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2017 NHL Draft - Chicago, Illinois June 23-24 2017


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5 minutes ago, HomeBrew said:

Matthews was in Europe their draft year (2016) and thus did not effect their numbers. Clayton Keller has dominated offensively at every level he has played so far and is going to be a hell of a player for the Coyotes. I would not down play his talent. The only question mark is whether he might struggle to be as effective in the Western Conference as a center given his size. 

White played with Matthews, that's who I was referencing.

 

Keller also played with some of the top players n the country.

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I'm still with Vilardi, skating is a bit choppy but Horvat had the same knock and now it's become a strength. Vilardi is one of the youngest in the draft and his production is consistently improving after a subpar start. Necas and middelstadt are right behind but only thing that concerns me about middelstadt is the level of competition but we shall see. 

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3 minutes ago, HomeBrew said:

Matthews was in Europe their draft year (2016) and thus did not effect their numbers. Clayton Keller has dominated offensively at every level he has played so far and is going to be a hell of a player for the Coyotes. I would not down play his talent. The only question mark is whether he might struggle to be as effective in the Western Conference as a center given his size. 

 

I really don't see Keller struggling much specifically due to the size of the West. He's way too smart to put himself in a position to get trucked into the boards. The only thing that would suffer is he might lose some more board battles, but there are a lot of winger that could do that part for him in Arizona. He's got amazing IQ, vision, agility, hands and evasiveness. He was my favourite along with Sergachev last year and is probably my favourite non-Canuck outside the NHL. 

 

Going back to the draft, I think it would be a good idea to draft another defenseman. Liljegren could bring a new element to our defense and make us that much better. Valimaki also looks like a pretty good option as well. I'm not sold on Makar and probably wouldn't take him in the top ten but he could be a good high risk pick after that. 

 

The reason I say we should pick defenseman is because none of these forwards outside the top 2 look like they can offer us something we don't already have. All these centres and winger look like they will top out as 2nd line players, which we already have. I don't think anyone could realistically displace what we already have:

 

________ - _________ - Boeser

Dahlen - Horvat - Goldobin

Baertschi - Gaudette - Virtanen

Granlund - Gaunce - Lockwood 

 

The only player besides a defenseman and the top 2 I could see fitting with our team is Vilardi. He could be a good 2nd line winger. His only real knock is his skating as he is big, strong and smart. I'm not sure if he could get it to Horvat heights, but I expect it to improve. He will be a big guy that is really hard to knock off the puck when he fills out even more. He would looks great with some pieces we already have:

 

Dahlen - Horvat - Vilardi

 

That's a hardworking, smart and defensively responsible line. The only concern would be the collective speed, but I think it would be fine as Horvat is the only one that has important defensive responsibilities and he is fast enough. 

 

Going back to defenseman, I think Liljegren would really solidify our group. We would have a pretty diverse range of skill sets, with a good mix of IQ, puck moving, size and stay at home guys. The only thing would be Liljegren would be pretty similar to what we already have in Stetcher, but that doesn't sound like a bad thing. Our D core would look pretty great if we got him since he is in our range:

 

Juolevi - Gudbranson

Tryamkin - Liljegren

Brisebois - Stetcher

Hutton

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7 minutes ago, cyoung said:

I'm still with Vilardi, skating is a bit choppy but Horvat had the same knock and now it's become a strength. Vilardi is one of the youngest in the draft and his production is consistently improving after a subpar start. Necas and middelstadt are right behind but only thing that concerns me about middelstadt is the level of competition but we shall see. 

I have a feeling Benning has Vilardi ranked higher too. Seems like his type of player.

 

But the fact that he said he wants a playmaking center makes me think he might be leaning towards Mittelstadt or Petterson. Vilardi is playing on wing right now, no?

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2 minutes ago, Gooseberries said:

Skating is so key in today's nhl. 

Skating and smarts are probably the two biggest things.

 

Not that it can't be improved on (Horvat) or that Vilardi's is 'bad' (it's merely 'ok') but if I have a choice between otherwise similar talent/ceiling players and 4 of them are good to great skaters and one's just 'ok'...

 

 

Edited by J.R.
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1 minute ago, winthecup said:

yea but you don't want to overlook players based on skating alone. Tkachuk was overlooked by a few teams because of his average skating ability. 

From the blue line in Tkatchuk was said to be excellent.  Plus, he's a super pest.  

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1 hour ago, HomeBrew said:

This season Mittelstadt has a 1.42 PPG rate for the Green Bay Gamblers. Another comparable is Nick Schmaltz who scored at a 1.15 rate. 

 

1 hour ago, DeNiro said:

How does Mittelstadt's USHL numbers stack up against some former highly drafted players? 

