. . . and the CSS rankings, and a few things jumped out at me.
1. Roman Tesliuk. Ranked as the 26th NA player by CSS, he's not ranked in the top 100 by THN.
2. Al Montoya. He's the top-ranked NA goalie by CSS and is ranked 8th in the entire draft by THN. And I'm thinking . . . "Ryan Miller." Another CCHA goalie who might be overranked. Montoya probably isn't as good a goalie as Miller (certainly not statistically, even at comparable points in their careers), and he's ranked 8th overall? Someone's going to bite, and might get bitten.
3. Lauri Korpikoski. He was the 156th-ranked European in the CSS mid-terms. Now, he's the 12th-ranked European by CSS and 22nd overall by THN. People get nosebleeds climbing that fast.
4. Boris Valabik. A fair number of Caps fans seem to want this guy. Well then, they should hope the THN rankings are right (20th) by an odd set of circumstances, he might be available.
5. Based on an unscientific weighting of rankings, I had these defensemen, in order:
- Cam Barker
- Ladislav Smid
- Andrej Meszaros
- Boris Valabik
- A.J. Thelen
- Jeff Schultz
- Mike Green
- Johan Fransson
- Kirill Lyamin
- Kyle Wharton
- Wes O'Neill
- Dmitri Vorobyev
- Roman Tesliuk
- Sami Lepisto
- Brett Carson
- Mark Fistric
- Andy Rogers
- Oscar Hedman
- Michael Funk
- Michal Sersen
The first five will almost certainly be off the board when the Caps pick late in the first. Assuming the Caps want: a) defensemen, and b) defensemen with size, then that would seem to reduce the group to: Schultz, Lyamin, Wharton, O'Neill, Vorobyev, Carson, Fistric, Rogers, and Funk. Schultz, Carson, Fistric, Rogers, and Funk are WHL guys. Looking at the CSS and THN rankings, only Schultz, Lyamin, and Wharton can be considered strong possibilities to be first-rounders, and all are would seem ticketed for the lower half of the round.
5. Fransson might be an interesting case to watch. On the one hand, he's the 7th-ranked European by CSS, which suggests going somewhere in the middle of the first round. On the other, he's ranked 37th overall by THN, pushing him down into the top third of the second round.
As Jason LaCanfora points out in his THN draft preview in THN, "the scouting staff had better have its best draft yet because the future of the organization rests on a swift rebuilding process." I would agree, top to bottom. Ovechkin is the no-brainer pick at the top. But there are some things to watch. Will the Caps package either or both of their last first-rounders to move up? And (this might be more important and harder to gauge), the club has to get more value in the mid-to-late rounds than the've had thus far in teh McPhee era (a value that approaches zero).
Here's my shocker Caps move . . . Sutherby will not be a Cap when the sun goes down on June 26th.
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Play hard, shake hands, drink beer.
"LA needs two hockey teams like Switzerland needs two navies" -- Norman Chad (from "My 10-Point Plan to Save Gary Bettman from Himself")
"Playoff hockey is the best two months in team sports . . . period."
-- Mitch Albom
