28th Overall: Carolina Hurricanes
The Hurricanes had a remarkable season, following in the footsteps of so many teams before them as this year’s Cinderella story. They have a great young core of players and just as many effective veterans, however, their prospect pool is quite depleted as a majority of their players have moved up to the big club. That doesn’t mean they don’t have good prospects still, because they do, but they are in a position where the best player available is what they should be after.
The problem is at this point in the draft there’s no real clear cut BPA unless there is someone in free-fall, in my mock draft there’s no-one of that sort and due to that, it comes down to Patrick Puistola, Lassi Thomson, Nicholas Robertson, and Brett Leason. Ultimately, I went with the player who I feel best fits with the style of play the Hurricanes play and that to me is Puistola, a smaller frame player who doesn’t have the best skating, he has high offensive skill with better passing than shooting ability despite what the stats say. He’s a slippery player and a very creative player who plays hard and makes things happen. The Hurricanes fans will learn to love Puistola pretty quickly I think.
29th Overall: Anaheim Ducks
I’ve been on the Lassi Thomson train for quite some time, going back to my scouting report on him back at the beginning of May. A right shot Defenseman is something the Anaheim Ducks badly need and something specific that Murray mentioned targeting (paraphrasing a bit.) A big right shot defender who can chew minutes, Thomson isn’t the biggest defender but he plays bigger than he is.
He is a great skater and has some very promising offensive ability. He’s likely to follow the path of Jacob Larsson and will take a few years to develop but once he does I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in a top 4 role.