FN Weekend Open Thread – First Round Targets

 

 

We’re still working our way through the season review stuff, but that will be over shortly. Obviously the really big focus this summer will be the first round of the draft: not only do the Flames have 6th overall, but they will also have two more picks (likely in the mid-to-late ’20s).

Previously we’ve only had to profile a handful of potential first round targets, but the pool of potential future Flames is obviously much bigger this year. As such, we need some help narrowing down the target list so we can start putting the profile series together.

This is the group near the top of the list. We can probably skip the top-3 (MacKinnon, Jones and Drouin) since it’s unlikely they’ll be in range, but the guy in the poll at right will probably all be looked at in detail: Barkov, Lindholm, Nurse, Nichushkin, Poluck, Monahan and Shinkaruk. We’ll pay particular attention to the like of Lindholm and Monahan, since they are the consensus choice(s) currently. 

Here’s where things get messy. With the Flames secondary picks probably falling around 25 give or take a few positions, the club will have a wide spread of options, depending, of course, on how the rest of the draft proceeds.

To give you an idea of the possibilities, take a look at the recent mock draft at NHLNumbers. JT Compher and Kerby Rychel are Calgary’s later picks in this hypothetical exercise, but there are many names who might be within range in June (Bo Harvat, Max Domi, Robert Hagg, Antturi Lehkonen, Alex Wennberg, Anthony Mantha, Ryan hartman, Mirco Mueller, Curtis Lazar, etc.).

We could profile guys forever, but instead we’ll use your input to whittle down the skaters* to focus on. So let us know in the comments who you’d like to see FN research going forward. We’ll concentrate on the players who garner the most interest.

*Goalies shouldn’t be taken in the first round and will therefore be ignored.