ok so, theres no doubt my team is Edmonton, has been for 44 years now and will never change (sorry I don't jump on or off bandwagons) having said that I guess I have two favorite teams...
Edmonton, and anyone who plays Calgary
so no team fighting, no riot talk, blah blah balh..
lets here your predictions for the draft and why. then in a week we'll see how close we were.
Now there have been a few people thinking that Edmonton should take RNH in the draft, this is crazy talk he is 2 to 3 years away from being NHL ready, especially size wise. what this years Cup final has shown us is it doesn't matter about talent unless you have the size to go with it. at 167lbs RNH might be slipping down the ranks just due to size.
even though the oilers lost a lot they scored a tone of goals.. usually when you are scoring 2 or more goals a game and still losing the forward aren't the week area.
so my hope and recommendation would be to take Larson. #1 for the European skaters and he is NHL ready (I hate that they rank the NA skaters in a different pool than the Europe ones) Larson is in the running with RNH for #1 in all the draft and I do think he will go first. this is the scouting notes on him.
“Adam is one of the best skater’s in this year’s draft -- he has excellent speed and mobility. He also has patient puck handling abilities and can surprise an opponent with a solid hit. His size and skating ability make him comparable with Tampa Bay Lightning defense-man Victor Hedman.”
he is also being compared to Calle Johansson and Nicklas Lidstrom.
enough on that. the other and probably the biggest issue my oilers have is goalies. Edmonton has always been known for descent goalies, but rolison was the last descent one they have had.. habby is washed out and never should have been grabbed by Edmonton, Dubby is going to be real good, but thats a year or two off yet. Gerber had been good when used, 4 starts 4 wins (two shutouts) but can he do that on a regular basis? We also have no "stand out" defense.. we had sourey and its really to bad about his attitude. so we have whitney.. he is good, but not at the sourey/pronger level
I guess if they have number 1 and 2 picks they could draft both RNH and Adam Larson, trade RNH for a good goalie and be laughing, but we don't and you can be sure if anyone grabs one of those two the other will be gone right away.
the other way to go is to grab Larson and with the 19th pick grab one of those hotshot young goalies, but that is a long term thing and goalies are a big gamble, better to let some one else develop a goalie and then trade for him later.