The first round of the 2023 NHL Draft was Wednesday night in Nashville. Dobber Prospects's Peter Harling was down there and seemed a bigger fan of the Arizona picks than some others. Peter is a sharp guy that I like to read so there may be more to what the Coyotes were doing here.

There were rumblings on social media through the day that Anaheim might not take Adam Fantilli second overall and indeed, they went with Leo Carlsson. As I often say, I am not a prospect guru, but this seemed a shocking pick. Not that Carlsson is a bad player and will be a bad NHLer or anything of the sort, it's more the upside that was left on the board. It is one of those picks that has work or it changes the future of the franchise for the worse. Fantilli is on his way to Columbus instead.

Speaking of which, as a Montreal fan, it was surprising to see David Reinbacher go fifth overall with the offensive talent left on the board. The reason it was surprising is because they just finished a season with 279 games played from rookie defencemen. They had four rookie blue liners play at least half the season and there is also Lane Hutson on the way. Not that they’ll all pan out, but in a draft with a lot of high-end forwards, it seemed a great opportunity to double-up on the Juraj Slafkovsky pick and give themselves more chances at having a future superstar forward. Instead, it's stuffing more vegetables in an already-full vegetable crisper. It's a pick that should turn a good player out, but it felt like better players were there.

Philadelphia landed Matvei Michkov seventh overall. I get the concerns about when he'll be available but I feel safe saying at least one player drafted ahead of Michkov will take at least two years to get to the NHL. The concern for Arizona and Montreal would have to be that Michkov would never arrive in the NHL, because the Flyers may have landed the second-best player in a generational draft with the seventh pick. It would be nice to see him with Travis Konecny someday.

Dalibor Dvorsky was one of the players I was keeping an eye on so good on St. Louis for grabbing him 10^th. If Dvorsky lives up to what analysts seem he can be, the future is very bright with him, Robert Thomas, and Jordan Kyrou around for the long-term.

I'm going to be honest: my heart sank a bit when Zach Benson fell to the Sabres at 13^th overall. To reiterate: I am not a prospect person and rely a lot on the observations of others. With that said, I had Benson in my personal top-5 for this draft and seeing him go to a team like Buffalo at 13^th was not thrilling. Considering the absurd wealth of very young talent Buffalo already has, the fact they had one of the best top lines in the league that had none of these prospects on it, added Devon Levi at the end of the year, and now drafted someone that could be a star in five years? It really feels like Buffalo is the next Eastern team that will establish itself as a perennial contender alongside New Jersey. If a few things break right for them, this is a cap-era dynasty in the making.

I liked the Colby Barlowe pick for Winnipeg. A goal scorer that can play along with Cole Perfetti's tremendous skill is a nice start to the next era of Jets hockey. I had a similar feeling for Gabriel Perreault to the New York Rangers at 23^rd. There's a non-zero chance he ends up a better player than any of the current members of their Kid Line.

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One player I was hoping for a breakout from in 2022-23 was Tampa Bay winger Ross Colton. He had some good underlying data, was scoring well, and seemed primed to move up the lineup as the team was losing players due to cap crunches. He never really moved up the lineup, and now he's moved on to Colorado. The trade to the Avalanche was broken down by Alex yesterday.

Even with Gabriel Landeskog injured, there is still Mikko Rantanen, Artturi Lehkonen, and Valeri Nichushkin on the wings. Alongside the addition of Ryan Johansen, the top-6 is filling out and Colton will assuredly not get power-play time without injury. At the same time, he has a legitimate chance to play with skilled offensive players, and that matters a lot. If he can add legitimate points upside to his monster hit totals, there is a Tom Wilson-type multi-cat performance in the waiting here, at least as far as hits go.

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A couple notable signings yesterday.

Timo Meier got his long-term extension with New Jersey and it came in under $9M a season. That seems a tidy bit of work for the calibre of player he is. He will still be worth it in cap leagues.

Yegor Sharangovich got two years and a little over $3.1M a season. That one is going to be tough to stomach in cap leagues without a huge offensive improvement.

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The first round of the NHL Draft saw Connor Bedard going first overall to Chicago. It gives the Blackhawks a much-needed jolt to their rebuild, even if tanking an entire season to do it probably shouldn't be rewarded. The game is the game, though.

As for what we can expect from Bedard, fantasy-wise, that'll take time to figure out. My personal projections won't be ready for a couple months and the 2023-24 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide won't be released for a month (or so) yet. We have to wait and see what happens in free agency and on the trade front.

We can look at other super-elite top picks over the last decade or so to see how they fared, and try to gauge some sort of range for Bedard. Let's go back as far as the first season post-2012 lockout (data from Natural Stat Trick and HockeyDB):

• Nathan MacKinnon (2013-14): 24 G, 39 A, 17 PPP, 241 shots in 82 games. Two most-common line mates at 5-on-5 were Gabriel Landeskog and Ryan O'Reilly.
• Connor McDavid (2015-16): 16 G, 32 A, 14 PPP, 105 shots in 45 games. Two most-common line mates at 5-on-5 were Jordan Eberle and Benoit Pouliot.
• Jack Eichel (2015-16): 24 G, 32 A, 21 PPP, 238 SOG in 81 games. Two most-common line mates at 5-on-5 were Evander Kane and Sam Reinhart.
• Auston Matthews (2016-17): 40 G, 29 A, 21 PPP, 279 SOG in 82 games. Two most-common line mates at 5-on-5 were Zach Hyman and William Nylander.

