in the second round.
Friday, June 15, 2018
2018 NHL Mock Draft Picks 26-30
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 6-14-2018
26. NY Rangers (from Boston)--RW, Dominik Bokk. Rangers landed a gem with the pick of Bouchard early in the draft and have another pick at No. 28. They could go a number of ways but opt to add offense with the selection of Bokk, a raw talent with room to fill out his 6'1" 176 lb. pro-frame. The word on Bokk is that he possesses elite stick skills and offensive-minded instincts but needs to work on his play away from the puck. Rangers have no problem with that as this pick helps strengthen the right side of the prospect pool up front while allowing Bokk adequate time to develop.
27. Chicago Blackhawks (from Nashville)--C, Ty Dellandrea. Hawks have balance at the top of the prospect pool between forwards and defensemen and opt for best player available which happens to be Dellandrea. The Flint Firebirds center has an NHL frame at 6'0" 183 lbs. and possesses keen on-ice instincts and was second in scoring (27 goals, 32 assists) on a Flint team that was last in the OHL's Western Conference. When watching him you get the sense that there's some Jonathan Toews to his game, which suits him well having Chicago draft him.
28. NY Rangers (from Tampa Bay)-- LHD, Adam Ginning. It's never a bad idea to have a defensive defenseman holding the fort while the rest of the skaters are on the offensive, and that's where Ginning comes into play. The 18 yr. old has great size at 6'3" 196 lbs. with room to grow into that frame. Word is that he'll need a couple more years in his native Sweden before making the move to North America which will give him time to build some upper-body strength and to acclimate to playing against pro talent. Which is fine with the Rangers. A project player with the third of three first rounders is a pretty solid approach to adding organizational depth, which they'll need as they'll always be in on top-priced free agents and will need quality players on the cheap to fill out the roster.
29. St. Louis Blues (from Winnipeg) RHD, Calen Addison. Blues are ticked that they missed out on a player like Fabree, amongst others, up in the top-15 but they can still land a good player that helps balance out a prospect pool a bit heavy on forwards in the top end. Addison is on the smaller side, but he's got moxie and is an extremely good skater who plays an offensive-minded game from the back-end. As with all players in the lower first round he'll need some work, which includes strength for the pro game, but the Blues may have gotten themselves a nice player here at No. 29.
30. Detroit Red Wings (from Vegas)--C, Jacob Olofsson. About the only thing stranger than both the Rangers and Blackhawks in their draft positions is the expansion Vegas Golden Knights trading away their first rounder for a playoff run and having the pick be the second-last in the first round. It's quite the rabbit hole we've fallen into. The Knights made it to the Stanley Cup Finals while the Red Wings have missed the playoffs two years running after a quarter century of playoff participation that included three Stanley Cups. The Wings snared a fine d-prospect in Boqvist early and land another fine prospect a No. 30. Although 10 goals and 21 points doesn't seem like a lot here in North America, Olofsson was named best junior player in Sweden's second-tier pro league joining previous winners Filip Forsberg and William Carlson. Oloffson might not be an elite scorer but his smarts, positioning and all-around play could see him as at least a top-nine pivot at the NHL level.
26. NY Rangers (from Boston)--RW, Dominik Bokk. Rangers landed a gem with the pick of Bouchard early in the draft and have another pick at No. 28. They could go a number of ways but opt to add offense with the selection of Bokk, a raw talent with room to fill out his 6'1" 176 lb. pro-frame. The word on Bokk is that he possesses elite stick skills and offensive-minded instincts but needs to work on his play away from the puck. Rangers have no problem with that as this pick helps strengthen the right side of the prospect pool up front while allowing Bokk adequate time to develop.
27. Chicago Blackhawks (from Nashville)--C, Ty Dellandrea. Hawks have balance at the top of the prospect pool between forwards and defensemen and opt for best player available which happens to be Dellandrea. The Flint Firebirds center has an NHL frame at 6'0" 183 lbs. and possesses keen on-ice instincts and was second in scoring (27 goals, 32 assists) on a Flint team that was last in the OHL's Western Conference. When watching him you get the sense that there's some Jonathan Toews to his game, which suits him well having Chicago draft him.
