HighOnHockey

And here's the back half. Didn't put nearly as much time or effort as the first 16, largely because it was a lot of teams picking again so the research was already done. 17. Detroit - Axel Sandin-Pellikka 18. Winnipeg - Eduard Sale (DAS: Mark Hillier) - They don't mind taking flawed players with upside later in the first round. 19. Chicago - Brayden Yager 20. Seattle - Samuel Honzek (DAS: Robert Kron) - A strong European scouting staff but so far they've played it safe, picking mostly from North America. I'm sure covid didn't help. A European via CHL would be a great way to dip their toe in the water. 21. Minnesota - Daniil But (DAS: Judd Brackett) 22. Philadelphia - Gavin Brindley - Flahr drafts out of USHL and NTDP as much as anyone. I thought we were out of NTDPers for the first round but then I remembered Brindley. Seems like a Daniel Briere pick. 23. Rangers - Quentin Musty (DAS: John Lilley) 24. Nashville - Otto Stenberg 25. St. Louis - Calum Ritchie 26. San Jose - Mikhail Gulyayev 27. Colorado - Theo Lindstein (DAS: Wade Klippenstein, DHO: Scott Harris) 28. Toronto - Riley Heidt (DAS: Wes Clark, DPP: Dave Morrison) 29. St. Louis - Bradley Nadeau 30. Carolina - Andrew Cristall (AGM: Darren Yorke) 31. Colorado - Ethan Gauthier 32. Vegas - Oliver Bonk (DPP: Vaughn Karpan, ADPP: Bob Lowes, DAS: Scott Luce)

Alright, I'll try finishing tomorrow, but this this may be as far as I get on my final mock. The parentheses with the personnel I expect to be most involved in making the pick were mostly just notes for myself, but I figured I'd leave them in, in case anyone is interested. 1. Chicago - Connor Bedard (Director of Amateur Scouting: Mike Doneghey) - Doesn't matter though, they're taking Bedard 2. Anaheim - Adam Fantilli (Directer of Player Evaluation: Bruce Franklin) - Again, probably wouldn't matter much who the scouts are behind the pick, Fantilli is the guy. 3. Columbus - Leo Carlsson (DAS: Ville Siren, ADAS: Trevor Timmins) - Timmins took Caufield early pretty recently, so there's some precedent for NTDP here, but Kekelainen seems to actively avoid drafting from that program. Besides, Carlsson seems to be the consensus BPA here. 4. San Jose - Will Smith (DAS: Chris Morehouse, DPP: Scott Fitzgerald) - Boston drafted incessantly out of the USHL and NTDP while Fitzgerald was there, so hard to imagine Smith falling past them here. 5. Montreal - Dalibor Dvorsky (DAS/DPP: Martin LaPointe, co-DAS: Nick Bobrov) - Maybe this is my personal bias showing, but they did take a Slovak first overall and another in the first round last year. Dvorsky feels like a Martin LaPointe kinda pick, although the same could be said for Leonard. 6. Arizona - Matthew Wood (GM: Bill Armstrong, DAS: Darryl Plandowski, ADAS: Ryan Jankowski) - These are tricky picks to predict. Between three old school Canadians at the helm, the tendencies scream CHL, but it seems a little early for any of the CHLers here. A trade-down seems likely, but if they're going to pick then Wood is my best guess, as both head scouts are based out of Western Canada, and the last two times Armstrong went outside of CHL in the first were collegiate players Logan Cooley and Tage Thompson. 7. Philadelphia - Ryan Leonard (AGM: Brent Flahr, DHO: Tom Minton) - This was the easiest decision since the first couple picks. Tom Minton has a close connection to the NTDP, Flahr has a long history drafting from the program, and the Torts-coached Flyers say they're looking for compete above all else in a draft pick. Not to mention he's the pretty clear BPA here. 8. Washington - Matvei Michkov (AGM: Ross Mahoney, DAS: Steve Bowman, DHO: Kris Wagner) All of the top guys running the draft have been there many years and had a ton of success, particularly out of Russia. 9. Detroit - David Reinbacher (DAS: Kris Draper, DES: Hakan Andersson) - They've picked overwhelmingly out of Europe with early picks since Yzerman took over. Mostly Sweden, but Seider came out of another secondary hockey market in Germany. 10. St. Louis - Colby Barlow (DAS: Tony Feltrin) - In 1999 Tony Feltrin and the Isles had three picks in the top ten and took all three out of the OHL. The Blues have also been hard after these heavy forwards lately (Snuggerud, Bolduc, Neighbors). 11. Vancouver - Tom Willander (GM: Patrik Allvin, DAS: Todd Harvey) - I have a feeling Gradin is going to be Allvin's number one guy. Looking like he hit it out of the park with another Swedish defenseman in Pettersson last year. Usually when a player skyrockets up Bob McKenzie's final ranking, they end up going even earlier on draft day. 12. Arizona - Nate Danielson - Again, the smart money is on a big forward out of Western Canada here. 13. Buffalo - Zach Benson (DAS Jerry Forton) - They have a pretty heavy core in place and went all skill with three firsts last year, including Benson's linemate Savoie at 9th overall. 14. Pittsburgh - Oliver Moore (DAS: Nick Pryor) - I mentioned before the Minnesota connection with their new head scout. Pretty good argument that Moore is BPA here, although Dubas doesn't have much of a track record drafting NTDP. 15. Nashville - Dimitri Simashev (AGM: Jeff Kealty) - Trotz said they wanna swing for the fences, well here you go. 16. Calgary - Gabe Perreault (DAS: Tod Button) - Arguably their two best picks under Button have been Adam Fox straight out of NTDP, and Matthew Tkachuk a year removed from it.

