The Athletic Hockey Show - Connor Bedard selected 1st overall by Chicago Blackhawks, Leo Carlsson to the Ducks and Adam Fantilli to Blue Jackets round out the top 3

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

Max and Corey breakdown the first round of the 2023 NHL draft from the floor in Nashville, minutes after the first round was completed. The guys discuss what Connor Bedard will bring to Chicago, Anaheim's decision to draft Leo Carlsson over Adam Fantilli who fell to the third slot and the Columbus Blue Jackets and the risky decision by the Flyers to draft Matvei Michkov who still has three years remaining on his NHL contract. Plus, Max and Corey lament the lack of trades during day one of the draft and look ahead to a busy day two on Thursday at the draft in Nashville.  Subscribe to The Athletic Hockey Show on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowGo to grammarly.com/tone to download and learn more about Grammarly Premium’s advanced tone suggestionsNuts.com is offering new customers a free gift with purchase and free shipping on orders of $29 or more at Nuts.com/hockey23 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show Prospect Series. Hey, everybody. Welcome to our post-draft episode of the Athletic Hockey Show Prospect Series. Just minutes removed, Corey, from the end of the first round of the NHL draft. And it was an eventful night in a lot of ways. Obviously, you get the expected big moment at the beginning with Connor Bedard. And then, as we teased yesterday on the show, a little bit of a change-up in the top five. Right.

And as we kind of discussed on the show last time, Leo Carlson going second overall, may have been a surprise in the moment, but I felt like that was something that was a building consensus in the league. Not consensus, let me rephrase that in a way that I think the majority of the league still thought Adam Fantelius was the second best prospect in the draft,

but there was a significant contingent of people in the league who felt like Carlson as at a minimum in the conversation or should be the second best player in the draft. And the conversation always came down to Hockey Sense in that Anfantelius Hockey Sense wasn't a liability, but it wasn't a major asset, which is scary at second overall.

You can't really go through a whole lot of second overall picks except for Quentin Bifield, which is an example some people who are Fantelli skeptics would use that where that is a true statement where they don't have a great hockey sense. And so that's where the debate came in. I still felt like, and we've talked about this before, that with hockey sense, it always comes down to offense, right?

If you're not smart, you're not creating offense at high levels. And Anaventilly went to college hockey this year and led the country in scoring. Went to the world championships and showed you can be on a power play and be an offensive contributor. So I didn't buy that, but that school of thought was definitely becoming a little bit more

widespread in the league. And then you look at Leo Carlson, he may not have the skating of Adam. He's a little bit bigger, and he has that dynamic playmaking ability, and I think Anaheim bought in on that. I think some people also looked at Anaheim and thought, well, Pat for Big just likes competitive guys. But

you know, there is something to having a compliment to Leo Carlson playing in the same center core as Mason McTavish and Nathan and Gosea, you put Trevor Zegroos on the wing, or Leo on the wing. We'll see what happens. Probably going to be Trevor. And now you have those two centers who are big and mean to play against, and Carlson, who can be your leading scorer on your team. Well, you mentioned Fantilli at Worlds, and that's something I'm really curious about.

He did show he could produce offense. He obviously the one highlight goal that went crazy. But I think people would say Leo played better at the Worlds. Exactly. Yes. And so I wonder how much you think that plays into an assessment like that. When you have these two guys head-to-head, Leo got a better role at Worlds. There's no doubt about that. but when you have them at the same event and you see one look better.

Well, I thought I was interesting when Patford Beak talked about the pick today. They said a couple of weeks ago is when they came to the decision. A couple of weeks ago was the conclusion that tournament. I'm not saying that tournament in itself led to that decision. I would say Carlson also outplayed Fantilia at the World Juniors, for example.

And I still think projecting Fantalia to higher levels, those tournaments weren't his best hockey, but he's played a lot of really good hockey in his life. But there's, I mean, there's really good arguments in Carlson's favor. The tumble, not too far, Roper Fantilli goes right away to Columbus. Natural fit there. They get kind of the franchise center they've always wanted.

