Prospect Info: Hurricanes select C Jack Drury #42 OA

DaveG

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Visitor here.

Now that Jack Drury has signed with the Vaxjö Lakers, what do you guys expect from him?
what kind of prospect you guys think he is?
Solid two-way guy, very defensively responsible, bit of a pest. Prettymuch what any team would want from a #3C.
There's question as to what his upside is but he definitely looks like a future NHLer.
 

A Star is Burns

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I have no reason to think this other than it seems he's done quite well at the last two levels he's been, but I think he might be better than expected and be a pretty good #2 center someday. I'm excited to see what he does in playing against men.
 

Vagrant

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drury is a prospect of ours that i am bullish on. there's a quality in some players that have trouble with level adjustments in their first pass because they don't quite know how good they are and their confidence wavers. morgan geekie is an example. when they finally understand their skill edge, they trust themselves more to be creative. drury brought his nhl pedigree to waterloo and just had a tough time that first year finding a role and that turned some scouts against his upside. but in his second pass in that league, he was head and shoulders above where he was the season prior. my biggest evaluation tool is grading the player against himself. virtually any prospect with nhl aspirations is going to put up the counting stats wherever they play, but the how is really important. 12 points in 52 games including 0-0-0- -4 in the playoffs the year before his draft season just tanked his stock. it's the same league that the jack hughes of the world were just ripping up with the development team at like 2 ppg. but the next season he looked like a new player and his talent started to play. scouts didn't know what to make of it, because the optics from his draft season were a first round player but his performance the year prior was just abysmal. a lot of outlets took the middle of the road of putting him in the 60's, which is right around where you start to see shoulder shrugs in evaluations like it could go either way.

the freshman year at harvard was good, but not jump off the page. there were signs, but nothing compared to how supernova he went during his sophomore season. i think if he was to stay at harvard for his junior year, he would have been the odds on favorite for the hobey baker. when you talk about beating a league, what he put on tape there was just far and away the best hockey of his life. in fact, it was so good that part of me started to get jumpy about the risk of allowing him to play his junior season. we aren't out of the woods yet, because my thought process is that if he wanted to turn professional, why wasn't he signed by carolina and then loaned to the swedish club of his choosing? perhaps there's some things there i don't know about the process and why he decided to do it this way, but if jack drury calls you from harvard and says he's ready to go pro you fax the contract blank and let him fill it out. perhaps during this covid nonsense he didn't want to be committed to being dictated as to where he was required in the states for camps, etc. and just wants a bigger hockey challenge in a country where the situation is more stable. but it's hard not to see that as a lack of trust between player and organization. that scares me a little.

as for what to expect from him in the SHL next season, he has notoriously taken some time to warm to the task of a level change and this one is the biggest psychological barrier he's faced to this point. they will have to be patient with him and endure some early nerves, but he'll likely warm to the task as the season goes on and he starts to understand that he belongs. no insult intended to the SHL, but with the amount of elite talent that has started to develop in liiga to make the fins more comfortable staying home and the draw of the KHL for the veterans, the SHL is a bit of no man's land with as inconsistent as the swedish crops have been the past few drafts. hopefully his confidence is high enough to avoid the adjustment phase, but my expectation is for him to finish around 0.6-0.8 ppg after finding his feet.
 

DaveG

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To hit on your middle point Vagrant, with the uncertainty about everything the US right now and questions about when the AHL season will even start up I get why he signed directly with the SHL team. Also I'm not sure we would have had the ability to loan him to an SHL team if he had signed a contract with us being North America based, maybe Lempo has more information there. But either way, with so much going on in North America and with his Harvard season effectively canceled with being postponed to Spring he made the right move.
 

Lempo

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To hit on your middle point Vagrant, with the uncertainty about everything the US right now and questions about when the AHL season will even start up I get why he signed directly with the SHL team. Also I'm not sure we would have had the ability to loan him to an SHL team if he had signed a contract with us being North America based, maybe Lempo has more information there. But either way, with so much going on in North America and with his Harvard season effectively canceled with being postponed to Spring he made the right move.
(Looks like) We are loaning Jesper Sellgren to an SHL team as we speak. Zero issues there, expect that we would be burning a year off from Drury's ELC, and now we aren't.

