Watched the show. Thoughts:
Selections have been made. Finally players to go with, no more guesswork. Not the strongest early roster by any means out of the possibilities in the draft. Not a huge surprise there was no loading up on many big names, but I would have thought they picked at least one bigger name or generally more expected players from some teams. Some picks were big surprises for sure, especially if without some strings attached.
Too early to put a stamp on this roster and post it onward to the moon. I'm expecting there will be roster effecting changes from the trades and free agency ahead. Cap space seems to be one thing we will hold onto long, though.
We do have decent enough physical and defensive defense to work with. Actual offense still lacking clearly, but the bottom half of the offense seems to be able to work it hard. Inexperienced goalies should have support from the defense and hard working players, which helps their job. The inexperienced goalies will still have to prove their worth that they can be counted on longer term. On the bright side, many players will have a great opportunity to jump into the spotlight and give it their best.
I think is the most level and effective way of looking at it. There were ~4 picks that are just major head scratchers. In particular:
LAK: MacDermid - we drafted a very big, very heavy and physical roster. MacDermid is poor defensively and was eventually shifted to 4th line wing because of it. He's basically an enforcer. We have enough size and physicality that passing on prospects like Grundstrom and Clague makes very little sense.
PHI: Twarynski - even if we weren't interested in taking JVR/Voracek at full pop, a guy like Ghost, or even Hagg is simply worth more. Ghost could have allowed us to explore moving Dunn for a solid forward and still having a puck mover on defense, or could probably have been flipped (perhaps with retention) for another asset. Virtually anything holds more value than Twarynski.
CHI: Quennville - he's a UFA. There won't be competition for his services like a Larsson or Oleksiak; there may not even be another NHL game in his future. We could have phoned him 7 days and said "hey, want a league minimum contract?" and he'd be a Kraken. With that said, we passed on Gaudette who is young and has upside yet when we're thin on forwards, and we passed on Zadorov/DeHaan. If the goal was to build a big heavy defense, take Zadorov. That way if you have a really good deal on the table for a guy like Soucy, you can still maintain that physical, aggressive element you wanted in that spot.
But with that said, there's a lot of cap space and sure to be a couple of moves. I wouldn't get too excited for a multitude of deals, but there will have to be at least a couple. We really won't know how this roster will look until that happens. Free agency has some names that are still out there who could add some offensive punch as well; Schwartz, Landeskog, Hoffman, Danault, Wennberg, etc. We may not end up with the sexiest names, but even a guy like Wennberg would improve the top-six right now, and still has upside (he did quite well in Florida; Columbus was never an offensive powerhouse).
A few guys like McCann, Appleton, Geekie and to a lesser extent Tanev may breakout here. Tanev could put up solid third line numbers. Geekie, Appleton and McCann could all have second line potential. Albeit, none are home runs (I do think Appleton is the single best breakout candidate in the draft), but there's potential there. A guy like that can also be packaged with a high upside D like Dunn or Lauzon and potentially land you a more established top-six player (and not a Voracek/Tarasenko on an inflated contract with concerns over age/injuries).
Seeing what happens with free agency and what kind of deals we make between now and September means it's virtually pointless to get too critical of this early roster. Like I said, a few head scratchers that just don't seem to make sense no matter how you slice it, but overall pretty decent. We'll see not only what happens in the early days of free agency and post-trade freeze, but if we manage to snag any big fish UFAs, or if we're able to flip guys to teams that strike out on their desired UFAs. The picture will get clearer over the next two months.
I doubt they'll move anyone who was brought out on stage. Earliest I could see any of them moving would be Gio at the TDL.