Will Smith, as we expect, rounds out that four. And then it was Montreal. We talked about that yesterday. This is where it all begins. And they end up going, as you put in your mock draft this morning, with the deep. Right. And I found the discussions about David and Reimbacker so confusing. Like, when I talked to my media colleagues when I would hear what our readers would say,

even talk to some scouts, he always kind of got portrayed as like this safe pick. Like, he's just a boring player. There's no upside here. And I think that couldn't be farther from the truth. These are really good hockey player. He's 6-2. He can skate. He scored over 20 points in a really tough league this year.

He competes well. When he went to play at the World Championship level, he can show him to be on power play there too. Like, I don't know. I know he's not Montefi and Mitchcoff. And I think that's really where the conversation came down. It wasn't, I think, hatred towards David Reimbacker from some of our Montreal readers

or just seeing the dialogue about him online over the last few weeks. it was him versus Montefi Michkoff. And listen, I'm in on Montefi Michikov. I was a big fan of the player. He was a big fan of Philly and a seven. I believe in the player. But even if you are a fan of the player,

you have to acknowledge the risks. There are a lot of risks in Mitchikov between his frame, his skating, his one-way play, the KHL contract for three more years, and frankly, the war. Like, I don't think it's unreasonable to not pick a Russian player because of what's going on over there,

now. You know, we saw what happened in Russia a couple of weeks. You know, who knows what's going to happen over the next three years? Maybe it gets better, maybe it gets worse. We can't know, obviously. We barely know hockey well enough, and never mind, you know, stuff like that. So I don't, I can't fault the team for not taking

a Russian player, especially you want on a cage-old contract. But we took Mitch Kov out of the equation. Ryan Bacher was the next best player on the board. At a premium position, he takes every box you want in a top lineup, sorry, a top defense prospect. and again, we'll see whether he has a good career or not.

He's not a sure thing. Nobody ever is outside of the first second overall, but I think he's going to have a long and productive NHL career. You touch on the premium position. I mean, we can turn around and look at this board here. It is centers and D. and when we talk about Michikov falling, Rambach is not the only D who went ahead of Mitchcov.

Mischoff wasn't even the first Russian taken here. Arizona goes with Dimitri Simashev. I do wonder if that positional premium, and especially in this class, we know how deep the forward class is conceived or, you know, perceived to be. That's different from the D. Arizona jumped on that and took Simashev. Well, we talked about Simashev's talent all year, 6-4, the skating. There's not elite offense, but there is offense. He played on a really deep team. You're not going to get the power play

all the time all the time. There's offense in his game. It's going to be more secondary in the NHL, second power play, but there's offense. And he was, at least in the mind of many scouts on pure talent. KHL factor aside, pure talent, the first or second best offenseman in the draft, some because of the KHL contract. Like, so Mitchkov, you know, just didn't feel as confident to go and do that. But we talked about with Arizona how you looked at the organization, post-Oliver Ekna-Larsen, post-Jacob, Victor Sotom, she was not really developing very well right now. They needed a big-time defense talent.

And that's why we always thought, if David Rybock gets the six and the league thought this, he's going to be a coyote. He doesn't get the six. He goes at five. And that always presented a dilemma for me with Arizona is, do you gamble that he's going to be there at 12 or Philander was going to be there at 12? Because as we saw, Philander was not going to be there at 12. So are you confident that Detroit, St. Louis, Washington doesn't take him?

And I think the answer to that question was no. And they went and got a really good defense prospect at a premium position. And there's risk there. There is a lot of risk because of the KHL factor. But I don't think on pure talent where he got picked was unreasonable. We're going to get to Mitch Kov in a second. But Arizona, I think the story of this is they took both of the locomotive kids. I know you felt really strongly for the last month that they were going to get one.

they walk out with both. Right. I didn't feel strongly, but like, I remember I was watching the tournament called the Black Sea Cup. It was a tournament a couple weeks ago. It was like a way for Russia to look at their under 20 prospects, especially since the non- international tournaments anymore.

And it was being taken place in Belarus, and not an easy place to get to for most Americans. And I was watching the game, and the camera turns, and there's a gigantic Arizona contingent with both of the amateur directors and Bill Armstrong in the stands. And that got around the league real quickly.

