2018 Draft Thread (June 22nd, 7:30PM | June 23rd, 11AM)

[Theo Von]

This is..... good... very good.

 

[The Wheelchair]

1.89 , .925 in 35 games in Liiga????

Uhhhh. Yes please.

Already 21 but three years in Liiga and this last season he had the best stats of any goalie who made more than 25 starts.

 

[The Jones Zone]

VEHVILAINEN, VEINI | 2016 NHL Draft Prospects

VEINI VEHVILAINEN

PROFILE

FAVORITES:
NHL TEAM: PITTSBURGH PENGUINS

 

[Jackets16]

I love the pick of Veini. We have quite a few good, young goaltenders who are close to ready. I've said it before, but I'd be trying to trade Bob.

 

[Jackets16]

It appears we have taken more risks this year. Makes sense, since we are young at the NHL level and can wait for them to develop. It also appears we have focused on guys who are good skaters with good hands.

 

[CBJWerenski8]

Well, at least I liked the goalie pick

 

[WannabeFinn]

It’s become quite obvious that the qualifications for Columbus draft picks now are Skating ability (emphasis on speed), Hockey IQ, and Offensive Creativity

Happy to see it after some size queen picks (Heatherington, Collins, etc.) really didn’t do so hot.

 

[The Wheelchair]

Last pick is RW Trey Fix-Wolansky out of Edmonton in the WHL. 89 points in 71 games. Listed between 5'5 and 5'8. I guess we're done drafting for size.

 

[CBJx614]

VEHVILAINEN, VEINI | 2016 NHL Draft Prospects

VEINI VEHVILAINEN

PROFILE

FAVORITES:
NHL TEAM: PITTSBURGH PENGUINS

I want this kid to make it before Rimer is gone.

 

[JustaFinnishGuy]

Veini is an amazing pick for you guys, he was due for a pick 2 years ago but didn't get picked up by anyone with his 'headcase' reputation. He flourished in our locker room atmosphere, and will hopefully have Nutivaara to chat with when he gets over, although I'm not ready to give him up to you guys yet.

I'm on mobile so I won't go over much, tomorrow when I get on my pc I'll post more.

 

[Hinterland]

I realize it was an early 6th, but trading a future 5th for a 6th now, common Jarmo.
Who knows what next season brings, that 5th round pick could be an early 5th next year.

Bad business IMO

These picks aren't likely to work out anyways. With Berni you get an 18yo defender who's playing against men already and he just won the title in Switzerland with the ZSC Lions. Berni didn't register a point but he played some important minutes and got played in any situation including PK or late in games to protect leads. How many 18yo defenders already playing in one of Europe's top leagues are gonna be available in next years 5th round? I'm shocked Berni fell this far. GM's were probably worried about his size and that would be my only question mark. He's easily better than Gross who went in the 4th round (NYR). It was Berni's first pro season and that's probably why he focused mostly on defense. I don't see why he couldn't score more at the highest level though. He has all the tools. He did score 15 points in 35 games in the 2nd league last season so there's definitely more to come.

 

[Theo Von]

Jarmos interview said they had been scouting our 1st rounder since ge was around 14 and it had nothing to do with his late push but that might have helped push them to pick him earlier because others might have caught on to what they already knew.

Our 2nd they were ecstatic about because they thought uf they had to move back a little or up into the 1st thats who they wanted so again I trust this pick.

The goalie is a great pick for what he did in the mens league and it was all about size and JK said they were ready to take him in the 4th or 5th but they didnt have picks and they had been trying to aquire but couldnt and then got him.


Given our past drafts especially with late rounders and unknowns like last year and tex... im 100% behind all the moves.

I was super critical of our Foudy pick but another tremendous Saturday for Jarmo and co. (Especially our goalie pick along with Kirill). Saturday’s continue to be kind to our scouting team it seems. Time will tell. But one thing I know for sure, if we don’t have THE BEST goalie prospect core then we easily have a top 3 best goalie prospect group in the league. And I say that confidently. If Bob isn’t a part of the Jackets after this season, we’ll still be in good hands.. I truly believe.

 

[Jackets16]

 

[CBJx614]

"they've all been contacted and they all are scheduled to be on a flight tomorrow"

Talking about the prospects camp

 

[CBJx614]

The only way I trade Bob is if Korpi shows up as a dominant force in net this season. Elvis or whoever else would need at least 2 seasons of great play as a backup/injury duty in the NHL before I would feel comfortable trading Bob.

If anything having two more kids coming over to battle for a spot next season could mean Korpi gets traded..

 

[Theo Von]

I doubt that. I don't know goalies that well but the expert lists out there don't have us with a single top ten goalie prospect. Merzlikins is the closest to a blue chipper and he's not quite there.



