A Tale of Two Drafts

By Bob Trask – Mock drafts are appearing with increasing frequency as July 7th approaches. Some limit themselves to the first round, others predict the first two rounds while only a few are bold enough to include all seven rounds of the draft.

One challenge with putting together a draft list for your favourite team is that so many of your choices depend upon what other teams pick. Another challenge is deciding on whose rankings to trust. Do you use those of Bob McKenzie, Craig Button or one of the multitude of draft ranking services?

Methodology

For the purposes of this draft, I used Future Considerations mock draft tool.

In the first draft, FC picked the players for all teams but Montreal and I chose the players for the Canadiens from those available. In some cases I chose players not on FC’s list but who were available at the time.

In the second draft, I chose the players for the Colorado Avalanche selecting the highest ranked player available at the time. FC chose the players for all other teams including Montreal. The reason I adopted this approach was because Colorado was the lowest ranked team in each round and had only four picks in the draft. In other words, my choices for Colorado would have the least impact on the choices available for FC.

The Results

The results represent the picks for the Montreal Canadiens using two different approaches. Only two players appeare on both lists – Shane Wright and Vincent Rohrer – and it illustrates the futility in trying to predict the choices made by your team in the upcoming draft.

Draft day trades will also impact where the picks for various teams will fall and could impact who is availalble to the Canadiens when their name is called even if they aren’t the team involved in the trade.

ROUND	PICK #	MY PICKS	FC PICKS
Round 1	1	Shane Wright	Shane Wright
	26	Tristan Luneau	Filip Bystedt
Round 2	33	Jimmy Snuggerud	Elias Salomonsson
	62	Ludwig Persson	Mattias Havelid
Round 3	66	Noah Warren	Cole Knuble
	75	Vincent Rohrer	Aleksanteri Kaskimaki
	92	Danny Zhilikin	Vincent Rohrer
Round 4	98	Logan Morrison	Jake Livanavage
	127	Ryan Greene	Nick Baer
	128	Topi Ronni	Willaim Rosenfors
Round 5	130	Connor Kurth	Victor Smeds
Round 6	162	Daniil Ivanov	Kasper Lundell
Round 7	194	Ian Blomquist	Sebastian Aarsund
	216	David Spacek	Dmitri Ivanov

Conclusion

This is not meant to be a mock draft but simply an illustration of how the actual picks can and probably will vary from our own personal choices. Have fun making your own predictions and don’t be shocked if none of your preferred players is chosen.