2014 NHL Entry Draft Aftermath - Best 3 Picks per Round

As always, it was an interesting, entertaining and at times frustrating NHL Entry Draft this year.  Here's a quick rundown of the best 3 picks per round, in my humble opinion:

Round 1

3 - Conner Bleackley - COL - 23 - There were three solid picks in a row with St. Louis grabbing Fabbri at 21 and the Penguins snapping up Kasperi Kapanen at 22 but the Bleackley pick for Colorado was a perfect pick for this organization.  Bleackley has the makeup to fit in well with their young core and can play a variety of roles that will insulate their high end offensive players.  He has great leadership potential and his maturity is very high already.  Look for him to be an O'Reilly type player without as much headache for management.  He gives them a lot of options moving forward.

2 - Josh Ho-Sang/Michael Dal Colle - NYI 28/5 - The Islanders got a great pickup with Dal Colle at number 5.  He is a consistent and reliable player who is the type of players coaches trust.  That pick gave them the ability to swing for the fences with Ho-Sang at pick 28.  The ultra-speedy and insanely talented offensive producer had a lot of questions around his character and that scared teams away.  The two picks together are a stroke of genius and a calculated risk that could prove to pay massive dividends down the line.

1 - Aaron Ekblad/Sam Reinhart - FLA/BUF - 1/2 - This feels almost like a cop out for me, but the fact that these two teams did not overthink these selections and took the two best players is huge for both organizations.  With Ekblad the Panthers get a versatile all-situations defender who is not only a weapon but the type of commodity all teams covet and have a very difficult time finding.  In Reinhart, the Sabres get a stable leader who will consistently make their team and the players around him better. 

 

Round 2

3 - Josh Jacobs - NJ - 41 - With Jon Merrill fitting in nicely to the Devils lineup, Jacobs fits a similar mould and gives them two incredibly exciting and versatile young defenders for years to come. In a few years, we may not to be able to tell them apart. 

2 - Hunter Smith - CAL - 54 - An absolute monster who is just starting to understand his value, Smith will be a great fit to insulate some of Calgary's younger smaller and skilled forwards. He is tough, intimidating and has underrated hands around the net.

1 - Roland McKeown - LA - 50 - Snagging one of the top 5 defenders with the 50th pick could end up being the pick of the draft. LA pulled in some tremendous value with many picks in this draft but having McKeown fall to them here is almost obscene. 

 

Round 3

3 - Dominic Turgeon - DET - 63 - Son of Pierre, Dominic is a versatile player with great two-way potential. In terms of players with late bloomer potential Turgeon could be a great value pick at this point of this draft.

2 - Jack Glover - WIN - 69 - Big versatile defender could thrive around a player like Jacob Trouba. He was considered a top round candidate before the season start and although he struggled through the year, he finished strong and if he can continue to trend up, he'll

1 - Brayden Point - TB - 79 - Point is an incredibly intelligent playmaker who if not for his lack of size would have been on every team's first round wish list. At pick 79 Tampa Bay may have found themselves an incredible potential secondary offensive weapon.

 

Round 4

3 - Ville Husso - STL - 94 - Anytime you are taking the first Finnish goalie of the draft, odds are it's a solid pick!

2 - De Leo - WIN - 99 - With Nic Petan already in the organizational fold, adding De Leo his Portland Winterhawk teammate allows the two to continue to work together and bring some comfort into camps and their quest to make it to the next level.

1 - Brent Moran - DAL - 115 - His long term potential is extremely high and the pick solidifies a very strong lineage of puck stoppers in their organization. They look set for the next 10-15 years in the crease with Lehtonen, Campbell, Desrosiers and now Moran.

 

Round 5

3 - Daniel Audette - MTL - 147 - The kid has great ties in his home province and has tremendous skill. He's worth the risk at this point in the draft and could pan out very well for the Habs.

2 - Jaedon Descheneau - STL - 124 - Small but speedy, that seemed to be the theme of this round.  He has the head and reaction time to succeed in fast pace environments.  Some tie his success to Reinhart but he held the fort on his own while Reinhart represented Canada.  He's a very underrated scoring forward.

1 - Anders Bjork - BOS - 146 - This kid has never received the credit he has deserved.  He has great wheels and quick hands.  He makes things happen on the ice and plays with great pace.  He has excellent potential as he bulks up to be a capable secondary scoring threat at the next level.

 

Round 6

3 - Adam Ollas Mattsson - CAL - 175 - A big bruising defender who has room to improve his technical skills, he's a bit slow footed right now but his feet aren't heavy, just not quick yet. Great use of a late pick on a long term prospect with very good upside.