We might not have a choice but to move on from Bob but whenever that happens it should be an agonizing choice. If you're confident then you're not serious. Bob is a year removed from the Vezina and according to the fancy stats folks who are tracking high danger shots, he's still the best goalie, preventing more goals than any other. His raw save percentage is pushed down by "safe is death".

Please, show me these “expert lists”.

 

[Maylo]

Please, show me these “expert lists”.

Please, don't go there.
Earning the Vezina 2018, Part 2: Advanced stats and the rightful winner - InGoal Magazine

 

[stevo61]

Please, don't go there.
Earning the Vezina 2018, Part 2: Advanced stats and the rightful winner - InGoal Magazine

dont bring facts to the discussion, any goalie could come here and easily stop multiple odd man rushes a game. Any goalie could easily stop all the cross ice passes Pittsburgh and Washington have disected the team with on the PP in the playoffs. I mean comeon, every other goalie those teams faced stood on their heads and stole series... oh wait, no they didnt.
Maybe the focus should shift to blaming poor defensive schemes and tipping a cap to some pretty damn exceptional offenses. Bob keeps the scores from getting ridiculous. I just cant see other peoples side on this, I honestly dont get it, the guy wins the team tons of games they often dont deserve and somehow he has become the scapegoat here

 

[stevo61]

Also one of Don Cherrys best quotes in my opinion is "show me a good goaltender and ill show you a good coach". I think Torts has had that benefit throughout his career to buy him time and I know hes trying to adapt now but im not sure him and his assistants (minus Shaw) are good for the team moving forward offensively and defensively

 

[CBJWerenski8]

Overall, unimpressed. Like last year, we went way off the board with almost every pick. Not that this is bad, but there might have been better options available. We'll see in 3-4 years. But the only pick I look at and say "yeah, that's a pretty good pick" was the goalie. 2nd round Russian coming in a close second.

But again, we'll see. I don't share the same trust in the front offices drafting ability as most here. But this is our draft class and we'll see how they do in a few years.

Onto free agency. This is a pretty massive offseason. And thus far we haven't gotten any better (only worse, with the Panarin news, and letting go of UFA's like Cole, Vanek, Calvert, and Letestu), and we all know of the big contracts upcoming. Let's see what happens.

 

[EspenK]

The more I review the draft and think about it I think we did pretty well considering where we were drafting. The only real head scratcher I have is our 3rd rounder who was so far off the board I have trouble finding write ups about him that are written in English.

 

[JustaFinnishGuy]

Ok, here we go.

Vehvilainen at midseason-ish with my take on him;

''After stealing the #1 spot from Jussi Rynnäs he has been lights out along with the team.
He has an impressive 93,87%SV along with a stunning 1.53 GA. He also has won 80,43% of games he's started. 4 shutouts which is the most in the league.
He leads every goaltending metric in FEL, and despite his awful WJC appearance, he has been head and shoulders better than Kaapo Kähkönen, who was the winning goalie in the WJC semifinal and the final.
Kähkönen hasn't played badly either, being #2 in SV% and #3 in GA, it's just that Veini has a huge lead on every goalie.
One knock on him is that he's gotten the 10th most shots in the league. He has gotten 235 shots less than Kähkönen.
All this after he went undrafted, and he was essentially abandoned by his former team as well, given how he didn't perform well in the playoffs and at times in the regular season.

Might be a solid pick in the later rounds of the draft next year.''

My general observations on him are that his horizontal movement needs some work, along with his reactiveness all around. Long shots seem to beat him a lot, but he made up for those 'weak' goals with his overall amazing and steady mindset, the whole playoffs it was relaxing to think that Vehviläinen will just catch everything, he had that aura around him. He was on fire for a long stretch in the regular season but took a little bit of a hit going into the playoffs with him having a mini-slump which saw Rynnäs starting the playoffs (and Rynnäs failing once again).
The rest is pretty promising towards an NHL career.

My take on him after the finals;

''Ari Hilli, his goalie coach, has been lauded as a 'peoples coach' like Manner, the head coach. Hilli helped springboard Bäckström, Rinne, and Tarkki (a former, popular Kärpät goalie) to their respective careers.

Vehviläinen surely has gotten the support of the team and the coaches on his side and it's rare for us to win a championship without having a goalie roulette nowadays, he stood still and took the #1 goalie spot as soon as Rynnäs screwed up against Ässät in the 3rd game of the playoffs and never looked back.

He was the definition of solid but I think he can still work on his positioning and awareness.
Some goals he let in were bad judgment calls in the regular season and in the series against IFK and in the Finals he got beat by some long-range shots which obviously could have been caught on his best day. That aside, he probably was the reason we won the championship since he caught all the ones that mattered. His stats were stellar for the playoffs.
11 wins and 4 losses with 3 shutouts. A 93,33 svs%, 1.57 GAA. Solid. Real solid.''​

Vehvilainen raising the cup with the Captain Lasse Kukkonen;

 

[Maylo]

JK simply was going by looks this year.

