[BigFlameDog]

Originally Posted by Five-hole

A thought just occurred to me. I'm not sure if there's much basis for this but thought I'd throw it out there.

Any risk with taking a highly-ranked Finnish forward? The last few Finnish forwards selected in the first round are Mikael Granlund, Lauri Tukkonen, Petteri Nokelainen, and Lauri Korpikoski. Granlund, while a good player, has arguably not lived up to his potential, though he's still young. Tukkonen was a total bust (and, interestingly, fell from being highly ranked in many top 5s to 11). Nokelainen played 200+ games but bounced from team to team and struggled to put up any offence. Korpikoski is a pretty good 3rd/4th liner, but that's obviously not what we'd be trying to draft in Rantanen.

Julius Honka (14th overall to Dallas) and Kasperi Kapanen (22nd to Pittsburgh) were drafted last year and the jury is obviously out on them.

Two of the top-10 highest scoring Finnish players of all time are Teppo Numminen and Kimmo Timonen, defencemen, and they didn't exactly light the world on fire for points. Mikko Koivu is 10th all time with 500 points.

So what gives? Why does Finland produce very few high-octane forwards?

I don't know....wasn't Granlund a 2 rounder? I think he's right where he supposed to be.