Well, I've got my final rankings done and a couple days off work. *sigh* Guess I'll do my mock draft. I almost don't wanna do it this year with the Russian factor and all the Ruskies ranked really early it's gonna be a shit show. I'm not much of a basketball fan and never really do brackets, but I'd imagine it's pretty similar, where one or two badly missed picks early creates a chain reaction and your whole thing is f**ked. Oh well, here I go. I'll post it later tonight or tomorrow sometimes.

I don't get the joke?

Alright well I've been watching a ton of footage the past couple weeks and I've made some adjustments toward the top. I guess this is my finals ranking.

@R3aL After Bob McKenzie's final rankings came out and Sale was the big faller, I've been going back and watching every scrap of footage I can find, trying trying to make sense of it. I can definitely see the reservations people have; I and others have expressed concerns about Smith and Carlsson - cheating for offense, lacking urgency or interest off the puck - but Sale takes it to another level. I've considered mitigating circumstances for various situations, such as deferring to veteran teammates, picking his spots rather than trying to win battles against obviously stronger players, and it seemed like a point of strategy for the WJC team that Kulich and Sapovaliv would handle most of the defensive/board play and try to break Sale offensively. But as Hammer puts it, the more you're having to make excuses for a player, the more you're probably asking for trouble. That said, from what I recall of watching him at his own age level (Hlinkas, both '22 and '23 U18s) he was a one-man show for Czechia, looking dominant despite subpar talent around him. You were always a detractor; I'm just curious what is your recollection of the discrepancies in his game across various levels (pro, U18s, U20s)?

Adam Gajan and Tomas Suchanek would be interesting later round options.

Finally getting around to this, the Sharks would like to thank Damon Severson for his services. With the likes of Thompson, Hartman, Toews coming up for contracts next summer, we knew would be unlikely to sign Damon and wanted to make sure we got something for him. We had been trying to swap him for a cheaper defenseman, but at this point we figured just getting a prospect the calibre of Mailloux would be a win.

Columbus selects Jakub Dvorak.

Columbus takes Coulson Pitre.

Felix Unger Sorum.

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Carson Rehkopf

Took him in FL. Thought I might be able to get him with 77 here. I'm a big Strbak fan too.

Columbus takes Max Strbak.

It's possible, but... between 2009 and 2019 while Darryl Plandowski was Tampa's head scout, out of 11 first round picks, 9 were directly out of the CHL. The only exceptions were Victor Hedman and Andre Vasilievsky. In the two drafts he's been in charge for Arizona they've had 4 first round picks - only Cooley was not CHL.

Tough to answer. Depends who's on the board. I mean, I've been Dvorsky's biggest fan most of the year, but can't see him there at 11. I'd avoid any of the Russians at 11, except for maybe Michkov. I'm also crazy high on Eduard Sale, so he's probably the guy most likely to be there that I'd be really stoked about. I'm also fully expecting Reinbacher and Leonard to be gone, so other than that, Danileson, Willander, Barlow would be pretty cool. I'd be ecstatic if the Canucks landed Minnetian at 75 - one of my favorite players in the draft regardless of ranking, he's just so electric with the puck. Beckett Hendrickson, Felix Nilsson, Ryan Fine, Axel Landen, Brady Cleveland would be some of my targets for various later picks.

Oh my bad. Never mind.

I think you mean his rankings, not his mock. This was the last time he did a mock draft, https://www.tsn.ca/nhl/craig-button-s-mock-draft-which-players-go-after-bedard-1.1957996.

Highly unlikely. Not because of their rankings, but Kekkailainen has never once picked directly out of the NTDP since Sonny Milano in 2014. Not a single pick, not even a 7th rounder. I don't know if he felt he got bad information from the staff there or what, but there are tendencies, and then there are flat out grudges.

This was great. Solid list, nice little writeups, and some decent comparisons. Regarding the bolded - this year is easily the most difficulty I've had trying to make a list since at least 2020. If we include the Russians there's upwards of 20 players I just can't imagine leaving out of my top 15. In 2020 I had about 16-18 such players. Such a strong draft class this year. Not quite in the all-time great strata with a 2003 or 2015, but definitely looks to be in the upper echelon of recent drafts.

... Is this a trick question? Can you imagine what Detroit's asking price for Seider would actually be though?

Didn't really think I needed to make a statement. Earlier in his career Hronek had to be the guy on defense for a bad team in Detroit, and his +/- suffered. This season he was able to see second-rate matchups behind Seider and had his first positive +/- season. Also, Hronek's defense partner most of the year was the pretty respectable Ben Chiarot... Seider's most common partner for the second half was (career 139 games played) Jake Walman.

https://public.tableau.com/shared/F8GYNQ4TG?:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link&:embed=y