Happy NHL Draft day to all who are celebrating!
Round one gets underway tonight with coverage beginning on ESPN around 7:00 PM ET. Tomorrow will be rounds two through seven starting at noon on NHL Network, but will also be streamed on ESPN+. We’ll have the pick later tonight when it comes through, followed by some discussion amongst our wonderful community here. Tomorrow will be fluid, but I’ll do my best to have all the picks and some analysis available for you fine people.
Detroit currently holds pick no. 13. Plenty of mock drafts out there, but I’ll just drop a couple here to get us started:
ESPN: Detroit selects forward Carter Bear
NHL dot com: Kimelman has Detroit selecting Carter Bear as well, while Morreale has Victor Eklund falling to the 13th pick.
I would love either of those players. Feels like both fit a need now and in the future. As always, these are just MOCK picks.. So don’t treat them as ironclad. MLive’s Ansar Khan also has Detroit taking Carter Bear FWIW.
Meanwhile in Red Wings land, Anttii Tuomisto has signed a two-way one-year extension. He’s still waiver exempt, so I would expect he’ll report to Grand Rapids to start the season.
Nick Kypreos reported that Detroit “could” trade Andrew Copp with some salary retention. I don’t put much stock in what Kypreos says personally, but it’s something to monitor.
Back to the Draft, it’s widely believed that players like Jason Robertson could be on the move. I would imagine Detroit is or has inquired on Robertson, but the price tag is going to be rich. Not sure how much Steve Yzerman is willing to give up in this scenario, but I would hope that the 13th pick and maybe next year’s 1st round pick would be in play. Plenty of other players could be on the move. It could also just be a boring 1st round!
Enjoy the day, and stay cool. We’ll be chatting later!