2 - Chase Lang - MIN - 167 - Lang is a hidden gem in this draft. He was buried on a deep Calgary Hitmen team but showed significant improvement and poise as the season went on. He is a smooth player who has potential to put up big numbers as his WHL career continues. 

1 - Jaden Lindo - PIT - 173 - This ranks among the best picks of the entire draft. Lindo gives the Penguins something they have been missing since letting Max Talbot walk away. He will play a role, add energy, consistency and positive leadership and could do so within 2 years.

 

Round 7

3 - Spencer Watson - LA - 209 - The Kings had some very savvy picks in this draft and took some calculated gambles. Watson is just that, a calculated gamble who has great speed and skill but is on the smaller side which scared the rest of the league off.

2 - Kelly Summers - OTT - 189 - He has good size can skate and has produced offense at a torrid rate. He's a project who will likely go the college route and reappear on the scene 4-5 years from now as a legitimate prospect with PP distribution potential.

1 - Jacob Middleton - LA - 210 - Potentially the best pick of the entire draft and it just happened to be the very last one, the Kings hit it out of the park in rounds 2 and 7 and got two of the best versatile defenders out of the OHL significantly later than they should have. Middleton skates well and can play in a variety of roles. He is underrated tough as well. He will play in the NHL at some point.

Congratulations to Bob Nicholson

I met Bob Nicholson in the summer of 2007.  Even before knowing him I understood his presence and power.  I have always been fascinated with leaders and with hockey and no one has combined the two like Bob.

I was a student at the Vierumaki Sports Institute in Finland, studying ice hockey coaching.  I had returned to Finland that summer to take part in the IIHF Development Camp.  I had just had the best year of my entire life and I finally felt like I had some direction in my life.  It was no coincidence that that summer I would meet one of the most influential people I will ever know.  I became fast friends with a lot of my classmates at Vierumaki and I felt like I fit in with the Finns more than I did in my own hometown.  The closest of these friends, who will remain one of my best friends until the day I die, was Petteri Hietanen.  Yes, this is a story about Bob and how proud I am to work in an office about 20 steps from his for another couple of months, but it would never have been possible without Petteri Hietanen. 

Petteri was a couple years younger than I was but equally as ambitious and he had a way with people (especially those of the opposite sex) that most people believe only exists in fictious characters.  Petteri is one of the most passionate hockey people you could ever expect to meet.  It turns out that Petteri's father happened to be Heikki Hietanen, and at that time Heikki was the executive director of the Finnish Ice Hockey Association. 

The Hietanen's treated me like a son and made Finland a home for me.  I would visit them in their home town of Hameenlinna (or H-town as Pete called it) often.  Petteri and I would pile into a small car with some of his friends, our classmate Josh Andrews (Canoe Cove, PEI) and our Spanish exchange student sidekick Miguel and go to concerts, hockey games, night clubs and other events all over Finland.  Often we would find ourselves waking up in the Hietanen home (later on Bob would share similar stories with me about the Hietanen family).

Upon my return to Finland in the summer of 2007, after 2 months back in Canada for summer break, Heikki and Petteri greeted me at Vierumaki.  Heikki, as important and powerful of a man as he was, always made me feel like he had nothing but time for me and he fed my ambition at every turn.  Earlier that spring, Heikki recruited me to manage the Scout Lounge as Finland hosted the IIHF U18 World Championships in Tampere (another moment that changed the course of my future).  Heikki had another life changing and future altering plan in mind for me on this day in sunny Vierumaki.  FIHA and Hockey Canada were going to be having meetings in the days leading up to the IIHF Development camp and Heikki needed someone to greet the Hockey Canada staff at the airport in Helsinki and to shuttle them the hour and a half back to the Finnish sports paradise in the middle of the forest. 

I have so much respect for all of the Hietanen family that they could ask me to pick up a grizzly bear and shuttle it somewhere in a smart car and I wouldn't hesitate.  So, I was given the keys to a 12 passenger van and sent on my way.

Driving in Europe is an interesting experience...Most vehicles I had ever driven were automatics....this van was not.  I had some minor experience driving stick and felt fairly confident doing so but this van had what seemed to be several more gears than I had ever experienced.  I managed to make it to the E75 South and eventually to the bus parking lot at Helsinki Vantaa Airport.  I waited at the international arrivals gate and was eventually met by a small army of men I would soon come to know much better.  There were 7 staff and a couple of family members, if memory serves me correctly.  This was my first meeting with Johnny Misley, Paul Delparte, Scott Smith and Bob Nicholson.

We piled into the van and headed for Vierumaki.  I think the first time my driving came into question was the third or fourth time I tried to reverse out of our parking spot....I stalled the van several times before getting onto the highway.  At this point the van was pretty quiet...