Jesper Sellgren till SHL igen

I think doing it this way is more to the SHL team's liking, as they got him under regular contract instead of as a loan. They aren't in danger to lose him mid-season, unless he signs to an NHL team and gets a roster spot immediately.

And also in these like times, the $230k or so of transfer fee money coming their way once he signs to the NHL is a massive thing for the team budget.
 
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Lempo

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Ha, the local team Ässät backs up my case with two Edmonton D-men: signed* Markus Niemelainen gets loaned until the Edmonton camp starts. Unsigned NCAA prospect from Boston U Kasper Kotkansalo gets signed to Ässät for one year.

(* a funny case: a 2016-draftee got signed to ELC on April 30 this spring, during the corona pause and merely a month before the expiry of his exclusive negotiation rights)

Looks like the draft-related UFA market might be stuffed a couple of years forward, maybe enough so that the agents of these recent pros may recommend them to sign early and with their drafting team instead of going rogue.
 
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Lempo

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My immediate first thought reading that he signed overseas was "good for him- I wouldn't begrudge anybody taking the opportunity to leave the states right now"
In the Assat press release Kotkansalo says explicitly that "the coronavirus situation in the Yankland looked bad enough so that I felt it best to stay and play in Liiga".

Obviously the choice isn't exactly hard when there probably won't be a NCAA season at all.

The college teams may get badly depleted because of this all.
 

The Stranger

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After a slow start, it appears he's settling in well in the SHL. 4 assists in the last two games and appears to be getting top line center minutes. He's #13 if you watch the highlights. First game below is against Frolunda...Sellgren is #58. Nice assist off the rush in traffic for Drury.



In this game, looks like his second assist should've been offside.

 

Nikishin Go Boom

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Jack Drury with an assist today. Not a strong day in the dot with 35% FO winning percentage but still getting big minutes, 20:48.
 
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spockBokk

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Nice report on Drury (with some notes on Gunler and Zybeck too):

For some reason I can’t post the link, but it’s from dobberprospects.com


Jack Drury, C, Växjö Lakers HC (Carolina Hurricanes)
This season might be a great preview of Drury’s future career. He has been given the role of a second-line center, which suits him quite well. Drury likes to hold on to the puck with his head up and waits for the right time to pass it or pull the trigger. He is also very good at using his body. He can either shield the puck to retain possession or battle along the boards.
One of his biggest strengths is not allowing opposing players to have the puck. This style of play is positively impacting the team’s performance. Växjö has taken 194 shot attempts for with Drury on the ice while allowing only 129 shot attempts against in his presence. Drury is a great play-driving force with a responsible defensive game who likes to be right in the middle of the action. Nine points in 15 outings with almost 18 minutes of ice time per game are simple proof of why he has been so reliable for the Lakers throughout the season.
 

tarheelhockey

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Other young draftees on that team, as points of reference apart from the veterans/non-draftees:

Fredrik Karlstrom - 15gp, 6-5-11 (.73ppg) - 1/12/1998, Stars 2016 #90
Pontus Holmberg - 12gp, 5-2-7 (.58ppg) - 3/9/1999, Maple Leafs 2018 #156
Jack Drury - 16gp, 1-8-9 (.56ppg) - 2/3/2000, Hurricanes 2018 #42
Marcus Davidsson - 12gp, 0-1-1 (.08ppg) - 11/18/1998, Sabres 2017 #37


FWIW it looks like Davidsson was recently cut loose to join another team, and is beginning to be viewed as a total bust. Karlstrom and Holmberg are still in the mix as potential AHL projects for their respective organizations.
 

Nikishin Go Boom

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Vaxjo is putting it on SHL leading Frolunda right now 5-0, half through the 2nd. Jack got an assist on the 5th goal.

Sellgren has been on the ice for two Vaxjo goals.

Vaxjo making a push to be in the top 3 and compete in the CHL. They are 1 point behind Rogle who is currently beating Nybeck's HV71 4-0.
 

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