Right. And I got it. had a sense they were going to take one. I didn't think they're going to take two. I don't think, you know, I love both of those players. I'm not sure I could take two of them because that's a lot of risk. You've got to get both of those kids signed now with the risk that we've already talked about with Russian players. But in terms of pure players, they are top 10 players in the draft. They are big, they are fast, they compete, they have skill. They look like, no doubt, NHL players. And obviously now it's going to be really interesting to see how Arizona

approaches them over the next couple of years and if they will be in Arizona three years from now. Yeah, both premium athletes, the kind that you are extremely hard pressed to find if you don't pick him on days like today. If I look at Daniel Bout and we'll see whether Quentin Bufeld to be remains a wing or goes at the center, but he looks a lot like Bifield. Yeah. You look at Simishchev, he looks a lot like Simon Evanston. Like, you know, these are guys who go high in the draft, but they didn't because they're Russians. Yeah.

Okay, let's get to Mitchcoff now. And Philly, I know, started to pick up buzz the last few days that this could be a landing spot. They get him. What does this mean for their organization? Well, I think there was just kind of a perfect combination of the fact that they really liked the player, they liked his interview, and this is the start of something in Philadelphia. They are tearing things down, and this new management group with Danny Breyer and Keith Jones seem to have a leash to be bad for a few years, which seems like they're going to be quite bad next season.

And with Mitchcoff, they can wait three years. Now you've got Cutter Gocha, who looks very promising right now. Now you add Mitchcoff, and you add Oliver Bonk. You're probably going to have a high pick again next year, and likely the year after that too. And Mitch Koff can now come to your organization when you're ready to start turn the corner and probably right around the time

when if you're not starting to win the fan base is going to start getting a little of impatient with Breyer. But I think there was a lot of things that have made perfect sense for Philadelphia. Yep, as a landing spot for sure. All right, what did you make of a few of the... We get, you know, Ryan Leonard today,

I don't want to skip over. Capital's fans, I'm sorry, but we do need to move along here. That was an expected one in that group. So he goes to Washington. What did you make a Nate Danielson at 9? That was one where it starts to open up a little bit. Yeah, and as you kind of know, maybe some of the people who've read my work,

you know I'm a fan of Danielson. I thought that's right where he should have gone. I think in my mock draft, I said 9 to 11, 8 to 11, or what I seemed like the range where I thought he was going to go in the draft. He's 6.1 and a half. He skates well. He competes well. There is offense. I've seen people say he doesn't have offense. I kind of think that's BS. I mean, you really look at some of his comparable. You look to say Dylan Cousins production in W. W.H.L. His draft year, draft minus one. It's very comparable to Danielson. I think there's a lot of offense. They're not elite offense, but good enough given his athletic trades and his competitiveness, that I think

he's going to be a really good NHL player. And a ton of rhyme with Marco Casper, which, you know, Detroit was rightly, I think, criticized early in the rebuild for not using their premium picks on centers. And the last two years, they've made up for that. I think he's a little different. I think he has more skill than Casper, but maybe not, like, he plays hard, but he doesn't have like that nastiness. Yeah, right, sure. But I still think

there's some, you know, these are two guys that maybe number two centers and you start to stack that up. I really like Danielson as a second line center. And Casper, if Casper's your third line center. If he becomes what we think he could become, then I think you are ecstatic with that, with that combination with Dylan Larkin. How did you feel about, I mean, really that pick,

in hindsight, kind of looks like a head-to-head. Danielson versus Delbor Dvorowski, who ends up going to St. Louis? I think it's skating, right? Because I've always kind of believed that Danescent had offense. If you didn't, I understand that, but I thought Danielson had the offense. He competes well, just like Dvorsky. He's a little bit bigger, and he skates better.

So I think it's a skating differential there that probably led to him being the pick. The next one that I think stood out to me. We kind of expected Tom Wlander to be in Van der. Vancouver's mix. Zach Benson, obviously, we thought, could go anywhere around that range. Braden Yeager at 14. What did you make of that one?

I got some text from a couple of people when I put in my mock draft leader today at 19. They're like, I don't think that's going to happen. I know he's kind of been falling down a little bit, but I think people still like this guy based on just the, you know, the skating, they compete, and they think that, you know, he has offense. The offense wasn't there prominently this season, but he showed, kind of like Danielson, he showed it over his career.

