Canadian clubs pass the draft test with top grades
Hockey insiders award highest grade for clever choices to Winnipeg Jets
Technically, the NHL Draft was held in Buffalo. But with Toronto and Winnipeg picking first and second respectively, and Edmonton, Vancouver and Calgary in the top six, and Montreal and Ottawa in the top 11, well, this was Canada’s weekend.
It was a chance for the Canadian teams, all of which missed the playoffs for the first time in 46 years, to significantly get better and speed up their rebuilds.
According to scouts, the teams did not disappoint.
From Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine to Jesse Puljujarvi and Olli Juolevi and Matthew Tkachuk, the best prospects ended up in Canada in what could be a watershed moment for hockey in this country.
“If you’re a Canadian team, you’re leaving the draft happy,” said Craig Button, TSN’s director of scouting. “They all put stakes in the ground in terms of getting franchise players.”
Postmedia News spoke with three independent scouts on how the Canadian teams fared:
CALGARY FLAMES GRADE: A
Calgary got a bit lucky when Matthew Tkachuk was still on the board at the No. 6 spot. But for a team that had the league’s worst save percentage, the biggest pickup of the weekend might have been acquiring goaltender Brian Elliott for a second-rounder in a trade with the St. Louis Blues.
While Elliott should provide stability in net, Tkachuk provides a mix of skill (he scored 107 points with the Memorial Cupwinning London Knights) and what team president Brian Burke likes to define as “truculence.”
With nine picks, Calgary was not afraid to swing for the fences. One player that could end up becoming a home run is 5-foot6, 140-pound Matthew Phillips (166th overall), who was the WHL’s rookie of the year with the Victoria Royals but dropped to the sixth round.
EDMONTON OILERS GRADE: B
Most declared it a huge win when Jesse Puljujarvi fell into Edmonton’s lap with the fourthoverall pick. But unless the twoway winger changes positions, the Oilers once again failed to address their most pressing need, a No. 1 defenceman.
“Another weekend with a lot of picks,” said Mark Seidel, chief scout with North American Central Scouting. “But still no potential top-pairing defenceman or significant increase in their prospect pool.”
Would the Edmonton Oilers have been better off choosing a defenceman or outright trading the pick? Maybe. But in past years, the first round has never really been the issue. It’s rest of the draft.
This year might change that. Scrappy forward Tyler Benson (32nd overall) would have been a high first-round pick had he not been injured for most of the season, while 6-foot-5 defenceman Markus Niemelainen (63rd overall) was a late first-rounder on some scouts’ lists.
MONTREAL CANADIENS GRADE: B+
The Canadiens did not part ways with P.K. Subban — phew! — but they still made a big splash in trading Lars Eller to the Capitals for second-rounders in each of 2017 and 2018, and then acquiring uber-pest Andrew Shaw from the Blackhawks for a pair of draft picks.
Montreal then used its No. 9 pick on Russian-born Mikhail Sergachev, who spent last season in Windsor and who many considered the best defenceman in the draft.
With only four picks — and just two in the top-70 — the Canadiens had to be smart with their later selections. And while 5-foot-10 William Bitten does not address the Canadiens’ need for more size up front, Seidel said he “plays with character, heart, emotion and some skill” — and scored 65 points in 67 games, no small feat considering the daily drama that surrounded the Flint Firebirds for most of the year.
OTTAWA SENATORS GRADE: B+
The Senators were the last Canadian team to pick in the first round, but they helped their cause a little bit by trading up one spot and taking 6-foot-6 Logan Brown (11th overall), a pass-first centre who led Windsor with 53 assists last season.
Ottawa stayed with the bloodlines angle — Logan is the son of former NHL defenceman Jeff Brown — by selecting Ulf Dahlen’s son Jonathan (42nd overall), who might not be as big as his dad but is rated as a better skater and scorer.
“They reached a bit in the middle rounds,” said Seidel, “but got a good pick in the sixth round with (6-foot-4 Finnish winger) Markus Nurmi, who plays hard, competes and has a big frame that will give him a chance.”
The Leafs’ rebuild, which included selecting Mitch Marner and William Nylander in the last two drafts, was sped up considerably with No. 1 overall pick Auston Matthews. The 6-foot-2 forward is the centrepiece that the team has desperately searching for ever since Mats Sundin left Toronto some eight years ago.
“When you start the draft off with the best player in the draft, it has to be a successful weekend,” said Seidel, “but then (head scout) Mark Hunter and his crew went to work to shore up their size deficiency and organizational needs on the back-end.”
Matthews was the easy pick. And in some ways, the Leafs continued that trend throughout the draft by taking four overaged players with their 11 picks, including the Russian winger Yegor Korshkov (31st overall), who had been passed up in two previous drafts.
VANCOUVER CANUCKS GRADE: B
With the fifth-overall pick, the Canucks selected Olli Juolevi over his London teammate Matthew Tkachuk, who actually might have been rated higher. But when you go 11 years without taking a defenceman in the first round, sometimes position trumps potential.
The Canucks were without second and fourth-round picks, but the team found value in American-born William Lockwood (64th overall), who more than one scout described as a “Jannik Hansen-type forward” and Jakob Stukel (154th), whose season coincidentally took off after getting traded from Vancouver to Calgary.
WINNIPEG JETS GRADE: A+
Winnipeg is considered the gold standard when it comes to the draft, as evidenced by a cupboard that is overflowing with NHL-ready prospects. This year was no different.
Finnish Patrik Laine, who was the MVP at the world championship, is considered the best pure goal-scorer since Alex Ovechkin and is expected to jump right into the Jets lineup. But watch out for Logan Stanley (18th overall), a 6-foot-7 defenceman who had scouts imagining what he might look like playing alongside 6-foot-8 Tyler Myers.
The Jets, who had one of the biggest rosters in the NHL this season, stayed with the size theme by selecting 6-foot-3 defenceman Jacob Cederholm (97th) and took a flyer on Russian goalie Mikhail Berdin (157th) with their final pick.