2018 NHL Entry Draft Thread

[le_sean]

Is Brady as good or better than his brother?

 

[DramaticGloveSave]

Is Brady as good or better than his brother?

Too early to tell, but I think he's bigger, faster, and more talented. Whether that means he's ultimately better, who knows, especially since they are playing in different leagues heading into their draft year, but I think he has a chance to be a bigger, faster, more skilled Matthew Tkachuk.

 

[NotProkofievian]

It's a really good game between Mikkeli and Oulu. Kupari had a partial break away and put a good backhand move on net, but couldn't get it over the goaltender's pad.

 

[Habs Halifax]

Right now, the players in the top 15 of ISS that I like best are, in ISS order-
Dahlin
Svechnikov
Veleno (I like but wouldn't take top 10)
Tkachuk
Zadina
Boqvist
Kupari
Wahlstrom
Wilde

Dahlin, Boqvist or Wilde would certainly be a great fit for a new age defense.

Reminds me of the 2016 draft. Two really good game changer talents in the top 2, then 12 solid 1st round picks after that.

What's the 15-50 range looking like?

 

[NotProkofievian]

Reminds me of the 2016 draft. Two really good game changer talents in the top 2, then 12 solid 1st round picks after that.

What's the 15-50 range looking like?

Got some interesting players floating around.

 

[NotProkofievian]

Hållander had himself a game against MODO yesterday with 3 assists. I'm copying the tweets from his prospect thread.







Very impressive.

 

[SOLR]

I don't follow juniors as much as you do. Any great top line centers in that list? I don't want to sound like a broken record but I don't want MB drafting another stud d-man or goalie or winger and then trade him for anything but a top line center

Dahlin is not a stud D-Man, he might be close to the caliber of Doughty - Matthew - Eichel - Tavares (Short Of McDavid, Crosby, Ovechkin) etc. ie. he is a star already, he changes the team overnight. We could then try to sell the old ones (Price included) for whatever we can get. If we get Dahlin, you have to do what Toronto has done and really build a new wave of talent. He would be the Matthews.

I would keep Chucky, Drouin, Lekhonen and start selling the rest aggressively. We should probably try to leverage Maxpac's - Gallagher's value into a Tkachuk during the same year. Then this would put us in a good position to draft top 3 again the following year and get a center.

Ok enough dreaming about doing the right thing and build an actually good team.

 

[montreal]

Watched the BC - SCSU game, was really impressed with Logan Hutsko, he was passed over last year while with the USNDTP and he's undersized but really good speed and is off to a good start so far as a Freshman.

 

[DDRhockey]

Dahlin highlights. Best swedish prospect ever imo at 17 he is already dominating which sundin, forsberg lidstrom didnt.

 

[DramaticGloveSave]

Dahlin and Mete would be a pretty dymaic as LDs for us going forward, but that aint happening. Getting the #1 pick is very difficult to do. You can sacrifice half a decade to trying to get one and never get it or end up with an RNH if you do.

 

[Habs]

Lets hope they can get 2 top 10 picks, this is the draft year to do it.

 

[le_sean]

Dahlin and Mete would be a pretty dymaic as LDs for us going forward, but that aint happening. Getting the #1 pick is very difficult to do. You can sacrifice half a decade to trying to get one and never get it or end up with an RNH if you do.

It’s a dream scenario. The new lottery system means that it is a possibility. But there’s about 5-7 players I’d be extremely happy in getting at the top of this draft that can help turn the team around. Guys like Zadina and Boqvist would still be great to have. This isn’t like 2012.

 

[habsterr]

Strong overall draft; top 2 player similar to Hedman/Tavares skill level and hype.

 

[De Montreal]

Looks like a good draft to have two top 15 picks. Let's hope our GM will be able to trade Weber for a 1st round pick.

 

[Habs76]

2018 is gonna be a good year to suck

 

[Pompeius Magnus]

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl-draft-prospect-svechnikov-out-8-weeks-1.891100
Andrei Svechnikov is out between 6 to 8 weeks with a broken hand, which sucks for me cause I was planning to see him live soon. Obviously his draft stock should not suffer much, he's a top 3 lock .

 

[Jethlan]

Interesting take on Zadina

I've watched most of Zadina's games this season.

He is excellent on his edges. The reason people such as Steve Kournianos and Sam Cosentino have made comparisons to Nico Hischier is primarily his ability to turn on a dime and control his motion in tight spaces with ease and precision.

That said, beyond that and their shared association with the Halifax Mooseheads, Zadina and Hischier are very different players.

Hischier's greatest attribute is his hockey IQ; while he tends to play a roaming, patient game, he always takes advantage of his quick acceleration and attacks the puck whenever he sees an opportunity to strike. He is fearless as well as aggressive, and he actively pressures the opposition on the forecheck. There is a sense of relentlessness in his game, and he hustles to get to loose pucks. He drives his line and knows when to hold on to the puck, when to pass the puck, and when to shoot.

