I really just want to record my thoughts so here goes:
I find it hilarious that Slafkovsky/Nemec went 1, 2 at the draft because I really don't like either player. Slafkovsky is the type of player that I feel like we've been learning as an NHL community to avoid. The argument we always used to hear was "X huge player has so much room to grow because he can get faster and more explosive and more agile" and it really just never happens. There are significant limits to how fast or quick you can be at 6'4", relative to guys who are 6 foot on the dot, give or take an inch. I think the player they're drafting is the player they're getting, more or less. I am a big power forward fan. I will and do root for players only because they're tall. But objectively, years of watching power forwards not pan out has jaded me. Nothing recent has really convinced me that power forwards are coming back.
Nemec is I think the concept rather than the actuality. You want a defenseman like Cale Makar. You go for the closest thing. That's Simon Nemec here. But Nemec is not Makar and Nemec has a lot of holes in his game in my opinion. He'll probably score points...
Cooley at 3 is good. Wright at 4, I still liked him a lot. Perfect balance of will be able to play sooner rather than later/not a project and also still somewhat of a ceiling.
Gauthier at 5. I mean, it made me chuckle. Same reason as Slafkovsky. I like them...it made me smile for a reason, it's a fetish of mine, but I don't know about objectively wise. Jiricek at 6 is great value. I think that's a huge steal. There are a lot of project Dmen who might be as good or even better in the distant future but he's a great balance of will be good early and will be even better as time goes on.
Korchinski at 7, I was actually quite happy about. I was on Marco watch by then but when I heard the pick I was like "yeah, that's not bad." Marco of course, I went wild. Of course I like that pick but we don't need to rehash that here.
I really liked the next 5 picks. And I liked the order in which they went. After that, I was watching where the project Dmen would go. And they all went pretty high, which made me happy. Also think, there's a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Russians, but I think the teams that did go Russian may end up being rewarded for it down the line.