Some really good takeaways from sportsnet article on the draft combine.
1. Julien Gauthier is now the standard against which all buff prospects will be compared.
Gauthier weighed in at 230 pounds, almost cleared the landing board in the standing long jump, soared in the force plate and generally crushed physical testing (though maybe he didn’t push the Wingate like we might have suspected).
His skill quotient is, well, average. But with his body and work ethic — it’s not like he just inherited that body — you could probably project him as a third or fourth line banger and anything else would be a bonus.
Size dictates destiny: He will play, if only in a limited role, at the next level. If in the unlikely event there’s more skill there, he might be somewhat more than that. Still, a top 15 or top 20 for a player in that profile would seem like over-spending.
2. I thought Logan Brown might be a climber after the World U18 Championship, and that seems like a majority opinion at the combine.
Said one veteran scout, “There’s a premium for big centres and I think there’s a shot he goes in the top five. He was great at U18s and in the second half of the season. He’s almost 6-foot-7 and he might be that by the end of the summer. In his interview he told us that he doesn’t know if he has stopped growing yet. He was a good interview, funny kid, not really like his father (former NHLer Jeff Brown), who was not the most social guy.”
The younger Brown is “tall” but not “big” at this point. He’d be two full years in junior beyond his draft year. He’ll need to pad his frame and right now it looks like the metabolism to put on 25 pounds is going to take a while.
6. There’s not quite a consensus on the choice between Olli Juolevi and Mikhail Sergachev as the top defenceman in this pool.
One scout who advocates Juolevi: “So smart, so much of what Finland did at the worlds and what London did this season started on his stick. Physically, he doesn’t get the credit that he should but he’s a playmaker and he makes the puck do the work. And he’s bigger than people might think.”
One scout who advocates Sergachev: “He probably helped himself this week. He measured at 220 pounds and over 6-foot-2. You can see him bring a physical component as a pro that you wouldn’t project for Juolevi. I think there’s a chance that he could be the best player in this whole draft eight or ten years from now. We liked him in our interview. He could have opted out of the U18s (after most of the Russian team was suspended for PED use). He told us that he wanted to go and play with underages at the tournament because he’d been an underager the year before and felt like he had a duty to help the Russian kids. ‘My country was always there for me, so I’m there for my country,’ he told us. Which you have to respect.”
7. You might see B.C. defenceman Charlie McAvoy and Sarnia blue liner Jake Chychrun show up in the top ten of a few mock drafts. This seems to be a reach, according to a poll of scouts.
Said one veteran scout who had viewed McAvoy five times on top of the world juniors: “The defencmen with top-pair upside here are Juolevi and Sergachev. Chychrun is at best a No. 3 defenceman [on a winning team] down the line. McAvoy might be a bit more of a wild card. The choice between Chychrun and McAvoy will come down to whether you like McAvoy’s hockey sense or Chychrun’s physical tools. Either way, if they’re not top-pair defencemen, then how do you spend a top ten pick on them?”
8. Said one goaltending coach: “I’m at the combine and I’m in the meetings but I can’t tell my GM that there’s a goalie that we can look at in the first two rounds. Maybe we can’t talk about one until the third or fourth. It’s a very bad year [for goalies].
So gauthier looks like a faller, brown could go top 5, only Juolevi and sergachev are potential top pairing d, chychrun might fall out of top 10 and surprise if a g is taken in the second round.
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/1...uting-combine/