Overcoming universal pessimism over the likely result of the evening’s festivities, the Blue Jackets earned the #3 overall pick in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, virtually assuring an impact player will be heading to Columbus.
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Climbing from the sixth position up to the third spot made the Winnipeg Jets the biggest movers of the night while the Oilers and Canucks took the largest falls, each sliding down two spots.
“You could have in this system the teams with the three highest point totals of the non-playoff teams pick 1-2-3”.
The other two Canadian teams – the Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators – will select ninth and 12th respectively, which is where their lottery odds projected them to draft.
Canadian teams have a 68.5 per cent chance of landing the top pick at Saturday’s lottery, led by the Toronto Maple Leafs at 20 per cent and Edmonton Oilers at 13.5 per cent.
For Toronto, the prize in this year’s draft was centre Auston Matthews, who hails from that hockey hotbed of Scottsdale, Arizona and chose to play professionally in Switzerland this past season for Zurich, a team coached by ex-NHL coach Marc Crawford.
Shanahan, who said he’d come to last year’s lottery with a raft of good-luck charms, said he came to Saturday’s proceedings bearing only hope. In 2013 the Florida Panthers finished last but the Colorado Avalanche won the lottery and selected center Nathan MacKinnon.
Even if you don’t believe the Matthews pick is set in stone, the debate of Auston Matthews versus Patrik Laine is the best question this generation of Leafs fans has ever had to ponder. In January, they helped Finland win gold at the World Junior Championship.
Laine (6-4, 206) is. And there may still be a slim chance Matthews slides to No. 2, but not to No. 3. “As far as the optics that it improves around the integrity of the game, I think it’s serving its goal”. He also had 17 goals and 33 points in 46 regular-season games.
He’s considered a threat to score from anywhere on the ice and could have the best one-timer of any player in this draft class. It was slightly more jubilant in Columbus, as that meant a top three slot was theirs. The speed at which Laine plays the game is incredible, and if the Canucks were to get him, he would have people harkening back to days of the “Russian Rocket” Pavel Bure, in terms of the overall pace the two players have been known to play at.
Now, Benning said there is a defenseman “in the top six”, not the top five.
Finnish forward Jesse Puljujarvi, Arizona born and St. Louis raised forward Matthew Tkachuk (the son of former Coyote Keith Tkachuk), forwards Pierre-Luc Dubois, Alexander Nylander and defensemen Jakob Chychrun, Mikhail Sergachev and Olli Juolevi are also considered top-10 prospects. The differences in the talent available from picks six to 16 is minuscule, which makes this group of players very interchangeable.
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A little after 8pm tonight, Leafs Nation will have a better idea of the future path of their franchise.
