I also wanted to add a little context to the reasons why I think we made this pick. And it's not a justification or changing of my opinion. I still don't like it and still think it was a bad value spot considering the players that were on the board. I just think after the shock of those factors having worn off a bit, there are factors about this selection that make it seem a little less of a value punt.
There's no doubt it was a reach, but there are some factors at play. Last season at this time, this player was in Junior B. U18. He wasn't even playing in the U20 Junior A league in Finland. That means he was entirely off the radar as a draft option. In the span of the following year, not only did he advance to Junior A, but he dominated Junior A in such a manner that he only spent 23 games there before it became obvious he was ready for Liiga. That's an impressive leap. We don't have similar tiered systems in North America, but if you can imagine if the USHL to NCAA to AHL route was linear, it would be like a player that was good but not transcendent in the USHL at the end of one season going to the NCAA and dominating so much that halfway through the season in the NCAA he was elevated to the AHL to play a regular shift. It's a pretty aggressive promotion with such a small sample size. Luostarinen apparently stood up to it very well and was at minimum reliable in his time in Liiga.
He's a pretty explosive skater for a guy of his size and his reach is immense. There's some obvious upside here and even though his statistical production wasn't hyper impressive, Liiga isn't very high scoring and young players aren't often trusted with big minutes. This is another one of those trajectory picks where a player had a big time burst in their stock. Really similar to the Morgan Geekie pick in terms of attempting to catch a player that is trending upwards before the news really gets out as to how good they are. It's possible that McKenzie's ambitious ranking of him gave Francis and company some pause about his potential for making it to further rounds and they may have felt compelled to move earlier than anticipated on him for that reason. I suppose we have to trust that their instincts are correct on this player.