Since the Matthews draft, there are first overall picks like Nico Hischier, Jack Hughes, Rasmus Dahlin, and Alexis Lafrenière that have all contributed, to some degree, but they did not have the hype that Bedard and the others had. Perhaps Hughes or Dahlin could be included but their hype still feels like it was a step below that of Bedard's.

The four players named combined for 104 goals and 132 assists in 290 games, or 29 goals and 37 assists every 82 games. Including peripherals, the 82-game paces for the four players named is 29 G, 37 A, 21 PPPs, and 244 shots. Depending on other peripherals, if a forward had put up that stat line in the 2022-23 season, they could easily finish somewhere between 60^th and 100^th overall in the final Yahoo! fantasy rankings.

However, we have to acknowledge a couple things. First, the scoring environment in the NHL is not what it was 6-10 years ago. According to Hockey Reference, there were 0.16 more power-play goals per game in 2022-23 than there were in 2016-17. That is an extra 197 power play goals across the league, even when factoring in Vegas and Seattle being added to the NHL. In theory, it should mean more offence for Bedard.

The second part to that, though, is the team around him. I made a point to note the forwards that each of those hyped rookies played with and outside of Benoit Pouliot, there are a lot of good scoring wingers listed. There is a big difference between having Nylander/Hyman as your wingers, even a 20-year-old Nylander, and having, say, Andrea Athanasiou and Lukas Reichel, or Philipp Kurashev and Tyler Johnson, or whatever it ends up being. The recent addition of Taylor Hall is certainly going to help in this regard, and perhaps they, along with Reichel or Athanasiou, can help Bedard's production along in his first year or two.

Again, we'll have to wait until we have a better idea of what the roster looks like a month or two from now. There is every reason to be over-the-moon excited about Bedard's long-term prospects, I'm just a bit wary about his team for 2023-24 until we see more help added.

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To dig in a bit more on Hall, let's review his recent performances.

Hall's last three seasons produced 46 goals, 84 assists, and 503 shots in 195 games. Every 82 games, that works out to 19 goals, 35 assists, and 212 shots. Not that it would be a bad performance for most players, but for a guy that had 183 points in 181 games from 2011-2014, and then a 93-point MVP season in 2017-18, it is a drop. He is getting up there in age but doesn't turn 32 years old until November. (Stuff like that always feels weird to type.)

So, what happened?

First, we have to remember his brief Buffalo stint. There, he posted just 19 points in 37 games. In fact, if we look at just his 158 regular season Boston games, he posted 2.2 points per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. It was higher than his mark in New Jersey (2.07) and would be a mark similar to high-end producers like Sebastian Aho (2.22), Kyle Connor (2.18), and Mika Zibanejad (2.17). A bigger problem is a lack of power play production in Boston, posting just 25 PPPs in 158 Bruins games. To put that into perspective, he had 37 PPPs in his 76-game MVP season alone.

In Hall's Boston career, he spent 255 minutes on the power play alongside David Pastrnak. In that time, Boston scored more per 60 minutes (9.15) than in the PP time Pastrnak spent away from Hall (9.0 goals/60 in 480-plus minutes). That isn't a lot of time skating with Pasta, either – Boston had 438-plus minutes on the power play in 2022-23 alone. Hall wasn't a fixture of the top PP unit over the years; he was rotated in along with names like Jake DeBrusk, David Krejci, Tyler Bertuzzi, Nick Foligno, Charlie Coyle, and Nick Ritchie, to some degree. A full season of Hall alongside Pastrnak and Patrice Bergeron would have likely produced something close to a 20 PPP season. That is a lot different than 25 every 158 games, or roughly 13 PPPs a season.

Now that we know how he produced at even strength and on the power play, we can work out what the ice-time drop meant for him. Back in New Jersey, he was routinely skating 19 minutes a night as a feature player. In Boston, he was skating 16 minutes a night as a support player. Comparing his even-strength ice time rates between New Jersey and Boston, he lost over 204 minutes every 82 games. That number of minutes at 2.2 points per 60 means about 7.5 points lost. If a feature role at even strength would have meant at least 7-8 more points added, and a feature role on the PP about the same, that means his drop in role alone cost him in the neighbourhood of 15 points every 82 games.

It is what gives me a bit of hope for his fantasy value in Chicago. Again, we'll have to see what kind of free-agent or trade shopping they do, but there's a very real chance Hall spends a lot of offensive minutes this coming season alongside Bedard. On top of that, Hall is likely to be a feature winger again, like he was in New Jersey. He is 32 years old, and the discussion about age-related decline is a necessary component of this, but there are reasons to be optimistic for Hall just because of the ice-time jump alone.   

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There were a lot of trades the day before the Draft and I wrote about them:

• Dubois to Los Angeles
• Hayes to St. Louis
• Newhook to Montreal
• Toffoli to New Jersey  

As a reminder, we will have the free agency breakdowns this Saturday, on Canada Day, here at Dobber. Be sure to check in between barbecues and beers to see what's going on.