2018 NHL Mock Draft: Picks 1-31 (March)

2018 NHL Draft

Mock Draft 2.0: Round 1 (Picks 1-31)

Steve Kournianos  |  3/11/2018 |  Nashville  |  [hupso]

NASHVILLE (The Draft Analyst) — We finally are at the point of the NHL season where we can separate the contenders from the pretenders, especially after several teams waved the proverbial white flag at the trade deadline by selling off veterans for future draft picks. While some may say the only race that matters is that for the Stanley Cup, you can’t help but notice the nudging and bumping being done by bottom dwellers as they (not admittedly) jockey for the chance at the highest draft pick.

Make no mistake — this draft deservedly is known as the Rasmus Dahlin Draft. A legitimate question to ask, however, is for how long? In other words, will the NHL careers of some of his notable draft peers make the eventual order of selection nothing more than a formality? History tells us that is very much a possibility, and you don’t have to go too far back to find examples. Auston Matthews, who went first overall in 2016, was the consensus top pick since his days as an early teens. Yet two years later, it’s the play of the player taken No. 2 — Winnipeg’s Patrik Laine — who leads the draft class in goal and points. In 2004, there was no debate whether or not Alex Ovechkin would be the first pick in the draft. But it didn’t take long for Evgeny Malkin, the player drafted 6ight after Ovechkin, to shift the discussion from where they were picked to which player will be first to make the Hall of Fame.

The point is simple — Dahlin has been anointed the best prospect for the draft and deservedly so. But that doesn’t mean he’ll end up with the better NHL career or enjoy greater team success than the players picked immediately after him. My guess is the “Rasmus Dahlin Draft” will be renamed a “Great NHL Draft” in just a few short seasons, especially if/when RW Andrei Svechnikov (Ranked No. 1) and LW Filip Zadina (Ranked No. 3) are each hitting the 50 to 60-point mark before they reach 20.

—The U18 5 Nations Tournament: This year’s winter event in Plymouth was almost like a mini-WJC in that it allowed scouts, front office types and analysts to watch most of the elite draft eligibles compete against one another. You’ll hear varying opinions on just how well certain notable prospects performed, but there’s a good bet that tournament was enough to solidify a handful of prospects on the upper end of several NHL draft boards, beginning with Svechnikov. My biggest takeaway from the tournament was that RHD Adam Boqvist (Ranked No. 6) is a lot better defensively than I previously gave him credit for — something I confirmed during film sessions of some of his recent J20 games with Brynas.

—Tanking and the Trade Deadline: Take a gander at the bottom portion of the NHL standings. Teams that sold off at the deadline are leaking losses all over the place, namely the Red Wings and the Canucks. Nobody likes using the term “tank”  because it’s so hard to do without getting caught. But the two aforementioned teams are in desperate need of a franchise player, and both likely think that player in Dahlin. If neither team gets the first pick, they’ll likely look towards a playmaking defenseman like Boqvist, LHD Ty Smith (Ranked No. 5) or LHD Quinn Hughes (Ranked No. 10),  or “settle” for a skilled winger like Svechnikov, Zadina, or rugged LW Brady Tkachuk (Ranked No. 8). There is no better time for fans of losing teams than after a post-deadline sell-off to embrace the idea of a gaining higher pick by all means necessary. When it comes to the chance to draft a player like Svechnikov or Dahlin, losing is actually winning, and winning is way worse than losing.

–Goals matter. So does draft position: While I won’t go as far as to say Dahlin will burst onto the NHL scene the way Connor McDavid did in 2015-16, you cannot argue against the pre-draft hype that began surrounding the young Swede early last year. Although I do think snipers like Svechnikov and Zadina eventually will have star NHL careers, thus putting the onus on Dahlin to live up to the hype by doing what only one of 13 defenseman picked 1st overall has ever done — win a Norris trophy. Goal scoring remains an important facet of the game, and if you want elite snipers that don’t require flashy puck movers to feed them the puck, a good place to start is picking first or second overall.

The latest version of my mock draft is based on the NHL standings from a week ago, so stomping up and down and banging your shoe on a table like Khruschev at the UN because your team had a hot week and is no longer out of the playoff picture gets you nowhere. I’ve said it a zillion times — mock drafts are for fun. They are intended to give fans a general idea on where prospects could be grouped. On the other hand, my rankings attempt to put players in order of NHL upside. Mock drafts are nothing more than a guessing game designed to spark draft-related discussion.

I’m not an expert. Neither are you.