Draft Steals & Reaches Rounds 1-3

Today’s focus will be on the first three rounds of the draft. Taking a look at three players who could turn out to be big steals for their respective teams and looking at three players who teams may regret drafting.  

Steals

Nikolay Goldobin – San Jose 27^th overall

It’s very difficult to find a sleeper in the first round of the draft as the players have been scouted extensively for the past few seasons. Despite that teams still looked past Goldobin. He slid for three reasons. First of all he is Russian which always scares teams. Second he is small at only 5’11. Third he played on a very bad Sarnia Sting team that finished last in the OHL. He was really all Sarnia had outside of Anthony DeAngelo in terms of talent. He played against the other team’s best players and had below average teammates and still managed to put up 94 points in 67 games. If the Sharks do end up blowing up their team, Goldobin is going to be a big part of the re-build.

Ivan Barbashev – St Louis 33^rd overall  

Barbashev fell for similar reasons to Goldobin. He’s Russian, isn’t the biggest guy at 6’1 and played on a mediocre Moncton team in the QMJHL. Again though skill will weigh out and Barbashev has tons of it. He put up 68 points in 48 games for the Wildcats. He was projected to be a first round pick by numerous people so St Louis already having a very good young core can another high level player to their system.

Brayden Point – Tampa Bay 79^th overall    

Steve Yzerman is starting to look like one of the smartest GM’s in the league. He seems to put a priority on skill and not size as shown by Tampa being reliant so much on Ondrej Palat and Tyler Johnson this past season. Not to mention Marty St. Louis when here was there. Yzerman may have found the next great small star with his third round pick of Brayden Point. Point much like Goldobin and Barbashev is as mentioned small, he’s 5’9. He also played on a poor Moose Jaw Warriors team that missed the playoffs in the WHL. Despite that Point has showed a great ability to score in the WHL, putting up 91 points in 72 games this past season. If he is able to reach his potential he will provide some nice secondary scoring for Tampa behind Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Drouin.  

Reaches

Travis Sanheim – Philadelphia 19^th overall

This is the second year in a row Philly has jumped at the biggest riser of the season. Last year it was Samuel Morin who came out of seemingly nowhere and ended up being picked 11^th overall. For Sanheim the big rise was attributed to his big performance at the Under 18 tournament where he put up 6 points in 7 games and was arguably Canada’s best defencemen. However this was mostly small sample size noise as he was nowhere near that type of production in the WHL. In 67 games this season with the Calgary Hitmen he had 29 points good for only a 0.43 ppg. He has a reputation of being a solid shutdown defencemen but it’s pretty clear that those players bust more often than not. Philly has had problems on defence for a long time and I don’t believe Sanheim or Morin are going to fix that issue.

Hunter Smith – Calgary 54^th overall

Classic Brian Burke pick here. Smith is everything Burke loves in a hockey player, he’s a giant on the ice listed at 6’7 and 220 pounds.  He competes as shown by his 100 penalty minutes and he also fights including this heavyweight bout with Nick Ritchie. The problem is that he is not very good at playing hockey itself. In Smiths first draft eligible year last season he put up 2 points in 45 games with Windsor and Oshawa. This season he had 40 points in 64 games which is much better but still nothing to write home about. I also wonder how much those numbers are influenced from playing on a great Oshawa team including Michael Dal Colle who went 5^th overall to the Islanders. I see Smith if he ever makes the NHL as being a fourth line goon and those can be had for basically free, no reason to waste a draft pick on one.

Warren Foegele – Carolina 67^th overall   

After the first two rounds it’s pretty tough to find a pick that’s a major reach as the majority of players are never going to see the NHL. Despite that I found Carolina’s pick of Warren Foegele an interesting one. He's interesting because he a very unusual route to being drafted. Foegele was selected from St. Andrew’s College which is a Canadian High School. The reason he chose this route was so that he can play NCAA hockey next season. He had one of the best seasons ever for a Canadian high schooler. He put up 107 points in 52 games which is the second highest point total ever per eliteprospects database. His points per game of 2.06 ranks 24^th all-time and moves up to 16^th if you include a 20 game minimum. The reason this pick is a reach is because of the inherent risk and uncertainty surrounding him. How much stock can you put into a kid playing against high schoolers? There is so much we don’t know about the league talent level whether from an individual or team perspective.  I can understand a team wanting to take a gamble but wait until the fifth, sixth, seventh round to do that.