28. NY Rangers (from Tampa Bay)-- LHD, Adam Ginning. It's never a bad idea to have a defensive defenseman holding the fort while the rest of the skaters are on the offensive, and that's where Ginning comes into play. The 18 yr. old has great size at 6'3" 196 lbs. with room to grow into that frame. Word is that he'll need a couple more years in his native Sweden before making the move to North America which will give him time to build some upper-body strength and to acclimate to playing against pro talent. Which is fine with the Rangers. A project player with the third of three first rounders is a pretty solid approach to adding organizational depth, which they'll need as they'll always be in on top-priced free agents and will need quality players on the cheap to fill out the roster.
29. St. Louis Blues (from Winnipeg) RHD, Calen Addison. Blues are ticked that they missed out on a player like Fabree, amongst others, up in the top-15 but they can still land a good player that helps balance out a prospect pool a bit heavy on forwards in the top end. Addison is on the smaller side, but he's got moxie and is an extremely good skater who plays an offensive-minded game from the back-end. As with all players in the lower first round he'll need some work, which includes strength for the pro game, but the Blues may have gotten themselves a nice player here at No. 29.
30. Detroit Red Wings (from Vegas)--C, Jacob Olofsson. About the only thing stranger than both the Rangers and Blackhawks in their draft positions is the expansion Vegas Golden Knights trading away their first rounder for a playoff run and having the pick be the second-last in the first round. It's quite the rabbit hole we've fallen into. The Knights made it to the Stanley Cup Finals while the Red Wings have missed the playoffs two years running after a quarter century of playoff participation that included three Stanley Cups. The Wings snared a fine d-prospect in Boqvist early and land another fine prospect a No. 30. Although 10 goals and 21 points doesn't seem like a lot here in North America, Olofsson was named best junior player in Sweden's second-tier pro league joining previous winners Filip Forsberg and William Carlson. Oloffson might not be an elite scorer but his smarts, positioning and all-around play could see him as at least a top-nine pivot at the NHL level.
Thursday, June 14, 2018
2018 NHL Mock Draft Picks 21-25
Published by hockeybuzz.com, 6-13-2018
21. San Jose Sharks--LHD, Jared McIsaac. First off, long-time GM Doug Wilson traded for and eventually re-signed former Sabre LW Evander Kane. Now news has come out that the Sharks interviewed 35 yr. old pond-jumping left winger Ilya Kovalchuk, who wants back into the NHL. In addition to that there's even been talk about the Sharks being a possible destination for John Tavares. Buying out Paul Martin and not re-signing Joe Thornton will help create some room for these grandiose plans but it would take some crafty cap configuring for them to accommodate some pretty pricey players. Luckily they've drafted extremely well to the point where there's a pool of cost-controlled youngins ready to contribute at the NHL level. Names like LeBlanc, Meier, and Ryan are ready to roll (or are already rolling) and they add another solid prospect in McIsaac, a 6'1" 196 lb. defenseman and reigning QMJHL Defenseman of the Year. Although offense isn't his forte, he's solid on the back end, very agile on his skates and he still has time to grow into his frame to become a physical presence on the back end.
22. Ottawa Senators (from PIT)--RW, Martin Kaut. Ottawa's been getting a bad rap lately and it seems as if much of it is deserved. Melnyk is one thing, as billionaire owners have their own mindset (regardless of country) which is usually taken in stride, but AGM Randy Lee's debacle at the NHL Combine really leaves a black mark on the front office. Now Erik Karlsson's wife files for a restraining order against team mate Mike Hoffman's girlfriend? And you thought Buffalo was bad when Evander Kane was in town? This is looks like it will be the end of Karlsson's time in Ottawa which will put the Sens in full rebuild-mode. Drafting an impact player fourth-overall certainly helps them down the road as does landing Kaut who rose up from mid-term rankings but falls a bit to No. 22. The solid two-way play of the 18 yr. old right winger who played in the top Czech league makes for an intriguing pick here. Kaut isn't flashy, but he's quick and is smart in all zones plus he has some finish to his game, which is good for the Sens as they'll need solid foundational pieces as they move on from the present soap opera.
