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With a break in the Stanley Cup Finals until the scene shifts to Ottawa on Saturday, I thought I'd roll out the second in the series of mock drafts. As with the first one, these scenarios do not necessarily reflect any team's intentions. It's just a fun exercise to create conversation and constructi...
I have written an extensive NHL Entry Draft primer for NHL.com, focusing on the European players eligible in the draft. In total, the article spanned 15 pages, so to make it easier to find what you want, we broke it down into country-by-country sections. Below is the link to the introduction....
Amidst the hoopla and congratulations going out to the Anaheim Ducks on winning the Stanley Cup, I thought I'd share a couple personal recollections about three members of the Ducks team: Teemu Selänne, Joe DiPenta and Samuel Påhlsson. Every player on both the champion Ducks and runner-up Sens...
I recently completed an article for NHL.com looking at a host of sleeper picks in this year's draft. Here is a sneak peak at the section on power forwards. *** Power forwards and big-frame defensemen often take longer to find their games than some of their more finesse oriented counterparts....
The Flyers have re-signed RFA defenseman Lars Jonsson to a one year, two-way contract. The defenseman, who suffered a high ankle sprain late in training camp last season and struggled with both the Flyers and Philadelphia Phantoms acknowledged that he may have an uphill climb to crack the opening...
I have written an article for the Philadelphia Flyers' official site looking at the history of second overall picks in the NHL draft. In many ways, the 1984 and 1988 drafts symbolize the way many fans view having the first pick as opposed to the second. In 1984, of course, the Penguins took Mari...
One question that seems to pop up frequently is how much value the Chicago Blackhawks or Philadelphia Flyers could get by trading down from the first or second pick of the draft. In a year like this, where there is no consensus superstar at the top of the draft, the intrinsic trade value of a dra...
Today on NHL.com, we take a look at the process by which promising youth players become legitimate NHL draft prospects. As crucial as in-season development is for young players, the work the top young players do during the spring and summer is equally crucial to their development. The level of d...
Judging by the early response to the Flyers-Predators trade, I may be the only person with some reservations from a Philadelphia standpoint. On the surface, it's a great deal for Philadelphia, but: 1) Timonen-- a rock solid defenseman who will add a lot to the Philadelphia blueline-- is 32 yea...
A quick sidenote to the Flyers' acquisition of Kimmo Timonen. Although there will be a lot of talk about Kimmo joining his brother Jussi (a Flyers' prospect), the older Timonen brother is actually closer with new teammate Sami Kapanen. Both Kapanen and Kimmo Timonen came up through the KalPa Kuop...
For those who missed the story, the Minnesota Wild's Branko Radivojevic and the New York Rangers Marcel Hossa made news this week in their home country of Slovakia by coming to the aid of a man being assaulted by a group of 10 neo-Nazis. According to Slovakian newspaper Pravda Daily, the pair an...
As any classic rock fanatic knows, the Clash posed the musical question "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" back in 1981. More recently, NHL Entry Draft prospects from the Czech Republic and Slovakia have decided in droves to leave home early to play junior hockey in Canada. In today's Across the Pon...
Several months ago, Los Angeles Kings general manager Dean Lombardi made some fascinating -- and, in my opinion, dead accurate --comments on the tricky nature of drafting and developing defensemen. Said Lombardi, "You have to be so careful with defensemen. The history of young defensemen is incre...
My apologies to those who were waiting for mock drafts for their favorite teams. Time didn't permit me to do the research and writing for the draft exercise and I figure that everyone has pretty much had their fill of mock drafts by now. It's time for the real thing. For those still interested, h...
Jarmo Kekäläinen is one of the most astute judges of hockey talent out there and, in my opinion, the Blues made a very astute move trading down from the #9 to #13, picking Lars Eller and getting a second round pick in the process. It'll be interesting to see if the Blues take Eller's linemate...
One statistical truth has never changed across the history of the NHL Draft. A forward who dominates offensively at hockey's lower levels is by no means guaranteed to be a dominant NHL player. But a forward who does not dominate against lower tier competition rarely makes an offensive impact in the...
I'm not a believer in picking "winners and losers" at the draft. I also don't think there's much more to add to the discussion about Russian players dropping off the cliff from their rankings, the Rangers selection of Alexei Cherepanov and the Penguins selection of Angelo Esposito. Instead, I will...
This year, we saw the selection of the highest percentage of American born players in NHL Entry Draft history. Some 30% of all draftees were American born players, and it was an especially good year for the USA National Team Development Program, led off with a former player(Patrick Kane) and current...
There's no denying the fact that some NHL Entry Draft years produce considerably more future star talent than other years. But it drives me up the wall when people simply dismiss a draft as "weak" or say "it's just a crapshoot, anyway" when certain teams inevitably turn up future solid NHLers--...
Interviewed today by Finnish newspaper Kaleva, Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Joni Pitkänen addressed the rampant trade rumors that are swirling around him, the Flyers acquisition of Kimmo Timonen and, if not traded, his impending salary arbitration case with the Flyers. For the most part, Pitk�...
The St. Louis Blues' recent selection of Lars Eller in the NHL Entry Draft has brought some media attention to hockey in Denmark. Any way you slice it, this has been a banner year for Danish hockey. In the course of the last twelve months, there have been a series of important firsts: *...
In a CHL import draft once again dominated by Czech and Slovak players -- comprising roughly 80 percent of the 53 selections made as of this writing -- Philadelphia Flyers goaltend prospect Jakub Kovar was chosen 29th overall by the Oshawa Generals. Kovar (pronounced like Koh-VASH) was widely r...
Peter Forsberg has undergone another round of foot surgery , this time by Dr. Leif Swärdh in Göteborg, Sweden. According to today's report in Aftonbladet by Mats Wennerholm, the surgery is apparently related to the lingering foot problems Forsberg had last season. Forsberg himself declined...
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