beepeearr
@beepeearr
Guess Nill/Dallas brain trust changed their minds on the kid. Veleno would surely have fallen to the 2nd round if Detroit hadn't finally taken him off the boards as I believe the defending champs took a defender?
Curious choice, given that Dellandrea has so little international exposure compared to Veleno and when both prospects were in the same intl tournament their performances were polar opposite and not at all in Ty's favor. I can understand Montreal taking Jesperi(though 3rd overall seems a bit of a reach imo), but the dawgs taking Hayton 5th and Dallas, Philly, LA, Anaheim, Columbus all taking centers with Veleno still on the board is a bit of a head scratcher. I had Veleno and Kotkaniemi neck and neck as the best 2 center prospects of this draft class and a big gap between they and Hayton. Time will tell who was right I suppose. It'll be interesting to see if Veleno plays with a chip on his shoulder after being snubbed by nearly every team in the league.
I know when Sean wrote that, the Stars were wanting to select one of Koktoniemi, Hughes, Hayton, Wahlstrom, Dellandrea, or Bokk. Veleno wasnt on the list, after seeing the names they were after I thought for sure they were going to try and trade up or down, because guys like Veleno or Kupari or Farrabee werent on the list. At the draft you could see them going through a stack of jerseys... the stars dont use name plates, so they cant just have a couple of name plates to stick on a jersey with some velcro. They actually had 6 jerseys made up for the draft, well in advance. Which they didnt even do for Heiskanen last year.