Before it was even noon in Chicagoland, we basically knew every pick that was going to the Seattle Kraken tonight.
Nice job NHL, your planning hits the nail on the head once again. (sarcasmmmm)
So if you missed it, here is how the day was supposed to go:
And nothing went as planned. With a 10 hour-ish gap between the pick submit time to the live draft, no shit reporters were going figure out who was getting drafted. It’s not on Frank Seravalli or anyone else, it’s on the NHL and their inability to plan anything out correctly.
Frank Seravalli, just doing hid job, tweeted out basically every pick we’ll see tonight in the draft. Seattle should have been able to play this one close to the vest because it really took the wind out of my sails for the draft now. I did pitch the idea on Twitter this morning that, and it’s not likely at all but walk with me here, if Frank was just making shit up on the spot and then the draft would be completely different, that would be the biggest troll job of all time. I don’t think that’s what’s happening here, the NHL just did not think this one through.
As for the picks themselves, some are real head scratchers.
According to this Athletic article that has all the picks and some inside scoop on them, the only players we don’t know are from the Detroit Red Wings, the New York Rangers, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the Tampa Bay Lightning. I have my little notes here so please enjoy who I thought each of those teams would lose. Let me also preface with I went with the logic of “don’t write any UFA/RFAs because they’ll probably just find a way to sign them, not waste a pick on them”. That logic is out the window so here is who I have anyway:
Detroit:
- Troy Stecher, RD, $1.7M
- Bobby Ryan, RW, $1M
Rangers:
- Colin Blackwell, C, $725,000
- Keith Kinkaid, G $825,000
Pittsburgh:
- Brandon Tanev, RW, $3.5M
- Jason Zucker, LW, $5.5M
Tampa Bay:
- Yanni Gourde, C, $5,166,666
- Patrick Maroon, LW, $900,000
I went with two from each team and I tried to stick close to guys who were worth their cap hit. I’m 6/30 currently so let’s see where that gets by draft time.
With all of the picks that the Kraken actually made, I have to assume there are going to be a fuckton of trades tonight. There were 10 in the Vegas draft so I’ll set my bet at a healthy 12 tonight. There is no way they try to pick this roster for Game 1. If they scooped all these picks and now they’re gonna make some trades and just flip them for better players, I could see that and get on board with it. Maybe pick up some more free agents later because they have so much cap space too. Do a sneaky round about approach instead of head-on “here is who we got”. That’s like the only logic my brain can apply to this news. It’s that or Frank trolled us all real fuckin good. Draft starts in about an hour so let’s see what happens then, kids. Best of luck.
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