IIHF U18 Recap

The under 18’s concluded this past Sunday with the USA taking home the gold defeating the Czech Republic 5-2. Canada took home the bronze defeating Sweden 3-1. I was not able to watch as many games as I had hoped but thanks to Fast Hockey was able to catch a few of the USA games. What follows is a stock watch, who improved their draft stock and who hurt it from this tournament.

Rising

William Nylander

The players who stock rose the most for me from this short tournament was William Nylander. Nylander started the year as a potential number one overall pick, but after not making the Swedish World Junior roster his stock dropped to outside the top 10. Rightfully or not he needed a big tournament to prove his worth to scouts. He did not disappoint leading the tournament in scoring with 6 goals and 10 assists in 7 games. He has definitely cemented himself into my top 10 with top 5 a possibility.      

Sonny Milano

As mentioned I saw a quite a few of Team USA’s games which means I had plenty of chances to see Sonny Milano. He played on the US’s top line with Jack Eichel and did not look out of place at all. He finished the tournament tied with Eichel (and Jakub Vrana) for third in scoring with 10 points. Milano has some of the top puck possession skills in the draft and he showed it in the games I watched. I like him as a top 15 pick.

Kevin Fiala

The Swiss forward has been climbing up everyone’s draft rankings it seems like. Personally I did not know much about this player going into the tournament. However he made his impact felt immediately. He was a key factor in the Swiss upsetting the USA in the first game of the tournament. He had a goal and an assist in that game, and finished with 9 points in just 5 games. From Corey Pronmann on twitter it appears that Fiala that a shot to make the Swiss national team for the World Championships. If he were to make that team, that will boost his stock even higher. He is now a sure-fire first rounder likely in the 15-20 range for me but could go even higher if he is able to make the World Championship roster.

Falling

Kasperi Kapanen

Kapanen came into the tournament as the top ranked European by central scouting’s final rankings. I expected him to do very well this tournament as it was in his home country of Finland. It wasn’t just Kapanen who struggled but the whole Finnish team as they did not even challenge for a medal. Kapanen has to take some of the blame as he is the star of that team. He had a poor tournament not even cracking the top 30 in scoring. He won’t drop too far in rankings as he’s had a great season, but this drops him a few spots down in my books.   

Upcoming

The OHL finals are set to start on Thursday with North Bay taking on Guelph. The winner will join London in the Memorial Cup. Personally I like Guelph in this series but North Bay after struggling to get through Niagara, rolled through Barrie and decimated Oshawa. Will be a good series regardless of who wins. I will be purchasing the OHL Livestream feature so that I can watch this series. Look for scoring chance data and reports on the draft eligible guys after each game. 

Also in the next few weeks I will post my draft rankings for the top 30 or so players. This won’t be a mock draft but rather my personal rankings. I also will include some sleepers who are guys I like in the later rounds of the draft.

Draft Lottery Day

With the playoffs starting tomorrow that means its draft lottery time! Every team who missed the playoffs are in the lottery. The exception this season is that if the Devils win the lottery a re-draw will occur.  Per NHL.com here are the draft lottery odds for each team.

Buffalo Sabres - 25.0%	Toronto Maple Leafs - 3.6%
Florida Panthers - 18.8%	Winnipeg Jets - 2.7%
Edmonton Oilers - 14.2%	Anaheim Ducks (from Ottawa) - 2.1%
Calgary Flames - 10.7%	New Jersey Devils - 1.5%
New York Islanders - 8.1%	Nashville Predators - 1.1%
Vancouver Canucks - 6.2%	Phoenix Coyotes - 0.8%
Carolina Hurricanes - 4.7%	Washington Capitals - 0.5%

Buffalo has the highest odds to win the lottery at 25%, but likely will end up picking second. That for me is a great spot to be in for Buffalo. They obviously are going to be the best player available as they need talent at all positions, and picking second they won’t have to decide whether to take Aaron Ekblad or Sam Reinhart. They can simply take who ever falls to them. For me the interesting storyline is the Oilers. It’s no secret they need defence help, if they don’t win the lottery it will be interesting to see what they do with their pick.

Using the draft simulator on the Oilers website I have the Vancouver Canucks winning the lottery. They would move up from 6 to 1. We will find out tonight if my pick is correct.

*Note post will be updated when the lottery results are revealed.*    

The Florida Panthers are the winners of the NHL Draft Lottery. They move up from two and have the first overall pick in the draft. They move up one spot from last year when they selected Aleksander Barkov second overall. The Sabers will pick second and the rest of the lottery teams remain the same. The off-season is going to be very interesting. With the Oilers as mentioned previously and with the Islanders holding fifth overall.

As you know the Islanders in the Thomas Vanek trade made their first round pick conditional on if it was a top 10 pick. Since it is a top 10 pick they have the option of keeping it and giving their 2015 pick to Buffalo or sending their 2014 pick to the Sabers. Personally I think I would keep the pick at 5. The reason is if you give your 2015 pick away you essentially giving up on next season. The Islanders have a chance to get a solid prospect, whether it be Michael Dal Cole, Leon Draisaitl or even William Nylander. I think the Islanders could be a playoff team next season and by keeping their pick they can fully commit to going for it. They can go out and sign some free agents and make some trades to help them compete next year.