23. Anaheim Ducks--C, Isac Lundestrom. The Ducks know how to draft and although they're not quite at a Detroit Red Wings level they continue to bring in quality NHL players and continue to make the playoffs despite a draft history that had them in the top-10 only three times since 2005. Anaheim still has a very deep talent pool on defense and have been drafting plenty of centers lately but still take Lundestrom, a speedy, versatile player with an NHL frame who plays a strong, two-way, north/south game and can also play the wing. The model of consistency that has been the Ducks since their 2007 Stanley Cup win is being tested right now as rumors of big changes are swirling. RW Corey Perry is said to be on the block and C, Ryan Kesler might miss all of next season because of bad hips. Both are 33 yrs. old and have seen better days with Perry possibly done in Anaheim.
24. Minnesota Wild--LHD, Rasmus Sandin. New GM Paul Fenton came from the Nashville Predators organization, the model for the new blueline approach to the NHL game, and served under Preds GM David Poile who was never afraid to pull off a big trade (see Shea Weber and Seth Jones trades.) Welcome to Minnesota where it's assumed that Fenton will do both. He's got his work cut out for him with the Wild, not so much talent-wise, but building a roster that can make it past the first round of the playoffs, something they've been unable to do the last three years. Will he blow it up? Or will he slowly disassemble this group of playoff underachievers? Perhaps because of his background we can expect at least one big move this off season, maybe at the draft. The Wild head into next week with a good pool of defensemen but you can never have enough good d-prospects and they find one in Sandin. Although he's the third Rasmus taken at this draft he's still a damn good player who thinks the game extremely well, is solid in his own end and is a great puck-mover, something Fenton is sure to love. Sandin crossed the pond and quickly became a top-pairing, all-around defenseman on a stacked Sault Ste. Marie squad and his selection by the Wild is a pretty good way to start the Paul Fenton-era in Minnesota.
25. Toronto Maple Leafs--RHD, Ryan Merkely. The Leafs have been propped up as the model for a successful rebuild, and they've earned it so far. Team president Brendan Shanahan built the organization with some of the best minds in the business which included Hall of Famers and analytics gurus leading the hockey operations. Although GM/Senior Advisor Lou Lamoriello bailed and it's said that head coach Mike Babcock is having some issues with his young stars, it's still the Leafs lead by three-time Cup-winner Shanahan atop and an almost enviable hockey department. New GM Kyle Dubas, who was promoted from AGM, is an analytics guru who served under an old-school type in Lamoriello providing a nice balance. But with 'Sweet Lou' gone, Dubas can't help himself when selecting Merkley as the Leafs need defense and the 18 yr. old checks all the analytics boxes in a dramatic way. Merkley has it all in the offensive zone and eventually it will be up to Babcock to bring out the full potential of a dynamic offensive-minded defenseman that is said to have issues, which is why he's dropped this far in the draft.
21. San Jose Sharks--LHD, Jared McIsaac. First off, long-time GM Doug Wilson traded for and eventually re-signed former Sabre LW Evander Kane. Now news has come out that the Sharks interviewed 35 yr. old pond-jumping left winger Ilya Kovalchuk, who wants back into the NHL. In addition to that there's even been talk about the Sharks being a possible destination for John Tavares. Buying out Paul Martin and not re-signing Joe Thornton will help create some room for these grandiose plans but it would take some crafty cap configuring for them to accommodate some pretty pricey players. Luckily they've drafted extremely well to the point where there's a pool of cost-controlled youngins ready to contribute at the NHL level. Names like LeBlanc, Meier, and Ryan are ready to roll (or are already rolling) and they add another solid prospect in McIsaac, a 6'1" 196 lb. defenseman and reigning QMJHL Defenseman of the Year. Although offense isn't his forte, he's solid on the back end, very agile on his skates and he still has time to grow into his frame to become a physical presence on the back end.