And you know what he's done. He, you know, he was one of the best players that Hlinkagresky outplayed guys like Zach Benson. Like Colby Barlow on that team, like Matt Wood. And I think people believe this guy is going to be a scorer as his career progresses. And if you believe that with his skating and his work ethic, then I think the pick is reasonable. And it's right around when I had him ready as a player, too. So here's one of the storylines that I didn't really pick up on until we were into the mid-20s.

We did not have a single trade up or down in the first round tonight. I don't know the last time that happened. No sexy trade to go get Mitchkoff, right? No, right. Not there. But even then, we've talked about the rarity in the top 10, let alone the top five. usually you are getting picks flipping in the teens and certainly in the 20s. And you've heard afterwards, like I heard teams say they tried to move up or move down,

but nobody ever bit. But yes, absolutely no movement whatsoever is very strange. I don't think anyone would have predicted, for example, St. Louis makes all three picks. They come out with Willander, Otto Stenberg, and Theo Lindstein. So clearly they liked something that was going on in Sweden this year. But Colorado making both of their first round picks. I mean, obviously they traded the one the other day, and maybe that's how you get there. but they take Kalam Ritchie and Mikhail Goliayev.

I mean, Colorado needs something in their system. I mean, their system is so bare. It was before a day it was hard to look at point of a guy and say, I think he's going to have an NHL career, but I think you can look at Richie and Goliath and I'll say, okay, he can be an NHL center or an NGO wing, he can be an NHL defenseman, maybe not in the immediate future,

but they needed something in their system because they had absolutely nothing. And it's not like they are Pittsburgh or Washington where their core is old. They need guys to come in and help play with Nathan McKinn McKin and Hickor-Macon and Keel McCarr at some point, even if it's not going to be in the next couple of years.

Yeah. All right, a few more picks I want to get you on. Oliver Moore at 19 to the Blackhawks. I think some people will be surprised that he got to 19. I know you felt like that was a reasonable range for him. But what I want to ask is the fit here. Chicago now in the last couple of drafts has assembled together Connor Bedard, Frank Naser, and Oliver Moore, which a lot of speed in that group.

There's a lot of talent. And work ethic. Also quite small. I think these are three sub six foot centermen here that Chicago appears to be building around. Right. But I think I agree with you, and that is a concern. I think they are just so.

early though in their rebuild. You know, you think about how hard it is to win in the NHL. Carnar McDavid is an absolute freak of nature and he's never made to an Stanley Cup final. And he has Leon Dreisd. He has a lot really good players around him. So I think you just got to take the best player. I know it's corny. But I don't think it's a guarantee

Nazar is an NHL center. I don't think it's a guarantee that Oliver Moore is an NHL center because of their size. I think they've got to prove that and maybe one of them isn't in the middle, one was out of the wing. Maybe you go down into your rebuild. You find that big center at some point. But I mean, you know, they need so much. I know they got Carter-Badard and they just got Taylor Hall and there's a lot of room for excitement in Chicago,

but they're going to be really bad next year. And probably the year after that, too. There's a lot of work left to do in Chicago. A couple picks later, Charlie Stramel goes at 21 to Minnesota. I know this was a guy coming into the year. You'd have been thrilled to get at number 21. But as it played out, it didn't necessarily always look like he was going to be able to go here. Yeah, I mean, there was, and it wasn't just a public ranking scores.

A lot of the national people I thought to thought he wasn't a first round. He's going in the second round. might go and go middle late second round. I just thought I always was really skeptical of that. Just from what I've seen of the guy over his career, he had a bad season. There is nothing taken away from it. I had him raided around there as a player,

and I would tell you there was nothing I saw this year that made me think he was that good. It's all based on what I've seen previously, because college hockey's really hard for a draft eligible to step into and be successful. If they are successful, they're like Matt Wood, and they go in the top 15, or they're like, Antealini, and they go in three,

or Matt Baneers or Ken Johnson. So it's really hard to be successful as a draft eligible. even Dylan Hallway didn't have a great year and he still went really high. And I always thought Stramo with his size, with his skating, with his physicality. Yes, the offense isn't amazing. I don't think he's going to be a big score, but I think he's a good player. And I think it would be a third line center. Maybe if he really, really hit you get a second line center.