Zadina is a much different player. He tends to let the play come to him, and he does not move his feet anywhere near as much as Hischier. There has been a lot of half-speed coasting in the games so far, and when his teammates don't have possession of the puck, he can have some fairly quiet shifts; when there are loose pucks, he is just late enough that the opponent gets to it first; rather than lay a hit and fight for possession, he sometimes just turns away. He has the ability to challenge the opposition and pressure them, but he does not do this as effectively as Hischier for two reasons: he lacks a little bit of the same explosiveness, and he also does not assess plays with the same keen eye or edge as Hischier. His ability to read plays is a notch below that of the Swiss star. In the defensive end, he has an itch to leave the zone early at times and is sometimes prone to turning the puck over with a bad pass or by holding on to the puck too long. There was one play against the Screaming Eagles, for example, where he tried to wind up with the puck from behind his own net and tried to beat the opposing forechecker, but instead turned it over and created a bit of havoc in his own zone.

His offensive skill set is quite impressive, and there are some who would contend that he has the best hands in the draft, although I think that point is debatable. His ability to weave around using his edges makes his body difficult to pinpoint when he wants to hang on to the puck and deke around the opponent; purely from a stick-handling perspective, I think Andrei Svechnikov is better at handling the puck from a standstill, although Zadina's ability to swivel and swerve around the opponent while keeping the puck makes him very slick in a different manner. Unlike players like Patrick Kane and Casey Mittelstadt who do quite a bit of stick-handling while standing still, Zadina's handling of a puck is more like Hischier's in the sense that his skating is as important, if not more important than his hands whenever he makes a one-on-one move against the opposition. He uses deceptive fakes and stutters-steps as well as his terrific agility to create opportunities in tight areas.

At 6'1'', 192 lbs, he has the strength and balance to keep the opponent off of him when he has possession of the puck, but I haven't seen a lot of physicality from him on the forecheck, and sometimes he'll let his teammates dig for the puck while he waits a few feet away in open ice. He isn't afraid to go to the front of the net or to go into high-traffic areas, and he knows how to maneuver into open space in the crease or anywhere where there is space between the opponent and the puck, but he also doesn't push hard enough to win a lot of battles; he has a tendency to stand around too much when teams are trying to fight for a loose puck. Unlike Hischier, who is 10 to 15 lbs lighter, he doesn't push hard enough -- he doesn't jam the net hard enough or compete with anywhere near the same intensity or determination. His work along the boards isn't physical in the aggressive sense, but is more about putting himself in the right position to separate the opponent and the opponent a la Cody Glass.

He is a shooter. He doesn't have a world-class shot, but he loves to put the puck on net and has a tendency to cut into the middle to change his shooting angle, holding on until he sees something; he can also distribute the puck, but as I mentioned, he sometimes makes errant passes that result in turnovers. While he is skilled, he makes questionable decisions with defensive consequences; that has to be fixed before teams will ever trust him at the NHL level. Based on his current play, he isn't NHL-ready from a defensive point of view. Last year's draft had a plethora of high-end, two-way players; a few of those players were NHL-ready from a defensive perspective, and they were able to join the NHL right away. At the moment, Zadina is a thoroughly one-way player who has to clean up his game quite a bit.

Zadina started the year on a line with Arnaud Durandeau and Raphael Lavoie. Ever since Otto Somppi's return against Cape Breton five games ago on October 13, 2017, Zadina has been lined up alongside Somppi and Durandeau. The team's other top line consists of Connor Moynihan with B.O. Groulx and Maxime Fortier.

The presence of Somppi, who is a lightning-fast, skilled line driver has had a very positive impact on Zadina. The right half-wall tends to be where Zadina operates from on the powerplay.

He leads all draft-eligible players in scoring right now with 11 goals, 10 assists, 21 points in 13 games (1.615 points per game). He is very skilled and quite creative, but he has quite a few bad habits in his game right now.

 

[get25]

We are at 5.6% chances to make the PO. (sportsclubstats)
So getting a top-10 is certainly possible.
1% for 3rd in Division and 2% for 4th in Division.

 

[Pompeius Magnus]

This goes to show you how much the draft has evolved since the 80's.

 

[Blade Paradigm]

Hi Habs fans,

Hopefully your season gets back on track, but if it doesn't, here is a video scouting package of one of the top prospects available in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft: Filip Zadina. It features every shift from five of his games so far this season.

--------------------------------------

Note: This project is inspired by some of the work done on HFBoards last season to chronicle the performances of some of the top draft-eligible prospects for that campaign. This is a continuation of that series in the same style and format. Hopefully, by offering an early glimpse of some of this season's top prospects, viewers can follow them throughout their draft season with a better sense of who they are.

