dura_mater

Ristolainen is horrible though.

I dunno, I think Pettersson will be just fine when he makes the jump to the NHL. Do you hope Hughes makes you eat humble pie next year?

Who's making him out to be generational? I didn't realise the term allowed for 2 (Hughes and Dahlin) generational talents in the same generation?

I don't buy this. They take the best player available; which will be Hughes regardless but not because of marketing. Skill and winning hockey games sell more tickets than brothers.

I don't know what either of these 2 words mean but I agree.

I'm sorry to crush your conspiracy theory but Bettman doesn't decide the outcome of the draft lottery.

Disagree. Cam Robinson says if he were to play on the Canucks today he'd be their best skating defense man. That says a lot.

My understanding is they can sign him, he just can't play >9games. Same reason why McLellan benched Bouchard 4 games in a row. Chiarelli, stupidly wanted Bouchard to play, McLellan refused to play him, protecting him from the expansion draft. Edit: someone mentioned this might work differently for NCAA players?

You'd be one of the few. Scouts are pegging him as only a step behind McDavid.

Not disagreeing overall but I can name one this season. Brannstrom.

In fact if I remember correctly you're from Australia. If you follow rugby league at all you'd understand my above point even better. After every game, FB posts for the NRL are littered with hundreds of fans complaining about the officiating and saying the league favours specific teams (e.g. #penaltybroncos).

Then why are you still here? No offense but your belief the league has it out for a bottom 5 team tells me more about you than it does the league. Like someone else pointed out no fan base is happy with the officiating in ANY sport and for as long as I've been watching it's pretty common knowledge the rules change at least slightly during the playoffs.

The kid looks like he has some massive legs on him.

Fair enough but for those of us who aren't scouts it's the next best thing. You can't scout based only off stat sheets.

My motivation is that I care about the young mans life and hope he gets the help he needs. Video game addiction isn't something that is generally taken seriously and if any light being shone on it can help someone seek help than that is a positive. I've seen what addiction can do first hand. If this puts me in an "interesting light", and you assuming I'd have any other reason to take interest in it, puts you in a good light then so be it.

Marek said it happened a year ago. Meaning the 2017 draft hadn't occurred and that puts Juolevi on the knights. So that leaves the 2015 or 2016 drafts. Maybe but how do old guys like Salo or Benning describe a problem (video game addiction) that they don't understand. If you're showing up to practice/games on 2-4 hours sleep I think that shows as poor conditioning even if it's just being tired. You may think it's stupid but video game addiction is a real problem that people have lost jobs over, marriages over and died because of. 1. I apologise if Evan Bouchard never said that. I can't find the radio interview/source so take it with a grain of salt. What I'm going off of is someone has posted a transcription of a radio interview with Bouchard where they claim he said "I think he did uh, he did play video games, he'd go home a lot just to play video games so I don't know, he didn't go out too-too much but uh he was always at home playing games" 2. No it wasn't referring to a player in the CHL THIS season. Marek specifically says he was talking to a CHL GM a year ago and that the league had to get this player help that it got so bad. Everything he says is in hindsight from a year ago. 3. Great, maybe that explains why his game turned around.

It was Jeff Marek and he specifically said it was when he talked to a CHL GM a year ago. Marek also says the player was a 1st round draft pick; then further narrows it down to a high pick. A player from a VERY prominent NHL team. CHL player. Juolevi played in the CHL a year ago. Because it was a year ago it eliminates 2017 draft. Initial players coming to mind were Alex Nylander but he's never played in the CHL or wasn't at that time. Ho-Sang; however, I'm not sure the Islanders are a VERY prominent NHL team. Add in a lot of odd comments from coaches - Salo saying his conditioning needs to be better if he's ever going to play in the NHL. Very poor showing at development camp. Evan Bouchard stating that Juolevi loves to play video games then back tracking a bit. When you're up all night playing video games and only getting 2 hours of sleep it could explain a lot of what is going on with Juolevi. There are small things like you're a LOT more likely to get sick/flu. It could also explain why he was often used so little this year. I know a lot of people are going to disagree but if you look at who it could be from the 2016 and 2015 draft you end up by process of elimination with only a couple guys. Juolevi is one of them. And remember these were comments from a year ago so we can't entirely use his improved play this year to disqualify him.

Can anyone clear something up for me? I've seen Pettersson listed as C/RW but have also read he has played on the LW. Is he more C/RW or C/LW?

The only thing I'd add is that Vegas targeted fast players. Also, they scouted extremely well. They were able to identify players the same way JB and staff were able to identify Pettersson, Gaudette, Lind, Boeser etc. A guy like Karlsson was probably too far down the depth chart to really show what he was capable of and/or he is just having a break out year.

And was it people like you who thought Virtanen was ready for the NHL? It is easy to cherry pick one player, Boeser or Virtanen, but it's hard for any of us to predict when a player is ready. None of the experts had Boeser putting up the numbers he did in his first full year.

I have to agree with Khay on this one. Our d and goaltending are too weak for us to be a playoff team next year. Strongly disagree. The Sedins retiring makes us a worse team. But that's okay, we need some more high end talent at the draft next year.

I think you're in for a big surprise if you think they'll be competing for a WC spot next year. I think it entirely depends on if the Sedins re-sign. I'm expecting the Canucks to be a bottom 5 team for at least 1 if not 2 more years (of course that changes if we get Dahlin). I'm okay with that though, the next 2 drafts are suppose to be very strong.

Pretty hard in a draft with the first overall and a shot at McDavid. It's not the first overalls that Edmonton struggles with but drafting in all of the other rounds. Includes the rest of the rounds and that list looks much different.

Exactly. Elliotte Friedman had the head of hockey operations for Columbus on his podcast a couple weeks back; unfortunately his name escapes my mind at the moment. He stated that it's pretty well known among GMs now that it's not worth trading to move up in the draft. I think he was specifically referring to the top picks in the first round. So while it's a great idea, I can't see it happening.

Sometimes you just get sick of arguing with people who use logical fallacies and straw mans. I appreciate differing opinions if people admit it's just an opinion or back facts up with facts but some people are just downright wasting everyone's time.