The Oilers are tricky. In listening to Scott Howsen on TSN he mentioned that the Oilers have solid defensive prospects with guys like Darnell Nurse and Oscar Klefbom and that it’s not a guarantee they would take a defenceman. That leads me to believe they make keep their pick and take either Reinhart or Bennett. Personally I would consider moving the pick and see if you could get a big time NHL defencemen. 

What I've Missed over the Last Two Weeks.

It’s been almost two weeks since my last blog. School work has taken up most of my time. So here are the major stories that have happened over the last two weeks.

OHL Playoffs

We saw the end of round one conclude with two epic game 7’s. First in North Bay where Niagara was looking for the upset and then in Kingston where Peterborough was looking to pull off the miraculous 3-0 comeback. The Ice Dogs dominated the first two periods out chancing North Bay. However they could only beat Battalion goalie Jake Smith once, being up just 1-0 through two. From there North Bay rallied with two third period goals to avoid the upset. Kingston did not have the same fate North Bay did. Kingston was up 3-0 in the series and was up 3-0 in game 6. The Petes never gave up and rallied for the miraculous series win in 7. Nick Ritchie had the OT winner to send the Petes to the next round.

In the second round there was nowhere near the same excitement seen in round one. Erie started the second round with a sweep of the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhound. The Otters dominated the series from start to finish, holding the Greyhounds to just three goals the entire series. The other West series saw defending OHL champs, the London Knights take on the regular season champs, the Guelph Storm. This series came as advertised with a ton of goals but London may have been feeling the effects of that Anthony Stolarz suspension as they went down in just 5 games. Stolarz has now missed 6 games and only has two left on the suspension which will be served during the Memorial Cup.  Out East the Petes found themselves in a familiar spot being down 3-0 in the series. However they used up all their magic in round one as they failed to win a game against their rival the Oshawa Generals. North Bay and Barrie played the most exciting series games wise, but it was still only a six game series. North Bay ruined my perfect bracket beating Barrie 4-2.

 The third round gets started on Thursday with Erie taking Guelph, with Oshawa and North Bay starting on Friday. I stand by my original picks and will still take Oshawa and Erie to win and play for the OHL Championship.      

OHL Draft

The OHL draft took place last week as well. I find it very odd that the OHL does their draft during the playoffs. I don’t see why they don’t just wait till the off-season doesn’t make a lot of sense to me but I digress. So to be honest I don’t know a lot about these players if anything. I do know that the kids picked in the first round are the ones most likely to be selected in the NHL draft. Most of these players will be eligible for the 2016 NHL Draft along with exceptional status defencemen Sean Day. The first overall pick was held by the Sarnia Sting, who selected Jakob Chychrun a left defencemen from the Toronto Jr. Canadians. He is 6’2 195, and from reading his bio in the OHL priority selection magazine he has a cannon of a shot and is a powerful skater. I am definitely looking to forward to watching more of Sarnia play next season with Chychrun and potential NHL first rounder’s Anthony DeAngelo (14 on CS list) and Nikolay Goldobin (24). I am also excited to watch the Ottawa 67’s next year as they added another high pick to go along with last year’s first overall selection and rookie of the year winner Travis Konecny.  Ottawa selected Travis Barron third overall. He is a left winger and also from the Toronto Jr. Canadians. He is 6’1 175 and is a very physical player.  

CSS Central Scouting List Final rankings

One final thing that happened over the last two weeks was NHL Central Scouting released their final rankings for North American and European skaters. As you know this is the most commonly cited ranking system on this blog. A few things stood out to me about the rankings. First they had a top three of Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad and Sam Reinhart. No real surprises there, as those three are likely going to be the top three in some order. What really had me intrigued was the ranking of players who have been discussed previously in posts. To start the biggest mover was Gavin Bayreuther, who jumped from 115 to 48. I had suggested in my NCAA defencemen post that Bayreuther would likey be a fourth round pick. It appears unlikely he will fall that far. I would still like my team to draft him just means it’s going to cost an early third, late second round pick. I still think he could be a steal.   

The other players that caught my eye were the two much talked about Niagara Ice Dogs defencemen, Aaron Haydon and Blake Siebenaler. I have made it be known that I thought Haydon was ranked way to high at 28 and apparently so did CS as he dropped all the way to 54. Siebenaler also dropped but not very far. He fell from 47 to right behind Haydon at 55. This change is ranking really only affects how Haydon is perceived. He went from being an early second round guy to a late second at best but likely an early third. I would still avoid Haydon even at the potential reduced draft cost as I just don’t think he has the offensive upside to make it work at the next level. I remain optimistic on Siebenaler and this draft ranking doesn’t really change his expected draft cost at all.  

IIHF U18

This is a more look ahead as this tournament starts this Thursday, April, 17.  This tournament is one of the last chances for scouts to see players before the combine. Since it is an under 18 event all of the players have yet to be drafted. It is a great chance to get a look at some guys for this upcoming draft as well as the 2015 draft. With the CHL playoffs still underway many good players are ineligible to play but that doesn’t take away much from team’s rosters. I don’t many round robin games will be available to watch but I know that TSN will be showing a couple games. They will have the Canada-Russia game on Tuesday April 22 at 9am. They will also have a quarterfinal game on Thursday April 24^th at 10am, a semi-final game on the 26^th and the Gold Medal Game at 2pm on the 27^th. I will be doing my best to catch as many games of this tournament as I can, and when I do I will make sure to put up my typical scoring chances post.