And he's a rare kind of player type that people covet in the playoffs. I get it. I like the pick. It's kind of funny. I think with Strainball, he didn't play a game this season. He heard himself at the World Junior's last year. let's say an injury we're taking him out all year. He's probably going top 15.

Yep. So he's a bad year. Now he's going in the middle of the second round. I always was really skeptical of that. The guy who fell later than I expected, and I think this is probably true for a lot of people. Gabe Perrault gets to number 23 in the Rangers. That was an expected landing spot for Stramel in some cases.

Instead, they get one of the smartest and most skilled players in this draft. Right. And I think you look at the Rangers organization, what they covet, what they had. And I sure they came in today saying, we probably don't want to draft a small, slow winger. Left winger, too, right? But I think it got to a point, I'm guessing,

I don't have to have to any of the rangers, I'm getting out to a point where he's probably like 10 on their list, and the next guy was like 20, and it's like, we have to take the guy, because he's the clear best player available. And Gabe's always a tough one because of the fact that he's this barely 5-11 wing, he's got this really scrawny frame,

he's not a great skater, and I think a lot of people were worried by the element of his brother, Jacob Perra, who had the same thing. super skilled, super intelligent goal score, but there was athletic concerns there and goes to the pro game. It's just going okay in Anaheim system. So I think, yeah, there was always this concern we gave. Some people loved him.

Like some people I've gotten text are just absolutely shocked by how low he fell. But some were like, yeah, there was a lot of risks in that profile. I like the player. Again, I think the hockey sense is off the charts. He's just, you know, you saw the skill in the offense. You know, but that player type is risky. Like he might be Colper Fetti. And maybe we'll see how Perfetti's career grows, but he looks like he's, when he's been healthy, he's been good for Winnipeg.

But there's people who think, and maybe Sonny Milano again, too, you know. So there's risk in the profile. I kind of get away. I would take him higher, but I get why he went to 23. Big picture we touched on it earlier, but there was really a focus, I think, on the premium positions, especially in the first half of that first round. You eventually do get that run on really skilled, talented, offensive wingers at the back half, or the later part of the first half of the first round.

But what do you make of that? Is there something to read into here? Is this anything new? I just kind of thought when I was going through the draft process and I'm reading about the draft and I'm seeing what people think players are going to go. I'm just like, that's not how the NHL looks. You know, small wings without elite skating.

Small D, Sandy Pelica goes 17. Yeah, he was always, I thought the fourth best D in the draft. Small centers, like, you know, Yeager was not going ahead of Daniels saying, like, I thought the league drafted like how the league looks in the first 15 picks. And then you got into like the, you know, the shots, whether it was, you know, guys with, with who lack size or lacks skating or lack skating, you know, I just, I just, I thought, whatever reason I thought there was a disconnect between the public and the teams, there always is. But I thought this year was especially pronounced.

And I thought today you saw, no, this is what the NHL actually looks like. Any other kind of overarching thoughts here as we go into day two or takeaways from day one? What are you looking for tomorrow? No, I mean, I think a lot of the best players really went off the bottom. board. We were looking at my list right now, and I think my highest rate player right now was 29. So if I was an NHL team and I was looking at my list, I'm like furious at the moment. You're trading down. Because I just got killed today. In that scenario, the one guy who I wasn't so high on was the Cowan pick at 28. I like the player. He's a good skater. He competes.

Had a really good playoff point for game. It was a big part of that deep run by London in the OHL playoffs. He looked really good this season, the OHL. I just looked at this guy. I thought he's barely 5-11. I don't think he's a good skater. I don't think it's dynamic feet. I don't think his dynamic skill. I didn't love the fit there at 28. Obviously, Toronto did, so time will tell who was right on that regard. That was the one that surprised me there a little bit. Awesome. I think that's going to do it for us today. We'll be back at this tomorrow, bright and early, and we'll talk to you guys again soon. Thanks for listening.