Thoughts on The Day After and Sunday Updates

Taking a look at this year's NHL Entry Draft through the rear-view mirror gives you a more even perspective than we had in the days leading up to the draft and in the midst of it.

Other than the massive hype and buildup as to who would be the number one pick, thanks to Garth Snow's ability to keep a secret, the draft was relatively uneventful compared to the ones of the recent past.

There were fewer trades and few unexpected picks through the first round. I think the lack of movement can be attributed to a fairly deep draft and the the extra couple of million dollars that teams got on the cap when the NHLPA agreed to invoke the inflator clause. With the bump in the cap, fewer teams were in a position to dump salary in exchange for a pick.

The Pronger et al to Philly trade was the biggest blockbuster trade with the one between Calgary and Florida a distance second, especially considering that they were only getting signing rights for a few days.

I think that the Predators had an excellent draft top to bottom. If the rule of thumb to be successful is to have two regular NHL players five years from now, the Preds look to be in good shape with their top two picks.

The more I read about Ryan Ellis, the better he looks. If he continues to grow and develop over the next two to three years, the Predators may have the answer to the power play problems that have plagued them since day one of the franchise.

Zach Budish, the second pick, was slated to be a top ten player in the draft prior to a football injury last fall. If he recovers, he could be the steal of the draft for the Predators. All the other picks have glowing attributes that we will have to keep an eye on over the next few years.

On the second day of the draft, the Preds went for size and forwards which made up for the diminutive defenseman taken in the first round.

David Poile said that he was pleased to have nine of his ten picks playing in North America. Four will be playing in college. For the budget conscious Predators, this will give the team plenty of time for the scouts to to watch the players develop and to get the players names on a contract.

Russians were out of vogue in this year's draft with only seven being picked, primarily due to the issues with the KHL. With the KHL starting a 17 year old draft this year, this is probably a trend that will hold for years to come.

With a few days to regroup before the free agent frenzy begins on Wednesday, hopefully the Preds will focus on resigning Steve Sullivan and Joel Ward. For the prices that they will command, I doubt that they will do better on the open market.

As a final word, thanks to the folks at The Daily Herald again for giving the NHL draft complete coverage. In addition to my story today, they had another long AP story and a complete list of every player taken broken down by team. For small town paper in a non-traditional market in the South, that is really impressive.

In Pred Nation....

Predators.com have their second day summary with a bunch of links here and at their Draft Central.

John Glennon at the Tennessean had several good stories and features on the draft. Here's a round-up story and a brief synopsis of each player taken. For those who like pictures here are two links - one two.

Section303.com overcame some serious technical issues to produce this edition of the 303:30. What they came up with was really good including interviews with Dee Karl, Damian Christodero, and Jordan Schroeder.

Dirk takes a look at the Preds draft class at OnTheForecheck.

Paul McCann give his breakdown here.

The University of New Hampshire has a post about the Pred's sevent round pick, Cam Reid.

Around the NHL...

Ryan at the RedLightDistrict has tons of draft coverage including the final grades for each team. He gave the Preds a good grade. Check it out.

The GM always doing the most talking, Brian Burke, says he is pleased with the Leafs draft. Would he say anything else?

Here's a breakdown by the numbers of the draft from NHL.com and a story about high schoolers gaining in popularity. The Preds took two, Zach Budish and Nick Oliver.

For all the picks broken down any way you want to cut it, go here.

Dee Karl has a funny post about John Tavares first opportunity to receive a chorus of boos from Ranger fans tonight on National TV.

Here's a nice story from Ray Ferraro on his son, Landon getting drafted.

More later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass

Friday's Draft Day Updates

This is the day hockey fans all across North America have been waiting for with the first round of the NHL entry draft being held tonight in Montreal. Coverage starts at 6:00 on Versus in the US. Saturdays coverage will be on the NHL Network and streamed online.

Locally, Predator fans will be meeting at three separate locations of O'Charley's for draft Parties that are official Predators functions. The official NHLTweetup will be held at the Franklin location. To respond to the TwtVite go here.

Probably the biggest development this year will be the information generated by Twitter from the floor in Montreal. Jamie Shalley @HTM_NHLHomeIce went as far as to call it the "Twitter Draft" which describes where most Tweetdeck aficionados will get their primary information this year. Television can only focus on a couple of things at once whereas the information on Twitter is only limited by how quickly you can read and absorb different opinions.

I haven't done a draft preview in this space but did one a couple of weeks ago (that is a bit dated) for the View from My Seats who published it today. I also did another version of it for The Daily Herald which came out this morning. I would like to thank the Columbia Daily Herald for giving Hockey the top of the page on draft day over Thursday's NBA draft, Baseball and everything else.

In Pred Nation...

John Glennon of the Tennessean reports that David Poile has spoken with Steve Sullivan's agent and will meet again the first of the week. The are reported to be apart on money and length of contract. I like Forechecker's posting yesterday which lays out the way to fund Sully's return.

John also has a few tidbits in his blog including information on Canada possibly picking a couple of Pred D-men for the 2010 Olympic Team.

Forechecker has is Friday roundup which includes the question Is Sutter the new Radulov? This is actually a link to Jim Diamond's column at the Examiner.

Mark at The View from 111 makes good points about the Pred's past draft performances. It is critical that we do better tonight than we have in some of the past drafts.

David Boclair at the City Paper tries to set realistic expectations for Pred fans for the draft in that whoever the Preds get in the first round will probably not play anytime soon.

Paul McCann talks about Michael Jackson on draft day. I was hoping this would be an MJ free column. Since it came up, my closest encounter with the odd one was when I was working the stage crew for three days at the Victory tour show at Neyland Stadium in August 1984. I can't say that I was ever a fan. Sorry, I have to be honest as is discussed in a link below.

@Sully26 tweets "I can't imagine how nervous those 18 year old boys are feeling in Montreal today. The beginning of all their dreams starts this weekend."

Here is Tom Calahan's video preview of the draft from Preds.com.


Around the NHL...

All Habs has a great response to Pierre McGuire and his apparent dislike for hockey bloggers. Most writers that I read are accountable to their readers and would not intentionally mislead or lie to their readers. As the MSM shrinks, bloggers and podcasters fill the void and provide content not found elsewhere. Anyone who is not accountable to their readers and themselves will not have a readership for very long. Some bloggers (Forechecker for example) provide original content that is not available anywhere else at any price. It's the new media, and those who don't embrace it and/or try to fight it will perish.

Gary Bettman sent an open letter to Coyote fans in conjunction with the Coyote open house Thursday night which appears to have been a huge success wit up to 4000 fans in attendance. Here is a TSN story that is encouraging to the loyal Phoenix fans.

Follow up on Twitter @PredsOnTheGlass for ongoing updates.

More later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass

Additions...

Most updates today will be via Twitter...

John Glennon at Inside Predators takes one last stab at what the Preds will do. It includes a quite from yesterday, ``Based on our list and our confidence level, it looks like we’ll be drafting at Number 11,’’ Preds general manager David Poile said late Thursday. ``I never say never, but it doesn’t feel like we’ll be moving up or down. But things can change when players get taken ahead of you.’’

Tipped off by Mirtle to "A huge list of all the NHL mock drafts available"