Top 5 draft prospects (fantasy value)

[tiger]

Pretty interesting stuff leading up to the draft. A lot of action, which leads to a lot of speculation of what GMs might do. There could be a flurry of activity after the first 4 picks are made. The next picks could go off the board which would lead to some scrambling for trades.

[Duncan]

i have a feel there will be a few off the board picks this year... it may be a good year to have a late 1st rounder

[Duncan]

Craig Smith of Nashville... tied with RNH with 14pts on the season... who knew!? who is this guy and where did he come from? is he going to be just a 17 game flash in the pants jason king rookie or will he stick?

[joel]

so after a full season, in hindsight i'd go with the following picks:
1-rnh
2-landeskog
3-hamilton
4-couterier
5-strome

not that much different than my first guess, hammy and couterier move up a bit, strome gets bumped down a little. but the 2-4 pack is much closer to #1 in my mind than it was at the time i talked about it last year. not that RNH didn't have a successful year, but as Dave foresaw, they rushed him. he's physically not NHL ready even though he has the skills to keep up most of the time. it was basically impossible for them to send down their best player, not sure if it could have long term impacts on him though. i feel much safer with all of the players in ranked 2-4 than i do with RNH right now.

[Duncan]

strome ahead of huberdeau? oversight or is there something i'm missing? i'd probably but huberdeau 5th before strome

[joel]

i've left huberdeau outside of the top 5 for the same reasons i left him off the first time. not confident he'll be able to translate his production to nhl. i also think all the stats for seadogs these past two seasons can't be completely trusted as a whole their team was incredibly stacked. And often times on these stacked teams, they can run up the score on much more inferior teams which inflate statistics.

huberdeau scored 4 pts games on 6 occasions this past season, 4 of those occassions happened to be against the last place team PEI. If you were to take out those 4 games alone his ppg average drops to about the same range as coyle a late addition teammate with the seadogs (or even strome's last years average). and then his performance in the playoffs was even less impressive.

it's not that i think huberdeau will be a bust or anything, but i am just not confident, that when he is heavily leaned upon to shoulder the offensive weight of the panthers, with a mediocre supporting cast that he'll look as dominant as he has in juniors. (i've stated before, my concern is the "turris" factor)

strome, on the other hand played on a less dominant team with a weaker supporting cast and against more balanced opposing teams. I think his situation with NYI is more favorable potentially getting to be the main setup man on that team too. (that is probably the factor that puts him just above huberdeau)

i haven't really stated how far apart i think they could be, but if i had to pick one it'd be strome right now. but neither have much proven at the next level yet.

[Duncan]

Yea, i agree their team was stacked and this year's playoff performance wasn't too spectacular. He was outscored by a bunch of guys on his team even though he was a beast last year in the memorial cup. I think i just like his upside. That's why i picked him over strome. I already had my "safe" pick in landeskog, so i went for boom or bust huberdeau too.

[geForce]

I guess the fantasy pool isn't going so well this season.

[se7entse7en]

Who's winning?

[nature boy]

the good guys probably.

[joel]