Tonight is the night that plenty of hockey fans, analysts, and media members wait for every year: the Entry Draft. For analysts like those over at Dobber Prospects, this is the culmination of a year (more precisely, a few years) of scouting this crop of players. This particular group of players, as well as the one before it, has been tough because of the many COVID pauses/breaks that various leagues have had, which also put a strain on in-person viewings and interviews. All the same, it's a big day in the hockey world and the excitement is rampant.

Remember to grab your copy of the 2022 Dobber Fantasy Hockey Prospects Report, too. It has hundreds of profiles of players both already drafted and on their way, breaking them down team by team. The Dobber group discusses upside, NHL-readiness, and a whole host of prospect-related issues.

I would also be remiss not to mention the Dobber Prospect's team final rankings for this draft. We have a great group of scouts/analysts all over the hockey world that cover a variety of leagues and this is a good place to get their thoughts on their top-100 players. I very much recommend seeing what they have to say, outside of the profiles written in the Prospects Report.

*

In my Ramblings on Tuesday, I talked about a few players of note/interest to me, in particular, with this upcoming draft. In that Ramblings, Byron Bader's Hockey Prospecting site was brought up, which is one of the hockey stats-ish sites where I subscribe. I described some of the issues that I had with Juraj Slafkovsky, as a Habs fan and seeing some scuttle about him possibly going first overall. Namely, my concern that his dominance with his size won't mean near as much as a 17- or 18-year-old compared to five years down the road. My basic point is that teams shouldn't draft Slafkovsky hoping that he'll be a roster player immediately, bur rather that he'll end up a superstar by the age of 23. I have my doubts that all the drooling over his size and skill is about translating that to superstar status years from now.

Mr. Bader tweeted about his prospect model on Tuesday and…

Slafkovsky has emerged as a true possibility at #1. If it happens, he would have the lowest star probability of any F taken 1st overall from 1990 to 2022 (as far back as the model goes). Might work out but the risk here is enormous.

— Byron Bader (@ByronMBader) July 5, 2022

Despite this being obscenely repetitive and very basic in the Year Of Our Lord 2022, I still feel the need to say: no model is perfect. Not in sports, not anywhere. Models are built by humans and humans make mistakes. All we can do is try to make the best educated guess we can at predicting the future by using history as a guide. Exceptions happen and that's what makes the NHL Draft, or any sports draft, difficult at the best of times.

With all that said, here are the comparisons for Slafkovsky and Shane Wright between their Draft-1 year and their draft year:

My belief is that Wright is the guy to take first overall, even without looking at models that help inform our decisions. Whenever it's close, my thought is to take the centre. This just reinforces my thought process.

It is easier to sit here and write words about this than it is to make the actual decision as a front office team. Teams have to take the guy they think will help their team the most and fans just have to live with it. I believe there is a clear number-1 in this draft, but that's why we wait for the teams to make the choice. It's what makes the Draft fun to watch, beyond all the rumours of trades. So, enjoy it, if you can?

*

Speaking of trades – and I don't like to fill my Ramblings with trade/signing rumours because a lot of it is just agents looking for more leverage – we do have to discuss Jesse Puljujärvi. By all accounts, he's played his last game for the Oilers and will have a new NHL team come October.

A month ago, these Ramblings covered a handful of Oilers players after they were eliminated, the 24-year-old Swede included. The player he was compared to in those Ramblings, and one he's been compared to often because of how this season/playoff went, was Valeri Nichushkin. Both are great two-way players who struggled to score early in their careers. Nichushkin has found his scoring touch in Colorado and is now looking ahead to a UFA contract worth tens of millions. His Swedish counterpart is staring down the barrel of being moved away from Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

Just as an aside here, let's say Pulju never finds his true scoring touch. Let's say he ends up an 8-9% true-talent shooter. That means reaching 20 goals in a season will be tough to pull off. What if he ends up like Artturi Lehkonen through his first several seasons in the league? In the real world (not fantasy), being a 12-15-goal elite defensive winger has a lot of value. That is worth a few million per season, at least. There seems to be a problem of expectations and that because of where he was drafted, and because of who he was sometimes playing with, he needed to score 30 goals a season or he's useless. That's nowhere close to true, and the Oilers may regret what they seem hell-bent on doing.

