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With Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine and Jesse Puljujarvi being the consensus top-3 players in the upcoming draft it seemed like any team lucky enough to win a lottery pick would happily keep the selection and pick one of those future stars.
That may not be the case as the Columbus Blue Jackets are reportedly not sold on taking Puljujarvi with the 3rd pick in the draft, according to Bob McKenzie (
interview transcribed by TodaysSlapShot).
“The sense that a lot of people are getting right now is that the Columbus Blue Jackets are not sold on Jesse Puljujarvi at that spot, and that they may be looking at a more positionally-oriented name, and that is a center.
“Specifically, two centers come to mind. One is Logan Brown, who’s the big 6-foot-6 American from St. Louis who plays for the Windsor Spitfires, who has been kind of rocketing up the draft charts. The other is Clayton Keller, another American who broke a lot of Patrick Kane’s records at the U.S. national program that he’s been a part of for the last couple of years. Now, he’s a small center. He’s Patrick Kane dimensions as well."
The whole article is worth a read but, in short, the Jackets aren't entirely in love with Puljujarvi and feel moving down, accumulating assets, and filling a positional need may be the best way to go.
McKenzie mentioned moving down in the 6-11 range would likely allow the Jackets to pick one of those two centers and, again, accumulate assets in the process.
I don't think moving up to that pick makes a ton of sense for the Devils as they are already short on assets and parlaying what they do have for one player could do more harm than good.
Columbus would surely want, say, Damon Severson and another promising asset like John Quenneville on top off 11th overall and I'm almost certain that still wouldn't be enough to get a deal done. Top-3 picks are extremely valuable, and rarely moved, so the asking prices tend to be absurdly high.
Trading up to the 3 spot seems unlikely at best so I think the big thing here is the possibility of the Jackets swapping picks with another team - but still picking ahead of the Devils - and taking Clayton Keller right in front of them.
Logan Brown would be a nice piece at 11, too, but Keller possesses the kind of offensive talent that two or three players per draft have in them.
Given the Devils' ineptitude when it comes to scoring goals and producing offense I think Keller falling to them at 11 would be a dream scenario.
Obviously it's not a given the Jackets take him if they move down - or that someone else doesn't take him ahead of 11 - but having an interested party picking in that range gives reason to be uneasy if Keller is the Devils' target.
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