The 2015 NHL Entry Draft is by all accounts a deep one. The top end of the Draft is loaded for bear with both McDavid and Eichel looking like future Super Stars and then it goes on from there with lots of excellent talent going right through the top two rounds at least. Many call it the best Draft since the 2003 Draft that loaded so many teams for the last decade or so. This is especially beneficial to the Oilers who happen to have 5 picks between 1 and 63 in this Draft.
Now I’m not entirely sold the Oilers should use all of their picks, but if they did keep them then at least it looks like this is the year to do it. We all know what the Oilers need. They need 2 Defensemen and a Goalie who can play and make an impact today. They have a stable of young Defensemen learning their trade on the farm but their system lacks legitimate prospects at the forward positions beyond Leon Draisaitl because they’ve drafted so high that those players have already graduated to the NHL. The Oilers also haven’t had much luck drafting and developing goaltenders, though they’ve added some young Goaltenders via trade or free agency.
We know that the Oilers have said they’d be open to trading some picks but we also know that the value of these Draft picks seems to get higher and higher in the minds of the GMs as we inch closer and closer to Draft day. On top of that, the Oil might have had a plan in place for Pittsburgh’s pick in January when they made that Trade that simply doesn’t make as much sense today.
Let’s not forget that when they made that deal they were trading for a pick that seemed destined for 25-30 in the Draft but ended up being 16th Overall.
16th Overall in a deep Draft like this one is going to be good. A few players slide or get taken ahead of where you thought they might go and all of a sudden the Oilers could be in a position to Draft a player they had ranked in their top 12.
If we stick to the 2003 comparisons, players that went after 16th Overall in that Draft were Parise, Getzlaf, Burns, Kesler, Richards, and Perry. And that’s just in the 1st Round!
There’s every reason to believe that there will be not just a good player at 16, but a potentially impactful player down the road.
Now the Oilers own the 1st, 16th, 33rd, 57th, and 63rd picks as their first 5 in this Draft. That’s a lot of ammunition for the scouting staff and they need to get things right. Chiarelli has asked the scouts to dig deeper than they’ve ever dug before into these players to find out more about them. These picks are so incredibly valuable that there cannot be any doubt if they choose to select a player or if they trade it away.
This is a critical time for the Oilers as they have to make the right decision because opting out of trades for pieces they desperately need at the NHL level will very likely keep them out of contention for the playoffs this coming year. They cant win with this Defense. They cant win with this goaltending. So choosing the prospects over NHL players is putting a lot of eggs in the UFA/RFA basket.
Using
Bob McKenzie’s Draft Rankings, these are the players that line up with Edmonton’s picks:
1) Connor McDavid: 47GP, 44-76-120. Consensus 1st Overall pick. He’s incredible in every way offensively. He has blinding speed, a great shot, sublime passing ability, and vision that allows him to see plays long before both his teammates and opponents can. He is going to step onto the Edmonton Oilers and be their 2C for G1 of the season barring the Oilers acquiring another C. His top end is so high we need to install an elevator. He is going to play with some combination of Hall, Eberle, Pouliot, or Nail Yakupov.
16) Colin White: 54GP, 23-31-54. He’s a Center from the US National Development Program who is committed to Boston College. He’s not big and certainly not as prolific a scorer as perhaps another USHL Kyle Connor who is ranked 13th on McKenzie’s list. In fact, I cant seem to find where McKenzie found 54 games played for White. I can only get info on 20 he played for the US National Development team where he went 20GP, 4-14-17. He is a right shooting C who should go to College and give the Oilers some time for him to develop without having to commit to a contract though, assuming they went that route.
33) Daniel Sprong: 68GP, 39-49-88. He’s a RW for Charlottetown of the QMJHL. He lead their team in scoring by 6 Goals and 13 points as a 17 year old then went 10GP, 7-4-11 in the Playoffs. He’s a Dutch born player who stands 6 feet tall and scored 30 goals in the Q during his Rookie campaign. Described as an electric player with plus stickhandling and skating ability.
57) Thomas Novak: 46GP, 14-34-48. A little smaller at 6 feet tall and 174 pounds but he has time to grow and develop physically since he is committed to the University of Minnesota. He’s listed by McKenzie as a C but at the very least he is partially used on the Wing. His
Redline Report notes from the beginning of the year state that despite his size he goes into all the dirty areas of the ice to retrieve pucks through sheer determination.
63) Mitchel Vande Sompel: 58GP, 12-51-63. Just won a Memorial Cup with the Oshawa Generals. He’s undersized by NHL standards at just 5’10” and 180 pounds on the blueline, but he’s a prolific scorer at the OHL level. He was 5th in OHL scoring by a defenseman at the age of 17. By god if he was 2 inches taller he would be rated significantly higher given his success on the score sheet and in the playoffs.
We all know that the McKenzie rankings are good but anything after the 1st round starts to get dicey. The reality is that any player within reasonable range of those picks should be considered a good pick. If the Oilers go off the board then they better know something nobody else does about the kid in question otherwise we get Mitch Moroz all over again.
I still firmly believe the 16th and the 33rd should be available in a trade but the 16th can only go if Edmonton is getting a defenseman and the 33rd is the highest I would be comfortable with for Edmonton to get a goaltender.
That’s giving up a lot in such a deep draft which means there’s a very real possibility we see one or the other but not both. We wait to see.
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