Because of the advantage of 20/20 hindsight—which counts in the NHL Draft because there are usually a few significant outliers—draft retrospectives are always fascinating. It is just the way the beast is. Drafting teenagers before they reach adulthood might lead to inconsistent and surprising outcomes because there is still a lot of physical, emotional, and psychological development that needs to happen.
It felt good to win this week’s NHL Draft Lottery with the San Jose Sharks. They have never held the first pick, and Macklin Celebrini, the youngster they will choose, is well-known and has a background in the area because the Jr. Sharks program helped him develop. They will eventually need to make a choice, perhaps not too long after the pick is made official. Either let Celebrini finish out his college career so he may compete against his peers and be ready for the fast-paced NHL play 12 months later, or sign him as a professional player right immediately because he already possesses the necessary talents to play in the NHL. Bringing Celebrini into the group is a cause for celebration in San Jose.
However, the bigger picture should be the main consideration here, as a player rarely suffers from an additional year of development.
Recall Quinn Hughes and how the Vancouver Canucks decided it was the proper decision to wait a year to turn him pro after talking with his adviser. Jack, Quinn’s brother and the 2019 No. 1 pick, did not accomplish that. He immediately turned pro and began playing with the New Jersey Devils. His debut season was poor, finishing 14th on the club in scoring with just 21 points in 61 games. While Jack continued to show hints of his potential throughout his debut campaign, he also appeared overburdened at times.
Would it have harmed any of them to wait a year to play in the NHL, even during this season when the first three players selected from the 2023 draft board—Connor Bedard of the Chicago Blackhawks, Leo Carlsson of the Anaheim Ducks, and Adam Fantilli of the Columbus Blue Jackets—to play in the league?
Perhaps for Bedard, as he most likely would not have benefited from another year of dominating junior. To help with the transition, the Ducks even had a plan in place to bring Carlsson gradually into the starting lineup. It was an amazing idea, in my opinion, and it displayed some creative thinking. Not everybody else did. It may be argued that this year’s injuries to all three of the young players were just coincidences or unfortunate circumstances. Within the NHL, things move quickly. The two largest adjustments a young player must make are to his or her pace of play and how quickly opponents close in on you when you have the puck. Making decisions and being able to defend oneself usually become a little simpler as one gets older.
Due to the fact that they acquired a second first-round pick, No. 14, in the Erik Karlsson trade with the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Sharks will have a unique opportunity in 2024. In their prospect pipeline, the Sharks most likely need a defenseman more than a forward. However, what if they were able to select Cole Eiserman at number 14, or even higher in the selection order? Eiserman and Celebrini played together for two years at Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school; Eiserman is going to Boston University the next year. The man the Sharks selected number four in 2023, Will Smith, completed his education and had an incredible season for Boston College, scoring 71 points in 41 games. What kind of nucleus that might be.
There is no need to rush if Celebrini is going to be the focal point of the Sharks of the future, much like Patrick Marleau was for the squad that was assembled around him after he was selected with the second overall choice in 1997. Creating a cautious forward plan is the most prudent course of action. The Sharks’ long-term strategy should be their top priority at this point in their rebuild. Less so are marketing-related issues.
The Wyatt Johnston chronicles
Every draft lottery week, I find myself thinking a lot about player growth and identification. Both are important, yet it is difficult to make any progress with the development if the identification is done incorrectly.
The Dallas Stars are arguably the best team in the world at identification right now. They ought to be the role model for everyone, based on the core group of young talent they have recruited.
Their 2017 draft class was a huge success, as evidenced by the three cornerstones they acquired in the same year: Jason Robertson, Jake Oettinger, and Miro Heiskanen.
However, what about in 2021? One more coup. Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the 2021 draft was completed remotely and one month later than usual, which made it particularly convoluted and messy.
Many of the players chosen in 2021 had not adhered to the conventional development arc, which is essentially the condensed account of how Wyatt Johnston ended up playing for the Stars at the age of 23. The Stars traded with the Detroit Red Wings to move back eight spots in the 2021 draft, from their original position of 15th pick. The Red Wings traded the Stars the 23rd, 48th, and 138th picks in order to do that.