We eventually got moving and once we were on the highway and I managed to squeak out that it would be about an hour and a half before we got to Vierumaki everyone started to relax a bit.  Scott Smith sat up front with me and chatted with me for most of the way with the rest of the boys interjecting from time to time.  They were surprised to have a Canadian greet them and (sort of) know where he was going.  They asked me a ton of questions and were very curious about what I had learned and what my experience had been like up to this point.

We arrived at Vierumaki on time and I proceeded to stall the van several more times while dropping everyone off...eventually just leaving the van in the middle of the parking lot...

Bob was the last to leave the van.  Before he left he thanked me for the ride and noticing perhaps how embarrassed (and somewhat nauseous even I now was) he said "You know what Ross?  This is going to be a story I can tell some day when I'm presenting an award to you"  He patted me on the back and got out to hug Heikki.

There are moments in ones life where emotions can turn on a dime.  In the 5 seconds it took for him to say that I went from the most embarrassed and disheartened with myself I had maybe ever been to feeling like I could do anything in the world.  Bob Nicholson is a man who can make anything seem like a reality.

In the years since, I would run into Bob all over the place.  As my presence and experience in the sport grew, I found myself at the same events, in the same room and sometimes at the same table as Bob more and more.  I was fortunate enough to coach his son, Grant and spend some time with the Nicholson boys and the Hietanen boys jumping in lakes after marathon sauna sessions.  He always made time for me when I came to Calgary and gave me great advice.  On one occasion I had just gone through a fairly intense end of what I considered a serious relationship and I ran into Bob in the middle of a crowded concourse during a World Junior game.  I obviously wasn't myself, and I feel like he tuned into that immediately.  He pulled me aside and gave me what I know now as a classic "Bob pep talk".  As hard as my outlook on life was at that time, he managed to somehow inspire me.  Funny enough, it wasn't the last time he would find me in such a situation.

Three years ago, I had applied for a few jobs with Hockey Canada and had come up just short every time.  Again, Bob brought me in for a meeting and pumped my tires and told me my time would come.  A few short days later, Paul Carson sent me an email saying he and Bob had talked and were wondering if I would be willing to go to Bosnia or Poland for an international development project.  Paul and Bob fall into a similar category of decision making as the Hietanen family does when it comes to personal requests.  So, off to Sarajevo I went.

Bosnia changed me.  It gave me something I could have never obtained in Canada or on my own.  I was there for close to 6 months and it was incredible.  Before I left for Bosnia, Bob again pulled me aside at a hotel bar in Penticton, BC.  He once again showered me with advice and told me that Bosnia is an opportunity that doesn't exist that often in sport.  It was the chance to build something, to help some people who were open to ideas and to put my own spin on the sport for that country.  He warned me that it was a difficult situation and it could be frustrating but if I went in determined and open-minded I would be able to accomplish something that very few people will ever get to experience.

Bob is a captivating man.  He has a tremendous ability to hit your soul with his words and he can swap from a fun, seemingly carefree, easy to be around guy at a party to an inspiring and motivating leader in the blink of an eye.  He's the guy everybody wants to be around and he handles that with incredible poise and optimism.

At the end of my Bosnian adventure, Haris Muhic, the Bob of hockey in Bosnia, invited me to the World Championships in Bratislava, Slovakia as a guest of Bosnian Ice Hockey.  I was given accreditation to attend IIHF Congress, something that for most people isn't that exciting, but for me it was as exciting as game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.  During one of the breaks, Haris asked me what I wanted to do next, and I told him I wanted to work for Hockey Canada.  Haris pulled Bob over and told Bob he wanted to know what it would take to convince him to assign me to Bosnia for longer.  I wasn't fully prepared for that question, but I was even more unprepared for Bob's response.  "Sorry Haris, we have plans for Ross back in Canada".  The conversation continued for some time but I heard nothing after Bob said that...Haris gave me a wink.

That September I started working for Hockey Canada.

Since then, I've had hundreds more interactions and have had the privilege of seeing the day to day attention to detail and personality that makes Bob such a valuable and cherished leader.  I've watched him handle difficult situations, bring staff together and provide guidance to countless sport leaders from countless other countries.  I've stood on the sidelines as he spoke to the media and watched him tease and joke with some of the most powerful people in sport.  The video for his 60th birthday was an amazing collection of people with outstanding stories and inside jokes.

The impact Bob has had on so many people is incredible.

When Bob made his announcement to the staff and then to the world, there were misty eyes among our staff.  Looking around the office I could see the almost hundred other people with stories and experiences like mine.   We were as glued to his press conference in Toronto as we were to the Olympic final.   It was bittersweet.  I'm extremely happy for Bob and his family and I know it won't be the last time he influences some direction for my future.  I just really like having a desk a few steps away from Bob Nicholson's...