I am still a total illiterate on next year’s draft, but there are especially a bunch of CHL players from like 10 to 30 that I am not that blown away about.
TSN and co are driving this as the big Canadian comeback year when they will pwn the 1st round completely. But these things are systematic, it’s not about cyclical trends. The USPNDPTDNP program (did I get it right?) has done an awesome job. The Finns is in a real golden age and is doing everything right up until the kids are 16-17 AND they have a somewhat crappy enough domestic league that the kids fast can get into and get accustomed to the pro game without being marginalized. Russia’s program is just much more stronger and complete than ppl give them credit for. At the same time, the Canadian junior league teams are very team oriented, and run from the bottom. It haven’t been able to muster that elite development drive organized from the top. It’s each to their own at a team for team basis.
Canada will of course still always produce great talent. Like during a crappy period, you still have guys like Mat Barzal pop up.
But I think we have seen a clear tend where the CHL kids — as a norm — have dropped over the year on average, AND on average also kept dropping post the draft. And there are certainly a lot of kids out there this year too that I really wonder if they will be able to keep up and play a 100% skill oriented game and get production from it at the NHL level down the road. Like look at Ty Ronning, we all know that there is a heck of a jump from the CHL to the pro game. It’s not enough to be very skilled, you need to be very very very skilled to make that jump.
This is a bit of a down year for most of the systems that have produced a big chunk of the top talent previous years. Especially the US. For it to — still — be an extraordinary deep draft, the other systems will need to be tremendously strong. Will that really be the case?