Sebastian Cossa, who Detroit believes will be its goaltender of the future, was selected at the age of 15. Dallas then took Johnston at 23, as mentioned. Following that, the Stars selected Logan Stankoven and Artem Grushnikov with consecutive picks at 47 and 48.
Right now, Stankoven is competing in their top 12. In order to acquire Chris Tanev as a rental, they dealt Grushnikov to the Calgary Flames along with a 2024 second-round pick.
Due to the epidemic, Johnston did not play for the Windsor Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey League in 2020–21, hence he was somewhat unknown during his draft year. Based on his 30 points in 52 games played for Windsor as a 16-year-old and his brief participation in the Under-18 IIHF Men’s World Championship, which took place in the Stars’ backyard in Frisco and Plano, Texas, that summer, the Stars selected him in the first round of the draft. Johnston started out as a bottom-six forward on an OHL juggernaut in his rookie season and pushed his way up the lineup. Here, Scott Wheeler of The Athletic did a great job of describing that period of Johnston’s life.
You should read it, in my opinion. Although Johnston does not turn 21 until this coming Tuesday, the Stars had to take a bit of a risk when they selected him in the first round since not much of the guy you see today—a player tied for the team lead in playoff scoring—was known at the time.
The sequence of events that allowed the Stars to select both Johnston and Stankoven in the same draft was attributed to the efforts of Joe McDonnell, the team’s head of amateur scouting, and his staff, according to general manager Jim Nill, who has been in charge since April 2013.
“We keep an eye on underages because that’s what you do, and we liked him (Johnston) as an underage,” explained Nill. “Then Covid hits. No hockey going on. All of a sudden, the under-18s are allowed to happen, and it happened down here. So, we got a chance to watch him play. Didn’t play a lot. Played kind of a third-line role for Team Canada because they had a pretty good team. You’re talking Bedard, (Mason) McTavish, all these guys. But he did a good job for them.
“With the rest of his scouting staff, Joe just had a gut feeling for the kid. Did a lot of homework on him. Talked to a lot of people. Part of scouting is that gut feeling – and Joe had it.”
The Stars could have simply selected Johnston at 15. But part of building an organization is trying to maximize assets. Nill said the Stars felt confident they could trade back to 23 and still land Johnston because at least two of the players chosen between 16 and 22 would be goaltenders – Detroit for sure with Cossa, and then the Minnesota Wild traded up to draft Jesper Wallstedt at 20.
Brennan Othmann (Rangers at 16), Zach Bolduc (Blues at 17), Chaz Lucius (Jets at 18), Fedor Svechkov (Predators at 19), Wallstedt, Fabian Lysell (Boston at 21), and Xavier Bourgault (Edmonton at 22) were the other players selected ahead of Johnston.
The majority of those players will probably make it to the NHL in the end, but Bolduc is the only one who has played more than a cameo thus far with 25 games. Johnston, meanwhile, appears to be headed for fame.
Although Nill expressed confidence that Johnston will be available at 23, he also noted that there is always a chance of ambiguity since you never know how a potential may be assessed internally by another organization. Every draft has some unusual out-of-left-field selections.
“At 15, there were still some pretty good players there,” said Nill. “Once again, I go back to Joe. I said, ‘Joe, I’ve got a call, we can move down.’ He said, ‘How far?’ We talked about going down to 23, and Joe said, ‘I think we can still get him there.’ So, we decided, ‘Let’s pick up that extra second; let’s pick up the extra fifth.’
“Now, you never know. But we’d done our homework, and because of the history of that year, we were pretty confident we were going to get him. It was fortunate it worked out for us.”
By acquiring an additional second-round pick, the Stars were able to select Stankoven and Grushnikov consecutively in the draft.
How did the draft go for that section?
“We were high on both guys,” answered Nill. “We really liked Logan. We had some insight on him because our owner, Mr. (Tom) Gagliardi, owns the Kamloops Blazers (where Stankoven played his junior hockey). I actually tried to move up, after the first round, to get higher in the second round to get him. I wasn’t able to do a trade, but fortunately, he dropped to us. We had the two picks. We got the guy we wanted in Logan and we were looking for a defenseman, and Grushnikov was the next guy on our list. So it ended up working out well for us.”
