Of 2020 draft-related note this morning: MLive’s Ansar Khan filed an article which rounds up several mock drafts, and Khan notes that there’s little consensus as to which player the Red Wings might pick with 4th overall in the first round:
Dobberprospects.com: Lucas Raymond Jokke Nevalainen writes: “Just a high-end offensive talent who can also play a pretty decent defensive game. The Red Wings can really build their roster around him.”
…
TheDraftAnalyst.com: Marco Rossi
Steve Kournianos writes: “It was unfortunate the Red Wings lost out on a top-three pick despite owning the league’s worst record by a significant margin. Nonetheless, they are far from settling by drafting Rossi – an Austrian-born scoring machine who finished as the OHL’s leading scorer and won the top player award. Rossi’s vision and IQ are off the charts, but he also owns a deadly shot and was one of the league’s better two-way centers. The size thing may seem like a turn off but watching him play and it becomes completely irrelevant.”
The Athletic also posted a staff mock draft this morning, and Wings beat writer Max Bultman’s going with the “local hero“…
4. Detroit: Cole Perfetti, C, Saginaw-OHL
Max Bultman: The Red Wings need everything, and at this spot in the draft they’ll have the ability to go in a number of directions. But Perfetti, with his widely praised hockey smarts and puck skills, would check a number of boxes for Detroit. He can run the Red Wings’ future power play. He can score. He can make plays. And if he ends up being able to do all of that from the center position, it’ll be all the better.
And in another behind-the-paywall article, The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler posted a list of his Top 100 Prospects, and he’s ranked Perfetti 4th. Here’s part of his scouting report:
4. Cole Perfetti — LW, Saginaw Spirit, 5-foot-10.5
There’s this thing that seems to happen with players who are labelled “smart” where, like those who are labelled “two-way,” their skill level doesn’t get the love it deserves. But it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Perfetti sees the game differently than everyone else in this class. He sees seams others don’t. He recognizes the way opposing defenders are reading the zone before the defenders even recognize what they’re seeing in that zone. And the more you watch him, the more so-called concerns of strength or speed begin to fade. He has an indescribable knack for finding pockets of space to get open into (or for giving the puck to a linemate just as he enters into one of them). He’s one or two steps ahead of everyone else. Those things shouldn’t discount the rest of his tools, though. Because he grades near the top of this draft class as a stickhandler, individual creator and shooter as well. He’s also one of the best draft-eligible prospects off the rush that I’ve seen in recent memory. And he doesn’t just make everyone else better, he can break open a game too. The reasons for ranking him a few spots lower have always been his skating or his strength. At this point, I’m going to keep standing by my evaluation.
Wheeler really does go 100 prospects deep, and that’s damn impressive (paywall)
