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*puolivalmiste* · 11-15-2019, 01:44 AM

Now that season 50 is behind us with Calgary and Carolina taking Cups to home, even last of us can turn our attention to next season. As we are closing in the Season 51 SHL draft I'll draw your attention to second generation of Swedish superstars and as Chicago ruined Texas dream for 1-2 in next draft they are very likely to head to different teams so which one might end up going first.

Henrik Lundqvist Jr. @FreakinAnime

Lets start with the one who might sound more familiar to people following hockey and take a look to see can a legendary goalie help his son to develop into a great center?

This young center was drafted to Colorado Raptors as their 28 overall pick. He has been improving lot ever since joining the team but still played his season as 4th line winger as Colorado's stacked roster did not really allow many players to move up during their run to Four Star Cup Finals that they ended up losing to Carolina. During regular season he averaged about 9 minutes and 10 second of ice time per game and when Carolina was making a push for the Cup Lundqvist's playtime dropped to few seconds over 8 minutes.

Even as Lundqvist has shown talent as a passer he had pretty balanced scoring for his first season in SMJHL. During his 50 games on regulation he scored 3 goals with his 70 shot attempts out of which 37 reached the goal. On top of those 3 goals and 4 assist for total of 7 points and with reduced ice time he managed only to record one assist during Colorado's 17 games on playoffs. His plus minus was -3 during regulation which to me looks solid enough for a fourth line rookie, in playoffs he had record of -5.

He isn't very physical player and is very disciplined player who only took 2 penalty minutes during regular season with 18 check on record. During playoffs on Colorado's second game versus Detroit he takes his only penalties of the post season by instigating a fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov, but ends up losing the fight and gets ejected from game with 17 PIM on his name.

As he has been playing most of the season as winger he has not been able to utilize his skill on face offs too much, yet he won 52.83% of 53 face offs he took during regulation. During play offs he got to take more face offs as his face offs per game went from bit above 1 to just under 2.3 but it did't work too well for him or Colorado as his win percentage dropped to 46.15%.

Overall pretty solid season considering that it was his first on a team where there was not a lot room for new players to get their chances to prove themselves.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic Jr. @soulja

Now lets take a look if football striker can transfer their talent to next generation hockey defenseman.

This defenseman joined Vancouver Whalers as their 6th overall pick and has been working hard on their defense ever since, starting season on second pair with long time third pair defenseman Victor Toeman but as his play improved he started to get minutes on first pair. He played full 50 games during regulation averaging about 21 minutes and 7 seconds per game with 117 minutes on power play during season and 68 during penalty kill.

He was top of his passing game finishing his rookie season with 20 assists while also scoring 6 goals with only 24 shots on goal on 53 shot attempts. Total of 26 points earned him a spot as 6th highest scoring rookie of the season with only 2 points behind second place. During 10 playoffs games Whalers played he recorded 1 goal and 2 assist, while keeping up his 25% shot percentage.

His early season while playing with Toeman took it's toll on Ibrahimovic's plus minus as he finished season at -8, though he finished post season at -9 on first pairing so there might be need to take a better look at his defensive play. But speaking of defencive play, Ibrahimovic puts his body on line every night and finished regular season with 57 blocked shots which was third on Whalers only five blocks behind leader. During post season he stayed well on pace and recorded 11 blocks on 10 games.

He also is way less disciplined compared to Lundqvist as he took 58 minutes of penalties during his rookie season without any of those being from fighting. He recorded 75 hits during season which sure contributed to his penalty minutes. During playoffs he took 22 minutes of penalties, all of them again being minors, while recording 16 hits.

So we are looking at very solid defenseman who can score points and has been improving at excellent pace, who should be able to take that first pair role and run with it for as long as he stays in SMJHL.

So now after all that who should be going first? People who don't know about these things might try to argue we should take a look at some other prospects but when there is so much natural talent to pick from I don't see point in that.

So first we might try to figure out what Chicago needs. Looking at their current prospects there are 2 Centers both drafted on season 50 draft, one being Ryan Shepard who is top of his class while other being Johnny Patey whose development has been much slower and could easily be replaced by Lundqvist, there are also 4 wingers that might be able to move to center position if needed so their offence might be set. On the other hand out of their current prospects only one is defenseman, also top of class 50, Akira Ren, so there might be room for Ibrahimovic in Syndicate lineup in future, even in top pair if he keeps his pace of developing up.

Finally we might take look at their bank balances, while Lundqvist's 1.8 million dollars would be enough for most, in a league where skates can cost up to 2 million dollars that isn't going to last too long. After taking a look Ibrahimovic's bank balance it gets clear that really big money isn't actually earned by playing hockey as Zlatan has saved his allowances to a pile up over 37 million dollars.

So with this info I would guess that #1 overall would more likely be Zlatan leaving Lundqvist as close #2 and most likely resulting in rest of teams passing on all their picks as what is point of taking anyone else?

After writing this it has come to my attention that Chicago ended up trading their first overall to Buffalo, which makes me pretty sure that Chicago's GM was afraid of being outperformed by Zlatan and while I took quick look at Buffalo's prospect pool they seem to have some centers and defenseman coming up most from season 50 draft including some top talent like Augustus Wang and Aron Hernadivic. So I really can't tell you anymore which one will go first, maybe Cameron Carter II based on some mock drafts.

(2 x for draft media, above 1200 words + some photo edit)

*puolivalmiste* · 11-15-2019, 02:05 AM

Can we get this moved to media section?

Edit: Thank you

soulja · 11-15-2019, 11:20 AM

lol great read. Thanks for the mention Whalers

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