I really like CM's game, when I watch his highlight packs, or any actual game footage which is really tough to find lol. There is one issue though that worries me. He absolutely lives on the powerplay in the USHL. His primary points per 60 at 5v5 is 137th best in the USHL. He only has 8 points at 5v5 this year through 20 games. 

As I said skill is through the roof, but 5v5 contributions do matter a lot. This is the same reason people are so wary of Rasmussen.

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6 minutes ago, winthecup said:

yea but you don't want to overlook players based on skating alone. Tkachuk was overlooked by a few teams because of his average skating ability. 

That's a great point. However I don't think the Canucks have the d-men for the quick transition game that could afford us to have an abundance of weak skaters. I think Benning wants this new core to all be great skaters and play the 200 foot game as we've seen thus far. 

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I read The Hockey News magazine and they had Keller as the best prospect in their top 50 prospects in all of the NHL. Then other prospects we passed on like Nylander, McAvoy, Sergachev were in the top 10. Juolevi was ranked #15 which is pretty decent but it's sad when all those guys are ranked ahead and we had the chance to pick one of them. Boeser wasn't far behind though ranked #19. I really love Juolevi and he deserved to be ranked in the top 10 at least. We really have to hit a home run with this year's pick. Whether it's Patrick, Hischier, Vilardi, Middlestadt or whoever, we need to make the most out of this pick and address our needs which is obviously in C. 

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5 minutes ago, Derp... said:

 

I really like CM's game, when I watch his highlight packs, or any actual game footage which is really tough to find lol. There is one issue though that worries me. He absolutely lives on the powerplay in the USHL. His primary points per 60 at 5v5 is 137th best in the USHL. He only has 8 points at 5v5 this year through 20 games. 

As I said skill is through the roof, but 5v5 contributions do matter a lot. This is the same reason people are so wary of Rasmussen.

That is definitely something to consider, as I did not know that about Mittlestadt's points re: 5v5. Between him and Rasmussen though, Mittletstadt actually seems to carry the play using his skill and elusiveness; whereas, Rasmussen tends to jam home points from in-close and dominates with his size and shot alone. We could actually use someone that can make our powerplay dominant again, so Mittlestadt being a powerplay specialist isn't necessarily a bad thing, but definitely something they should take into account. 

 

#MakeCanucksPPGreatAgain

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22 minutes ago, Beary Sweet said:

I read The Hockey News magazine and they had Keller as the best prospect in their top 50 prospects in all of the NHL. Then other prospects we passed on like Nylander, McAvoy, Sergachev were in the top 10. Juolevi was ranked #15 which is pretty decent but it's sad when all those guys are ranked ahead and we had the chance to pick one of them. Boeser wasn't far behind though ranked #19. I really love Juolevi and he deserved to be ranked in the top 10 at least. We really have to hit a home run with this year's pick. Whether it's Patrick, Hischier, Vilardi, Middlestadt or whoever, we need to make the most out of this pick and address our needs which is obviously in C. 

All those lists are subjective.

 

Lots of hyped up players on prospect lists have gone on to bust. Nothing matters until they reach the big show.

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52 minutes ago, Camel Toe Drag said:

Great insight, Gooseberries. Even getting your skates on is half the battle these days would you agree? 

Easy there sparky.  Why don't we just chalk this down to WDs coaching ability.  After all he was behind the goldobin illness no? As well as markstroms food poisoning?

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4 hours ago, J.R. said:

NHL readiness isn't terribly high on my check list personally. We don't need a player to jump in next year, we need a guy who will have a higher ceiling in 3+ years.

 

I'd probably put him around there as well.

 

This. A lot.

 

Honestly people get to fixated on individual rankings (see the Juolevi/Tkachuck debate). They should view the draft more in 'groupings'. As in there's the top 2 group of Patrick/Hischier. Then after that there's probably +/- 6-8 players group who could probably be taken in any order and not be 'wrong' as they're all so close. At that point I'm prioritizing C then D making it unlikely we select a W (or C who projects as W) this draft as there will be equal or better C's and D's available when we pick.

 

So Patrick/Hischier, then probably (in largely any order) Mittelstadt, Vilardi, Necas, Petterson, Glass, Liljegren, Makar. There you go, that's 7 :lol:

Benning is that you?

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55 minutes ago, Derp... said:

 

I really like CM's game, when I watch his highlight packs, or any actual game footage which is really tough to find lol. There is one issue though that worries me. He absolutely lives on the powerplay in the USHL. His primary points per 60 at 5v5 is 137th best in the USHL. He only has 8 points at 5v5 this year through 20 games. 

As I said skill is through the roof, but 5v5 contributions do matter a lot. This is the same reason people are so wary of Rasmussen.

This right here is toxic concerning a prospect as 5v5 production is strong indicator of future success.

Power play points are totally different. There is more space, more time, coached set plays. This information significantly drop Mittlestadts stock in my eyes, possibly even takes him out of that 2nd tier.

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