 

[EspenK]

• https://thehockeywriters.com/2018-nhl-draft-50-takeaways/
  
• Did Columbus’ draft seem a little weird to you? It did for me. Overall I think they did fine. I’d give them a solid B overall. But a closer look brings to light a couple of things. First and foremost, they wanted speed and skill. That explains the Liam Foudy pick. He has speed for days and will develop in London. I saw many suggest this was a reach. It could be. If Foudy comes out of this reaching his upside as a top-six center, then it’s no reach at all. His season in London will be worth watching.
• Kirill Marchenko is perhaps my favorite second-round pick in this draft. Assuming he comes to North America, the Blue Jackets landed a 6-foot-3 version of Vitaly Abramov that is arguably better. That takes some of the sting out of reaching for Foudy if that’s what you think it was.
• Here’s where things got weird for me. They took Markus Karlberg in round three. He wasn’t even on the Central Scouting list anywhere. I understand the team does their own list and sticks with it. But was there a real fear in someone else taking him just 80 picks in? Karlberg could be a fine player but I don’t understand the thinking at that spot in the draft given who was available. We’re going to have to let time play this one out for us.
• Fun fact: Columbus drafted the oldest player in the draft when they took goalie Veini Vehvilainen. He’s 21 as of Saturday and was passed over in multiple drafts. He won a championship in Finland and according to Jarmo Kekalainen could be ready for North America. It’s an interesting strategy that I can’t wait to see play out.

 

[CBJx614]

• https://thehockeywriters.com/2018-nhl-draft-50-takeaways/
  
• Did Columbus’ draft seem a little weird to you? It did for me. Overall I think they did fine. I’d give them a solid B overall. But a closer look brings to light a couple of things. First and foremost, they wanted speed and skill. That explains the Liam Foudy pick. He has speed for days and will develop in London. I saw many suggest this was a reach. It could be. If Foudy comes out of this reaching his upside as a top-six center, then it’s no reach at all. His season in London will be worth watching.
• Kirill Marchenko is perhaps my favorite second-round pick in this draft. Assuming he comes to North America, the Blue Jackets landed a 6-foot-3 version of Vitaly Abramov that is arguably better. That takes some of the sting out of reaching for Foudy if that’s what you think it was.
• Here’s where things got weird for me. They took Markus Karlberg in round three. He wasn’t even on the Central Scouting list anywhere. I understand the team does their own list and sticks with it. But was there a real fear in someone else taking him just 80 picks in? Karlberg could be a fine player but I don’t understand the thinking at that spot in the draft given who was available. We’re going to have to let time play this one out for us.
• Fun fact: Columbus drafted the oldest player in the draft when they took goalie Veini Vehvilainen. He’s 21 as of Saturday and was passed over in multiple drafts. He won a championship in Finland and according to Jarmo Kekalainen could be ready for North America. It’s an interesting strategy that I can’t wait to see play out.

Don't we have another Finnish players who went through something similar?

He's turned out quite nicely so far.


I think next year in camp will be a Battle between VV, Elvis and Korpi for the backup spot

 

[MoeBartoli]

Don't we have another Finnish players who went through something similar?

He's turned out quite nicely so far.


I think next year in camp will be a Battle between VV, Elvis and Korpi for the backup spot

Or maybe the starting spot?

 

[Hammer Slammer]

A shift by shift look at Tim Berni from an NLB game:

Tim Berni vs HC La Chaux de Fonds | Jan 24 2018

 

[JustaFinnishGuy]

To be honest I would be pretty f***ing annoyed if Vehviläinen signed AND went over for a probable AHL and/or a backup gig.
His former team JYP gets some compensation of him going to the NHL, so Kärpät doesn't get full compensation bonus along with them losing their #1 goalie.
Next year is so much better for our team, then we get the full compensation bonus for him and we get to be ready for him leaving barring an abysmal season.

 

[JacketsFanWest]

He wasn’t even on the Central Scouting list anywhere.

This is a problem with Central Scouting, not the Jackets' scouts. Karlberg was the #7 leading scorer in the SuperElit J20 league . Imagine if the the #7 scorer in his draft year in the OHL was left off of Central Scouting's list. For U19 players, he's #4 and above Bokk with a higher PPG. Central Scouting didn't include him because he's 5'8 and assumed he's too small so they won't waste time.

He was the leading scorer in the SuperElit for the beginning of the season, and I will add that there are two parts of the SuperElit season - the first part teams play within their region (North/South) and the good teams destroy the weak teams (scores of 5-1 are not uncommon). Then in the second part of the season, the top 10 teams play in a separate division. Leksand plays in the ultra-competitive North division and didn't qualify for the Top 10, so they played in the relegation (Forts.) group where he had less competition. So it's possible some scouts discounted his stats as being inflated due to weak competition.