The Year of Dahlin or "Why Bother Have Mock Drafts?"

This year's NHL entry draft was nuts!  Okay, the 1st round was crazy and that bled down the list and only time will tell how well each team really did.

There's no question that this year's draft was Rasmus Dahlin's, taken 1st overall by the Buffalo Sabres, and there was no doubt that he was this year's premier player.  Andrei Svechnikov was among the next three players, in terms of the rankings for the better part of the season, but it quickly became no secret that the Hurricanes were going to go after him.  Then... it gets interesting.

The Montreal Canadiens, after trading away Alex Galchenyuk, summed up their opening round with a new centre, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, who jumped up the rankings among most of the lists and quickly.

Brady Tkachuk, another top four player, goes 4th to Ottawa, Barrett Hayton jumps up some spots to 5th for Arizona, leaving Filip Zadina, my 2nd pick in my mock draft, dropped to 6th for Detroit, which could be a huge win.  After Zadina finally fell off the board, the picks were all over the place and lists were scrapped, binned and tossed, as teams were finally getting looks at players that they probably didn't see them picking up at the start of the day.

With all of that being said, these drafts are not necessarily giving us hockey poolies a whole lot.  Nico Hischier, the 1st overall pick last year, was only one of three players taken in last years draft to play more than 10 games, Nolan Patrick, the 2nd overall pick, was another and the other?  5th round draft pick, defenseman Sebastian Aho for the New York Islanders.

For us guys who get together and pick players for a season's long journey for money, rookies are getting harder and harder to select.  You really have to be on top of your game, when it comes to team's prospects and who is going to make the jump when.  This year's draft might be another one of those years, where we're not going to see a whole lot of jumps, so we'll have to go back a year or two to get those guys... especially, if there's a rookie pool in the mini games.