Alright, so I was just lurkin' in the Flyers' draft thread and I saw a couple posts that I found interesting. The
first is regarding birthdays and the
second is regarding draft-1 scoring. I've see those ideas before but I figured I'd look in depth at guys who might fit the profile in this draft.
Firstly, defensemen who have late (May or later) birthdays (in order of oldest to youngest). All but Werenski have a chance of falling out of the first (although I don't think Roy or Kylington will):
--May--
Jeremy Roy
Vili Saarijarvi
Oliver Kylington
Jesper Lindgren
Erik Cernak
--June--
Caleb Jones
Ethan Bear
--July--
Nicolas Meloche
Zach Werenski
Guillaume Brisebois
Brendan Guhle
--August--
Parker Wotherspoon
--September ('97)--
Nicholas Boka
The majority of defenseman steals come from the 2nd round, so from this group, I've singled out Meloche as someone I'm interested in a lot at 39th. Besides the young birthdate, he's got a solid draft-1 and draft year in terms of scoring in the QMJHL. He's supposedly mobile, physical, good defensively. I have not seen him play more than once, so this is all secondhand. But I think this would be an interesting upside pick. The 99 PIM in 44 games stands out.
I've watched both Jones and Boka significantly with the NTDP and both are solid yet unspectacular players; could be solid bottom pairing guys in the NHL; Particularly Jones improved a lot from the beginning of the year until now, and he's moving to the WHL next season. Could be an interesting pick in the 4th or later.
I've been impressed by Parker Wotherspoon each time I've watched him, much more than his brother Tyler ever did. Kinda played second fiddle to Carlo in terms of hype but I think Wotherspoon is the better player. Despite being almost a full year younger than Carlo, Wotherspoon was only 9 points off the team lead. Keep in mind that Tri-City was very weak offensively. Definitely a reach at 39th but I wouldn't be surprised to see him go in the late 2nd.
I don't know that much about Erik Cernak (except that Corey Pronman is very high on him), and since I don't know much about Slovakia's top league I can't speak to his stats, but they look pretty solid for a young guy in a men's league. Big kid.
I've talked about Lindgren enough. Karlsson type of player, RHD. Both late May birthdays, both were about a point per game in J20 SuperElit in about 40 games in their draft years and put up a point in a handful of SHL games. Karlsson's point totals at the U18 were better. Same height, same build (although Lindgren needs to put on some serious weight). I doubt Lindgren has Karlsson's skating and his defensive game is a work in progress, to put it nicely, but if we're looking for upside here's a guy to look at.
Saarijarvi is a name that only came onto my radar because he was named best defenseman at the U18. Tiny (5'9") Finnish offensive defenseman. Seems like a Sami Vatanen type, who was an early June birthday and a 4th rounder. Saarijarvi put up better draft-1 years in the Finnish J20 league than Vatanen put up in his draft year. Saarijarvi spent this past season in the USHL, where he was 9 points off the team lead (albeit with more games played) on a low-scoring team.
The second post reminded me of a trend that I've seen repeated several times, which is that a player's draft-1 point totals are more predictive of NHL success than their draft year. Specifically, this puts Konecny, Kylington, Roy, White, and Zacha back on the map in a BIG way. Pretty much holds Sprong, Barzal, Marner, Connor, Werenski, and Hanifin steady. Detriments Strome, Rantanen, Meier, and Provorov. But it's really Kylington and Konecny that I see as litmus tests for this trend from this draft.