At the deadline, Nill sent Grushnikov’s rights to Calgary in exchange for Tanev’s 2024 second-round pick while he was playing for the AHL Texas Stars in his rookie season. Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic wrote a detailed account of his impact on the Stars here.
Tanev, Heiskanen, Thomas Harley, and Esa Lindell, his regular partner, are the four Stars defensemen who ice for an average of more than 23 minutes a night.
While Grushnikov is still growing as a stay-at-home defenseman, he played in 20 regular season games with the Wranglers, Calgary’s AHL affiliate. The Flames made several offers to Tanev, including one that included a first-round draft pick; nevertheless, primarily because they were impressed with Grushnikov, they decided to accept the Dallas package.
Nill is a fan as well: “He is truly a great story too, another young kid who was prevented from playing hockey in Russia because to Covid.” Thus, he traveled to Belarus and engaged in some gaming. Fortunately, we managed to get some tape on him. Because of a sickness or whatever, he ended up playing a game there under someone else’s name instead of his own. We thus have some excellent video of him. When he was a minor the previous year, we liked him. We had heard that he is a well-to-do character child. We decided that this was a nice guy to take a chance on.
“You mentioned the (Tanev) trade. As we were going through the trade calls, his name kept getting pushed. That’s the guy Calgary had to have. I didn’t want to give him up. It’s what I told Calgary. I think Grushnikov could be a Chris Tanev in five, six, seven years – that’s what he could turn into, that type of character player. Calgary did a good job, scouting the right guy. To get something, I had to give up something. Didn’t want to, but that’s just part of the business.”
Tanev possesses a characteristic that the Stars have found useful during these playoffs. Tanev’s strengths, which include playing excellent defense, blocking shots, and having sound positioning, should be easy for other players to emulate. In actuality, they are challenging, and the world’s Chris Tanevs are an uncommon but valuable species. Tanev and Lindell were out there in the closing moments on Thursday night as the Stars attempted to retain the lead against a Colorado team that was on the rise. Lindell eventually scored the empty-netter that sealed the victory and tied the series.
Tanev, Nill said, has “more puck skills than people realize. He makes good decisions with the puck under pressure. That’s not easy to do. He’ll take a hit to make the right play. He’s got good composure under pressure with the puck. That’s what’s really impressed me. And his character is off the charts. He has high-end character. He came into our room and fit in with our guys right away. He fit like a glove.”
Johnston will be allowed to legally sip champagne from the Stanley Cup if the Stars chance to win the championship this year, in Dallas, at home, when he turns 21 on Tuesday. Something that he could not have accomplished today.
And finally
The National Hockey League Players’ Association and members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association vote on the Hart Memorial Trophy, the official NHL hardware, and a few national broadcasters select the Ted Lindsay Award, which is the de facto MVP of the league. The Lindsay is a peer award, and players who win it frequently mention this in their speech. This is because the players you fight against on the ice every night cast their votes for the Lindsay, making it just as important as any other award. And who better to evaluate your influence than them?
The finalists for both prizes have been the same for several years. Every now and again there is a small deviance, like what happened this year. The writers selected Nathan MacKinnon of Colorado, Nikita Kucherov of Tampa Bay, and Connor McDavid of Edmonton for the Hart. MacKinnon, Kucherov, and Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs were nominated by the players.
It was intriguing that the players selected Matthews over McDavid.
McDavid previously won the Lindsay in 2017, 2018, 2021, and 2023. His message on individual trophies has mostly remained the same in recent years: while they are good, winning the Stanley Cup is what matters most to him at this point in his career. There is motivation enough in the fact that he has not done it yet. However, the fact that McDavid is not a finalist for the prize that most likely means the most to him just serves to fan the flames. McDavid was held scoreless in the Oilers’ series opener against the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night. It will be intriguing to watch his response in Game 2. A big game seems to be approaching.
(Photo of Macklin Celebrini at the NHL Draft Lottery: Mike Stobe / NHLI via Getty Images)
