I think there should still be a couple of quality choices at 16. Yakemchuck may fall, Hage or Iginla may still be on the board. I'd be happy with any of those three. Maybe someone goes crazy and picks that Connolly kid super high, or gets scared by someone's skating, etc. Also, there's a bunch of evidence that draftees with size start to creep up and those without start to fall a little after the season is over, meaning a guy we all like may fall and a guy we're not interested in may jump. You never know how the draft is going to work out, even sometimes at #1.
I'm glad we had meaningful games down the stretch and gave our young guys like Hofer, Neighbors, Bolduc, and Kessel bigger roles and minutes, so we could see what they have. We were never getting a top 8 pick, and frankly from about 10-18 there are a lot of good players available. I trust our scouting and development pipeline.