FILIP ZADINA: FIVE-GAME SCOUTING PACK (2017-18 QMJHL SEASON)



For those of you unfamiliar with Filip Zadina, he is one of the top-ranked players available in the 2018 NHL Draft. A skilled, agile, 6'1'', 192 lbs winger from the Czech Republic, Zadina has been on scouting radars for quite a long time. Most scouting services have him firmly ranked in their preseason Top 10 and a few have him in their Top 5, but with his hot start so far in his rookie season with the Halifax Mooseheads, he may be a Top 5 staple by the time of the mid-season rankings.

Rankings so far:

Dobber Prospects (Oct. 4): #5
Hockey Prospect (Sept. 27): #6
Corey Pronman (Sept. 26): #9
Bob McKenzie (Sept. 13): #7
NACS (Sept. 11): #7
Craig Button (Sept. 5): #10
Future Considerations (Sept. Edition): #3
The Draft Analyst (Sept. 5): #3

Originally drafted fourth-overall in the 2016 CHL Import Draft by the Vancouver Giants, he opted last year to play another season in the Czech player development system.

http://theprovince.com/sports/hocke...dina-might-be-too-good-for-whl-clubs-own-good

Giants prospect Zadina might be too good for WHL club's own good
Steve Ewen
Published: August 14, 2016
Updated: August 14, 2016 6:40 PM PDT

Vancouver Giants prospect Filip Zadina was one of the stars of last week’s Ivan Hlinka Memorial Cup, which is a plus and a minus for the WHL club.

The winger the Giants used the fourth overall pick on in June’s CHL Import Draft has game-breaker talents. That’s become abundantly obvious. Zadina had a pair of markers Saturday to help the tournament host Czech Republic edge the U.S. 4-3 in the Hlinka final, and the 16-year-old finished tied for the goal-scoring lead in the Under-18 tournament with five tallies in four games.

Giants owner Ron Toigo admits that Zadina has told his club that he has his sights set on playing in the Czech pro league this season and it’s easy to wonder if the 6-foot, 190-pounder might be good enough to do so. He played in a pair of games last season as a call-up with HC Pardubice.

...

In 2017, he was drafted again in the CHL Import Draft, this time eleventh-overall by the Halifax Mooseheads. Zadina opted to join the Mooseheads for the 2017-18 QMJHL season and has been one of the league's hottest scorers so far with 11 goals, 10 assists, 21 points in the first 14 games of the campaign. As of today, October 24, 2017, he is tied for second in QMJHL point scoring with Mika Cyr, and is three points behind Drake Batherson's league-leading 24 points.

He began the season on a line with Raphael Lavoie and Arnaud Durandeau, but since October 13, 2017, the date of Otto Somppi's return to the Mooseheads lineup, he has played alongside Durandeau and Somppi.

This five-game scouting pack features every shift from five of Zadina's performances from the first month of the 2017-18 QMJHL season.

The games featured (and corresponding time stamps) are:

(0:15) 2017-09-30: Halifax Mooseheads vs Acadie-Bathurst Titans
(22:22) 2017-10-01: Halifax Mooseheads vs Charlottetown Islanders
(44:30) 2017-10-08: Halifax Mooseheads vs Blainville-Boisbriand Armada
(1:13:15) 2017-10-13: Halifax Mooseheads @ Cape Breton Screaming Eagles
(1:40:01) 2017-10-17: Halifax Mooseheads vs Moncton Wildcats

 

[Pompeius Magnus]

Interesting read ! Zadina is definitely one of the more intriguing players in this year's draft. He's got some elite tools but he's very one-dimension right now, which has me a bit worried.

 

[NotProkofievian]

I liked Zadina better than Necas last year at the U18s. He's such a dangerous player.

 

[FrankMTL]

So can we go back to hoping that we'll draft in the top 5? We should also have those three second round picks as at this pace Sergachev will play his 40+ games. Hopefully we can add a few more draft picks in the first 2 rounds.

 

[sandviper]

I've only been following Dahlin out of general interest since I expected to be drafting in the mid-20s...

Zadina and Svechnikov look like great options, but they are wingers. Not that I would be upset picking them (should we be unable to land Dahlin who we need more), but who is the top center prospect this draft?

 

[le_sean]

I've only been following Dahlin out of general interest since I expected to be drafting in the mid-20s...

Zadina and Svechnikov look like great options, but they are wingers. Not that I would be upset picking them (should we be unable to land Dahlin who we need more), but who is the top center prospect this draft?

Right now it’s Veleno but he is underwhelming.

I expect Wahlstrom to shoot up the rankings if teams view him as a centre. Veleno and Kupari are the only two “true” centres in the Top 10.