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Flames Draft Watcher · 05-31-2013, 02:03 AM

Here's an interesting hypothetical question. Imagine the Flames have Nichushkin top 5 on their list in terms of talent but without taking into consideration the Russian Factor and his contractual situation.

Might one of the reasons why the Flames are eager to trade up be that they want to avoid the dilemma of having a top 5 pick available in Nichushkin while being extremely squeamish about taking him?

I'm really hoping Feaster can negotiate a reasonable price to move up.

Worst case scenario for me is we have Nichushkin ranked top 5 on talent and then Jones, MacKinnon, Drouin and Barkov all go and we take Nichushkin at #6 over Lindholm/Monahan adding yet another LWer to a team that has their best prospects at LW (Baertschi, Gaudreau) and a ton of NHLers at the postion as well (Tanguay, Cammalleri, Glencross). Nichushkin may be a great talent but two reasons to not take him are the redundancy of adding another top 2 line LW and the chance he defects back to Russia whenever things aren't going well. It just makes so much more sense to try and get a franchise centre. If trading up is the best way to get a franchise centre then lets get it done. I'd be most ecstatic about landing MacKinnon or Barkov.

05-31-2013, 02:03 AM	#4756
Flames Draft Watcher In the Sin Bin Join Date: Oct 2001 Exp:	Here's an interesting hypothetical question. Imagine the Flames have Nichushkin top 5 on their list in terms of talent but without taking into consideration the Russian Factor and his contractual situation. Might one of the reasons why the Flames are eager to trade up be that they want to avoid the dilemma of having a top 5 pick available in Nichushkin while being extremely squeamish about taking him? I'm really hoping Feaster can negotiate a reasonable price to move up. Worst case scenario for me is we have Nichushkin ranked top 5 on talent and then Jones, MacKinnon, Drouin and Barkov all go and we take Nichushkin at #6 over Lindholm/Monahan adding yet another LWer to a team that has their best prospects at LW (Baertschi, Gaudreau) and a ton of NHLers at the postion as well (Tanguay, Cammalleri, Glencross). Nichushkin may be a great talent but two reasons to not take him are the redundancy of adding another top 2 line LW and the chance he defects back to Russia whenever things aren't going well. It just makes so much more sense to try and get a franchise centre. If trading up is the best way to get a franchise centre then lets get it done. I'd be most ecstatic about landing MacKinnon or Barkov. Last edited by Flames Draft Watcher; 05-31-2013 at 02:06 AM.