Edmonton's big year for the entry draft was last year. The Blizzard loaded up on picks for one of the stronger classes in recent memory, and by so doing have set their team up for what they hope to be a very strong future core. They accomplished this, however, without giving up any picks in this year's draft. While the Blizzard weren't exactly Montreal or Winnipeg in terms of going hard for this year's class, they got a respectable haul of their own to supplement their existing build, and they did so without trading out of a single round of this draft.

With their first selection in the S60 draft, at 14th overall, the Edmonton Blizzard selected Maverick Seabrook, a tall left winger from Great Britain. In his first season with the St Louis Scarecrows, Seabrook posted an impressive 12-10-22 in 66 games. A very high shooting percentage at 17.1% and a presence on the powerplay helped him become a strong contributor to a Scarecrows team that badly needed one even as a rookie. His -22 overall rating shouldn't be taken as a serious blight on his record, given that the STL team as a whole had an equally severe problem with the ratio of their goals scored to those of the opposition. With 26 penalty minutes, he was a bit of an edgy player but not a liability to his team. 39 shot blocks and 46 hits rounded out his stats for the year.

It follows the logical assumption, then, that Seabrook is an offense-first sort of player. With solid strength and balance, he enjoys setting up in front of the opposing net and playing screen for more veteran offensive scorers, but he's no less capable of getting open and sniping one in from the circles himself. His passing and offensive hockey IQ are both very strong as well. The end result is a rock-solid swiss army knife of a player in the attacking zone.

In the defensive zone, he's less noteworthy, but his defensive IQ is good enough to read any given play, and his positioning in his own zone is under the radar, but nonetheless the strongest single point of his defensive game. However, the Blizzard didn't draft Maverick Seabrook with a future penalty killer in mind. Seabrook is playdriver and a goal-scorer on the right hand side, a less physical player than the Blizzard have historically preferred, but nonetheless an excellent chance to add some soft hands and shooting skill to what's developing into a hard-nosed lineup.

Their second pick, at 22nd overall, saw the Edmonton Blizzard fetching Lev Lebedev, the centerman from St Petersburg who plays his junior hockey in Vancouver.

Lebedev is arguably a more impressive player than Seabrook in some respects. He is a riskier prospect than most that went in the first round, but many pundits were nonetheless surprised to see him fall so far. The 18-17-35 point centerman didn't make it past the Blizzard more than once. With a more sustainable shooting percentage, a higher overall offensive analytics rating, and still decent defensive numbers, he's a high ceiling low floor type of center. If he pans out, he projects to be the exact kind of player great teams find in the later rounds.

Like Seabrook, Lebedev spent some time on his team's powerplay unit in his rookie season. He only averaged forty seven seconds of powerplay time per game, but he nonetheless posted two powerplay goals and one assist during that time. This, of course, means that he went 16-16-32 on even strength as a rookie. Especially on a Vancouver team that did not make a significant playoff run, this is not any kind of mean feat. Add that to his impressive blocked shots total of 62, with his 36 hits, and you have a player whose eye-test suggests a better rounded player than his advanced stats show.

As a player, one can easily see that Lebedev's bread and butter is his goal scoring. The absolute highlights of his game are in his ability to read the offensive play, get open, and shoot the puck home. He has the ability to screen, but if he's doing that he's not doing what he's best at, so the skill goes unused in most of his minutes. His passing is good, but not exceptional, and his faceoff skills need work if he wants to continue to place center at the SHL level.

His defense is unremarkable, but not a liability even on paper where he usually doesn't excel. He did draw in to the Vancouver penalty kill on certain occasions when one of their main penalty killers was the man in the box, and comported himself well on those rare occasions. He finished the year with a -7 plus minus, which sums up his current game relatively well, with the caveat that this would probably be a +7 if he played for Kelowna or Anchorage. If Lev Lebedev can focus and train well during his remaining three years of junior hockey, he'll emerge on the professional scene as a goal scoring centerman ready to make an immediate impact at the top level, and like Seabrook, will be a complement to the Blizzard's hard-nosed roster.

At fifty forth overall, the Blizzard picked up Alimony Tony, another right winger, and this one actually did play for Anchorage. If you've noticed a pattern of the Blizzard drafting goal scorers this year, this is where that pattern breaks. He leads all Blizzard draftees of this year's class with 54 hits in his junior year, and while his shot blocking totals are less impressive at 27 on the year, he remains an archetypically Edmonton Blizzard player. Tony is a two-way rock who projects to be the kind of player that's critical in winning the long playoff hauls of the SHL.

Unlike many other players, Tony very rarely wastes time parking in front of the net when such positioning decisions don't otherwise mesh with his game. His shot is dangerous, but not on the level of a true sniper. That shot is, if anything, at its most dangerous when it forces the defense to respect it enough to open up even three inches of an unexpected passing lane. Alimony Tony will thread that needle every time. His offensive instincts are very strong for a third round pick, as are his passing and his stickhandling.

With how offensively dangerous Tony can be kept in mind, his defensive skills become that much more impressive. Here we find a player more in the classic Edmonton mould, a hard checker and a strong hitter. While he isn't the type of defender to hit first and ask questions about why he's fifteen feet behind the play later, his bodychecking, stick checking, and defensive hockey IQ are all notable strengths. His positioning is so close to being great, but his feet sometimes struggle to keep up with his brain to translate his defensive reading into strong positioning. This isn't a strength of his right now, but we can genuinely expect it to become one over the next several years of his development.

Finally, the Edmonton Blizzard got a bit of a bonus this year. The SMJHL draft recently concluded, and a player named Conner Tanner was drafted out of Osaka, Japan. However, thanks to an obscure clause in the SHL's players union CBA, SHL organizations are automatically entitled to certain prospects without the need to draft them. The precise legal mechanisms that triggered in the case of a Japanese-born player with what could be one of the most Canadian names of all time being automatically assigned to the Blizzard are both too complicated and too tedious to go over here. However, the player himself certainly merits a look, despite being one year further out than the rest of these Blizzard rookies.

Conner Tanner is a left-shooting, left-side defenseman who towers in at 6'6". He's a defensive defenseman by trade, and a good, physical one at that. In many ways, he's the exact archetype of an Edmonton player. His defensive hockey IQ is very strong, as is his hitting, both of which are well above average for a player his age. His offense is quite weak, but has enough of a foundation for his coaches to build on through juniors. The one generally offensive skill he does quite well is keep the puck on his stick; he does this well enough to prevent frequent turnovers, but not well enough to generate much offense himself. Expect lots of drop-passes in the neutral zone for Tanner's first year of junior hockey. Indeed, the only classically Edmonton thing Conner Tanner doesn't do is fight. He has yet to drop the gloves in his entire Japan League career.

Overall, Edmonton added a great deal of forward skill in this year's draft. Given how well they stocked up on grit and defense last year, plus the effective free addition of Conner Tanner to next year's draft, the Blizzard look to be in very good shape for a long time to come.


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@Keygan @ShnarlyDude @Tonzy @Lorec

Great write-up, love seeing love shown to the prospects (by prospects???).

Edmonton Fucks