Draft time
Quinnipiac’s Smilanic, UConn’s Kuznetsov likely to go early
The dynamic freshman forward from Denver with speed to burn or the physical sophomore defenseman from Russia — which will be the first player with Connecticut ties taken in this week’s NHL Draft?
It shouldn’t take long to find out where Quinnipiac freshman Ty Smilanic and UConn sophomore Yan Kuznetsov land. In fact, there is a possibility they could be selected in Tuesday night’s first round (7 p.m., NBC SN) or early Wednesday, when rounds 2-7 are held (11:30 a.m., NHL Network).
Smilanic had the good fortune of being a regular at Colorado Avalanche games growing up. While the Avalanche have had plenty of talented forwards over the years, it was Joe Sakic who caught Smilanic’s eye as a youngster.
“I started going before I could even remember, but when I remembered actually going to the games, I was probably 5 or 6,” Smilanic said. “Even when I was 5 or 6, it was towards the end of his career but Joe Sakic, he was a hockey legend and being the captain of the Avalanches for 10-12 years, so I got to watch him a lot.”
Sakic had his sixth and final 100-point season at the NHL level during the 2006-07 season. when Smilanic was five. It was a decade later when Smilanic, then playing in the U.S. national team program, began to realize the potential as a draft prospect.
Smilanic is coming off an injury-riddled season which was something new for him.
“I never had injuries in my life until this year, never had an injury cause me to miss a game and I had three this year that caused me to miss a significant amount of time, but I just try to stay as positive as I could,” Smilanic said.
He is ranked 24th among North American skaters in the final NHL Central Scouting rankings. ISS Hockey and McKeen’s
Hockey have him rated 19th and 31st respectively. Former Calgary Flames general manager Craig Button, a draft analyst for TSN, has him in at No. 62.
Button has Kuznetsov at No. 32, just out of the first round. He is 36th on the NHL list of North American skaters even though the 6-foot-4, 201-pound Kuznetsov is a native of Murmansk, Russia.
Kuznetsov was just 17 when he played his first game at UConn. He fin
ished with two goals and nine assists in 34 games and impressed UConn coach Mike Cavanaugh with his physical play against dynamic Hockey East forwards.
“Yan, all along we knew was going to be a potential top-two round pick,” Cavanaugh said. “He is just big and strong. He was the youngest kid in college hockey last year, he keeps getting better and better. He reminds me a lot of one of my former players, Brooks Orpik [who Cavanaugh worked with when he was an assistant coach at Boston College] with his work ethic, his size and strength. What I think he’ll be in the NHL is a big shutdown defenseman with some chance to chip in offensively, but I think he is going to make his living being a big, strong shutdown D.”
Orpik, a first-round pick by Pittsburgh in 2000, has played in more than 1,000 regular-season NHL games and won a pair of Stanley Cups, so that is pretty high praise from Cavanaugh.
Kuznetsov is one of four players on UConn’s 2020-21 roster who could get drafted, which would be the most of a Connecticut college program.
“I think it speaks volumes of what our assistant coaches have done on the recruiting trail. One of West Haven’s own, Joe Pereira, has been my assistant since I got here and he does an outstanding job finding that under-theradar talent,” Cavanaugh said. “We have been able to develop some of it and I
think it bodes well.
“Tage Thompson came and he wasn’t really a highly recruited kid, he developed and became a firstrounder and played in the NHL. Max Letunov was another kid who came here and developed for three years and had a chance to play in the NHL last year, so I think it is a really positive direction for our program.”
Jacob Flynn, who had two goals and seven assists in 30 games as a freshman, is 122nd among North American skaters in the NHL draft rankings. Freshman forward Nick Capone from East Haven is ranked 126th and fellow UConn freshman forward Artem Shlaine jumped up to No. 93 in the NHL’s final predraft rankings. That’s just four spots ahead of Alex Jefferies, who had 60 goals and 66 assists in 63 games in two seasons at The Gunnery School. Greenwich’s Zakary Karpa is ranked 199th among North American skaters while Seamus Campbell, expected to join Quinnipiac during the 202122 season, is ranked 195th.
By the end of the draft, it could be one of the best years for players from Connecticut college programs being drafted — which is saying something since UConn has had 11 players selected, Quinnipiac eight and Yale five since 2013. Five of those players appeared in the NHL this season.
Still, that doesn’t mean that even the coaches know where and when their players will be taken.
“It is a very unusual year in that a big evaluation for the draft every year are the World Championships, which the U.S. was going to
host this year, and that tournament didn’t even take place so it is going to be an interesting year all the way around so I couldn’t venture a guess,” Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said.
“I thought Devon Toews was going to get drafted for sure [in 2013] and nobody took him. I couldn’t believe it. Then he had a good freshman year for us and then he goes in the fourth round the next year. I thought he was going to go higher than that. If you go back and look at the success he has had in the NHL, he probably should have been a first or second
rounder. It is so hard to predict. This year more than anything, with teams not getting that last look at players whether it was the World Championships, the USHL playoffs or so many other things that got canceled, spring hockey there are so many showcases in April and May that kids can get a lot of looking at so it is going to be a tough year for NHL teams to go into the draft.”
The New York Rangers have the No. 1 overall pick and are expected to select Alexis Lafreniere.