22. Ottawa Senators (from PIT)--RW, Martin Kaut. Ottawa's been getting a bad rap lately and it seems as if much of it is deserved. Melnyk is one thing, as billionaire owners have their own mindset (regardless of country) which is usually taken in stride, but AGM Randy Lee's debacle at the NHL Combine really leaves a black mark on the front office. Now Erik Karlsson's wife files for a restraining order against team mate Mike Hoffman's girlfriend? And you thought Buffalo was bad when Evander Kane was in town? This is looks like it will be the end of Karlsson's time in Ottawa which will put the Sens in full rebuild-mode. Drafting an impact player fourth-overall certainly helps them down the road as does landing Kaut who rose up from mid-term rankings but falls a bit to No. 22. The solid two-way play of the 18 yr. old right winger who played in the top Czech league makes for an intriguing pick here. Kaut isn't flashy, but he's quick and is smart in all zones plus he has some finish to his game, which is good for the Sens as they'll need solid foundational pieces as they move on from the present soap opera.
23. Anaheim Ducks--C, Isac Lundestrom. The Ducks know how to draft and although they're not quite at a Detroit Red Wings level they continue to bring in quality NHL players and continue to make the playoffs despite a draft history that had them in the top-10 only three times since 2005. Anaheim still has a very deep talent pool on defense and have been drafting plenty of centers lately but still take Lundestrom, a speedy, versatile player with an NHL frame who plays a strong, two-way, north/south game and can also play the wing. The model of consistency that has been the Ducks since their 2007 Stanley Cup win is being tested right now as rumors of big changes are swirling. RW Corey Perry is said to be on the block and C, Ryan Kesler might miss all of next season because of bad hips. Both are 33 yrs. old and have seen better days with Perry possibly done in Anaheim.
24. Minnesota Wild--LHD, Rasmus Sandin. New GM Paul Fenton came from the Nashville Predators organization, the model for the new blueline approach to the NHL game, and served under Preds GM David Poile who was never afraid to pull off a big trade (see Shea Weber and Seth Jones trades.) Welcome to Minnesota where it's assumed that Fenton will do both. He's got his work cut out for him with the Wild, not so much talent-wise, but building a roster that can make it past the first round of the playoffs, something they've been unable to do the last three years. Will he blow it up? Or will he slowly disassemble this group of playoff underachievers? Perhaps because of his background we can expect at least one big move this off season, maybe at the draft. The Wild head into next week with a good pool of defensemen but you can never have enough good d-prospects and they find one in Sandin. Although he's the third Rasmus taken at this draft he's still a damn good player who thinks the game extremely well, is solid in his own end and is a great puck-mover, something Fenton is sure to love. Sandin crossed the pond and quickly became a top-pairing, all-around defenseman on a stacked Sault Ste. Marie squad and his selection by the Wild is a pretty good way to start the Paul Fenton-era in Minnesota.
25. Toronto Maple Leafs--RHD, Ryan Merkely. The Leafs have been propped up as the model for a successful rebuild, and they've earned it so far. Team president Brendan Shanahan built the organization with some of the best minds in the business which included Hall of Famers and analytics gurus leading the hockey operations. Although GM/Senior Advisor Lou Lamoriello bailed and it's said that head coach Mike Babcock is having some issues with his young stars, it's still the Leafs lead by three-time Cup-winner Shanahan atop and an almost enviable hockey department. New GM Kyle Dubas, who was promoted from AGM, is an analytics guru who served under an old-school type in Lamoriello providing a nice balance. But with 'Sweet Lou' gone, Dubas can't help himself when selecting Merkley as the Leafs need defense and the 18 yr. old checks all the analytics boxes in a dramatic way. Merkley has it all in the offensive zone and eventually it will be up to Babcock to bring out the full potential of a dynamic offensive-minded defenseman that is said to have issues, which is why he's dropped this far in the draft.
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