Edmonton-area prospects have a shot
Spruce Grove Saints defenceman Ian Mitchell and Lethbridge Hurricanes goalie Stuart Skinner are built for this year’s National Hockey League entry draft — a smallish puck-mover and a tall netminder.
The Edmonton-area players will likely be selected in the second or third round June 24 in Chicago, with Mitchell staying at his parents’ place in Calahoo, Alta., waiting for a phone call from the draft while the family plans a barbecue.
“I’ll probably have some chores to do as well,’’ says Mitchell, while Skinner, the youngest of nine kids (five figure-skating sisters, four hockey-playing brothers), will be at the United Center for Day 2 of the draft on June 25 waiting to climb out of his seat and head to the podium after his name’s called.
Mitchell, who likes the way Tyson Barrie plays in Colorado, is off this fall to the University of Denver, where he’ll be on the same reigning NCAA championship team as Oilers coach Todd McLellan’s son Tyson, a forward. Skinner, who played on the same juggernaut bantam AAA Southside Athletic Club team as Oilers prospect Tyler Benson, will likely be back in Lethbridge for a fourth Western Hockey League season.
Whatever their routes, both players — who’ve played for Canada’s under-18 team and who attended the NHL Combine two weeks ago in Buffalo, where both were interviewed by their hometown Oilers — will be inextricably tied to the 2017 draft. The Oilers don’t have a second-round pick but have two in Round 3. “Yeah, Nos. 82 and 84,” said the right-shot Mitchell.
Mitchell, who stands five-foot-11 and weighs 175 pounds, chose to play in the Alberta Junior Hockey League rather than the WHL in large part because his folks wanted him to go to university. His father, Bill, sells trucks in Acheson and his mother, Sara, was a microbiologist at the University of Alberta for 25 years. Ian, who had an 86-per-cent average in Grade 12, will study finance at school.
Mitchell will look at numbers in the classroom and hope his numbers go up on the weigh scale, too, because there’s little room for 175-pound defencemen in the NHL. He’ll have to be in the 190-pound range.
Mitchell is a bit undersized “like (Cale) Makar (Brooks AJHL, who could go in the top five or six in the draft) but he’s really smart and can run a power play,” said the Central Scouting Bureau’s Rick Jackson.
“Ian needs time and he’ll get it going to school. Look at Troy Stecher who played junior in Penticton went to school, used it to his advantage and he’ll be a regular NHLer (Vancouver). I think Ian could compare to that kind of player,” said Craig Button, TSN’s scouting guru.
Skinner’s had some of his best junior games against the Oil Kings, with his family and friends swallowed up by the local junior team’s fan base at Rexall Place and now Rogers Place.
The six-foot-three Skinner covers lots of acreage, and, as Button says, “he’s really competitive in the net and has really good skills but needs time to develop. It’s like a pitcher in baseball. You can throw, but you have to learn how to pitch. Stuart is in net but has to learn how to be a goaltender. He’s in that group of six or seven goalies who could go from No. 40 to No. 75 in the draft.”
Boston University’s Jake Oettinger is the best of the goalie bunch and might go in Round 1, but after that, it’s uncertain who goes where and when.
“On his questionnaire, one of his idols is Pekka Rinne,” said Jackson. “He’s athletic, but I don’t know if he’s that athletic. Maybe he’s more of a cross between him and Matt Murray, playing at the top of the paint and square to the shooter.”