Something I've wanted to mention for a while, but kept forgetting. The consensus surrounding this 2017 draft has been "not a strong draft class". There have been comparisons to 2012. It's been mentioned that it's not going to be as strong as 2016.
Lets look at the ISS 2016 NHL Draft Ranking from this time, last year:
http://www.isshockey.com/iss-hockey-...-for-november/
Nov 4th, 2015:
1. Matthews (#1)
2. Chychrun
3. Jones
4. Tkatchuk (#6)
5. Puljujarvi (#4)
6. MacLeod
7. Nylander
8. Brown
9. Laine (#2)
10. Gauthier
11. Dubois (#3)
12. Sergachev
13. Fabbro
14. Juolevi (#5)
15. Clague
16. Benson
17. Jost
18. Bellows
19. Steel
20. Bean
21. Keller (#7)
22. Knierim
23. Makinen
24. Krys
25. Howden
26. Kunin
27. Asplund
28. Abramov
29. Mattson
30. Hajek
- Laine didn't crack the top 5 until January. Think about what he's doing in this league, and then think about that.
- Dubois didn't crack the top 10 until March.
- Keller never got higher than the 12th rank. Obviously it remains to be seen how he pans out... but I know a lot of us, myself included, wanted Keller at our 6th pick if none of Tkatchuk, Dubois, or Puljujarvi were available.
Point I'm making is that, with the exception of Nolan Patrick, the rest of this 2017 draft class is relatively unknown. Any scouting service labeling a draft as poor when the players haven't even played their draft -1 season, is just plain stupid.