Well last weekend was the NHL draft. This one of a bunch of favorite times of the year for a puck-head like myself. I love the trade deadline, day 1 of free agency, Opening day, and of course the DRAFT. Now I don’t claim to be an expert in the way of junior hockey and college hockey but I do my research around draft time and I go into it hoping for a ton of trades on draft day… well basically b/c who doesn’t love trades???

A major reason I love the draft is b/c I am a Hurricanes season ticket holder for about 10 years, and growing up on Long Island, a life-long die hard Isles fan. What does that mean? It generally means that I get to see one or both of my teams pick real high in the draft b/c in the last 20 years they both basically have either made big runs in the playoffs, or both really sucked.

This weekend was no exception as the Canes picked 7th and the Isles picked 5th.   I will start with the Isles since they picked earlier in the 1st. I went into the draft thinking the Isles would take a big D man b/c after the Taylor/Tyler boys went the next batch of studs were all D men. They were sitting pretty all set to take Cam Fowler at 5 when they came up there with “E” from Entourage (Kevin Connolly) in Charles Wang’s ENTOURAGE! (Wow see where I went with that one?).  I am going to get sidetracked here for a second. I love the fact that Connolly was up on stage. This is the type of stuff the NHL needs. Some celeb faces mixing it up. And Entourage is bar none easily one of my top 5 shows on TV right now. E always has Isles stuff on his desk, his screen saver is the Isles symbol and he wears Isles gear out alot when I see my wife bringing up the people web site and he’s on it. So Kudos Wang great to get something good started. (Now get the damn light house project done will  you!!!).

Ok I guess back to the pick. Well instead of Fowler the Isles took a forward. They went with WHL RW Nino Neiderreiter. I was surprised, happy and sad all at the same time. Surprised b/c Fowler was the clear choice here, happy b/c I loved Nino coming into the draft for one of my 2 teams, and upset b/c I wanted the Canes to take him at 7. But hey great pick Isles and I hope he pans out and not fizzles out like most of the Euros the Isles tend to pick then usually trade. The Isles also made a trade up to get the last pick in the 1st round and picked up big 6’3 center Brock Nelson. Awesome job I love this kid’s size and can’t wait to see him inaction as well. Good draft for the Isles and I love their youth movement and in the next year or two they should (hopefully) show what all this rebuilding is for. After all even Crosby’s Pens were not built in one draft.

The Canes at 7 also picked a forward in top goal scorer Jeff Skinner. Yes I said TOP goal scorer. While he might not have racked up as many points as Taylor/Tyler he was the best goal scorer in the draft ranks. This was a great pick. Rutherford hopefully had his crap together with this pick and with any luck in 1-2 more seasons he can join the team and contribute. However, as usual I will point out what I don’t like about this pick. Where he went. This was, to me, easily a place where the Canes could have moved down a few spots and picked up either a player or a pick or two and still landed Skinner fairly easy. All of the scouts had him in the teens range for ranking so likely he wasn’t on any real radar to go that high. However, if you like a guy and want him, why take the risk of losing him so this complaint is minor really. 

They then selected 5 D men with their next 5 of 6 picks. I won’t go into them individually much but I think Faulk and Alt are STUDS and also can’t wait to see them in a Canes jersey. What I think Rutherford was thinking with 5 D men is, we need D men so if I pick 5 of them surely we can get 2 NHL D men out of them down the road eh? 

I really expected the Canes to either move up in the 1st or trade for another 1st round pick. They had 11 picks in the draft and ended up doing alot with them but I kinda expected them to get another 1st rounder. Well technically they did get more 1st rounders they just had to trade some picks for former 1st rounders. Picking up C Riley Nash and Bobby Sanguinetti. They also picked up AHL 30 goal scorer  Jon Matsumoto from the Flyers. I don’t mind these trades b/c they are players who have fallen out of favor with their drafted teams but still all have some tallent and when Ron Francis is really high on Nash well I will give old Ronnie the benefit of the doubt here. I look for Nash to fight for the 4th center position this year but likely to be in the minors.  Sanguinetti will likely play this year for the Canes. He saw a little action on the Rangers last year but with training camp this year I think that might be enough to have him in a 4-6th D man on the Canes. Matsomoto is the typical Canes signing/pick. He’s a guy they will bring up from time to time to fill in and maybe get a spark here and there but I really don’t expect much at all from him. See Keith Aucoin, Mike Ziggomanis, Jerome Samson  , Patrick Dwyer. All are AAA+ guys to me. Guys who are great in the minors but never seen to be good enough to crack the top 6 on any team.

All in all a good weekend and draft for the Isles and Canes and I am happy with it. As usual you NEVER know about these things until they are 2-3 years old so hopefully looking back on it some of these guys pan out.

In a few days I will bitch about the anounced self cap that Rutherford/Karmanos has put on the canes and why I am not so happy about it. Should be a nice bitchy post which should be a good read!

GJ out.

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