There are a number of teams that have been rumoured to be interested in trading for him, but the one that makes a lot of sense to me is New Jersey. They desperately need top-6 wingers and they can trade for Puljujärvi to add one for a relatively low cost. New Jersey has a fair amount of pure offensive skill as it is so even if Pulju doesn't reach another production level, they don't really need him to. What he does digging pucks, denying the opposing offence, and creating havoc around the crease is more than enough.

I also saw Detroit thrown out as a potential landing spot in a few spots. Given where they are in their rebuild, that also makes a lot of sense. They have loads of cap space and will for the foreseeable future, even figuring in high-dollar extensions for guys like Dylan Larkin and Tyler Bertuzzi.

Whatever ends up happening here, it feels hard to believe Edmonton will recoup assets commensurate with the player Puljujärvi is already, let alone what he could be if he shoots 12% instead of 8%. Good luck, Oilers fans.

*

Looking ahead to free agency, one player that surely seems like he'll be on the move is Ryan Strome. Though he's never had a 60-point season, that can be a bit misleading because of how the last few seasons have gone in the NHL. He has 162 points in his last 200 games, which works out to about 66-67 points every 82 games. That would probably be close to 70 points/82 games had his PP production been better in 2021-22 – he had 14 PPPs in 74 games compared to 18 in just 56 games during the COVID 2021 season. He averaged 20 PPPs/82 games over the last three seasons with the Rangers.

This is what makes me kind of wary about his prospects going somewhere else. He may end up with a pretty good set of wingers on either side but that doesn't guarantee a 60-point-ish season for him. Power-play production has been vital to supporting his fantasy value, and the Rangers' top-5 power play over the last three years is a big reason for his fantasy success.

The obvious problem is that he's unlikely to go to a team that will have a top-5 power play. He won't be signing in places like Edmonton, Toronto, Florida, Colorado, or Carolina. All those teams either have limited cap space or have their own players to sign, and are too smart to eschew them for a 29-year-old non-elite centre. This is a guy who ends up somewhere like Arizona, Chicago, or Anaheim. Despite a team like Anaheim having some good pieces for the future, they won't be elite on the PP just yet, and that's how Strome will suffer the most. It'll be going from, say, 20 PPPs/82 games to 12, even if his 5-on-5 play holds steady.

And it's a wonder if that 5-on-5 production will be anything really useful. There are some things he does very well – he's a good playmaker and he's a better backchecker than he gets credit for. But, from Corey Sznajder's game-tracking Patreon, he falters in a lot of transition areas and is not a great shooter (this is from 2021-22):

A guy playing most of his 5-on-5 time with Artemi Panarin and also skating on one of the best PP units in the league has averaged 66 points/82 games over the last three years. He turns 30 years old a year from now. He is unlikely to go to a team that has anywhere near the same level of PP production, so without a bigger role, there are a lot of concerns here.

Strome can be a useful fantasy option but the lack of hits, middling shot rates, and likely decline in PP production are a problem. I guess we'll have to see where he ends up first, but it's not looking great for him.

*

I was going through Dobber's top-120 keeper league defencemen post from yesterday and one thing did catch my eye: the rise in Drew Doughty's ranking. He is now inside the top-25, in the same range as names like Torey Krug and John Klingberg. The obvious reason for this is the addition of Kevin Fiala. He is a bona fide top-line scoring winger, something Los Angeles was hoping to get from Viktor Arvidsson, and are still hoping Adrian Kempe is. Adding a guy of that magnitude is going to be a big boost for Doughty, obviously.

One concern I have is Fiala's power-play contributions, or lack thereof. Over the last two seasons, per Natural Stat Trick, Minnesota scored a whopping 46% more often at 5-on-4 with Kirill Kaprizov on the ice without Fiala than with him. It wasn't just pure shooting luck, either, as they generated roughly 31% more high-danger shot attempts when Kaprizov was on the ice without Fiala. In virtually every regard, the top Minnesota power play was better off without Los Angeles's new winger.

Was it a matter of his role? Was it deferring to others? Or does he have the Phillip Danault problem where his elite 5-on-5 play just doesn't transition nearly as well to 5-on-4? We'll find out next season, but I'm a bit wary of just declaring Los Angeles as having vastly improved their power play just because Fiala has been added. Sure, the 5-on-5 production should improve a lot with him around, but it's not exactly the same skill set with the man advantage. Just something to chew on.