2026 NHL Draft Thread

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by Sandman

Such a great (and criminally underrated) draft for D!

In drafts like this, my thought is that it's a good idea to load up on that position with a bunch of your picks.

Look at the 08 draft for an example. Ended up getting Brodie in the 4th round and there tons of high end D-men that year, 17 decent to HOF D-men that year alone.

While getting a C is a good idea potentially with pick 1, the Flames defense pool is rather shallow when you remove Parekh and Brz from it. Due to D-men taking longer to develop, it's more prudent in my opinion to get a few of them in this draft as well. Stack the deck.

We basically have 5 picks in the top 65 or so at this point, I'd like to take two centers and three defenseman this year if everything works out. Start to build some depth at those positions and hope for the best. Realistically, if you have 8 high end defense prospects, maybe 3-4 turn into legit top 4 defenders. Right now we have 3, Parekh, Brzustewicz, and Mews. Got to add more and more. Parekh could turn out to be a top pairing guy, or could be a depth PP guy like Marc Andre Bergeron who could never round out his game at the NHL level. Mews injury might set him back like it did Poirier. It is so hard to tell.

[Sandman]

Originally Posted by Caged Great

In drafts like this, my thought is that it's a good idea to load up on that position with a bunch of your picks.

Look at the 08 draft for an example. Ended up getting Brodie in the 4th round and there tons of high end D-men that year, 17 decent to HOF D-men that year alone.

While getting a C is a good idea potentially with pick 1, the Flames defense pool is rather shallow when you remove Parekh and Brz from it. Due to D-men taking longer to develop, it's more prudent in my opinion to get a few of them in this draft as well. Stack the deck.

We basically have 5 picks in the top 65 or so at this point, I'd like to take two centers and three defenseman this year if everything works out. Start to build some depth at those positions and hope for the best. Realistically, if you have 8 high end defense prospects, maybe 3-4 turn into legit top 4 defenders. Right now we have 3, Parekh, Brzustewicz, and Mews. Got to add more and more. Parekh could turn out to be a top pairing guy, or could be a depth PP guy like Marc Andre Bergeron who could never round out his game at the NHL level. Mews injury might set him back like it did Poirier. It is so hard to tell.

I’m even thinking that if we are picking between 3-8 (and we most certainly will) that there’s a very high possibility of our team coming away with a defenseman as their top pick. The D in the top-10 are all serious game-changers, and probably in a tier ahead of the desired centers. I’m perfectly fine with that, as most of our top prospects on the backend are six-footers.