Really exciting. We needed the centre iceman. We talked about it a lot. We weren’t going to reach for it. Skill, hockey sense, compete, winner. That’s how you describe Cole Reschny.

Again, centre iceman. People are going to debate whether he’s going to be a centre or a winger at the next level. We said when we drafted him he’s a centre. If it doesn’t work out that way, that’s just something that goes on in development over player maturity in the process. But we drafted him to be a centre. He’s one of the best skaters in the draft. He’s a great vision, great hands and he’s self-driven. He’s a motivated kid. If you know his background, his mom, Olympian and the bloodlines are there. Doing the school early to get in to challenge himself. He wanted a better challenge. So some people, you could knock a guy that goes to school early. He doesn’t put up the numbers he might have if he stayed at the program or gone to junior. I look at that as a positive. This kid wanted to go challenge himself against bigger, stronger guys. And in my opinion, he aced the test. So really excited to get Cullen.

Left wing/centre. He played a lot of left wing. I saw him on both wings. I know he played centre. I know he’s listed at centre… So he had thyroid cancer a couple of years ago. He’s beat it. So it’s a really neat story… But didn’t play in the national team until November this year. Played on a strong Djurgardens team with some really good players. Skilled, smart. He’s got reach. He needs physical development. But when we did the whole process with [director of sports performance] Rick Davis and our doctors, we think he was physically hampered obviously by going through the cancer treatment. So we think it’s going to come. He’s 6’3″. His brother’s a thicker kid. So we think he’s a little behind that way. But we’re not worried about him.

We had a subset of defencemen that we really liked. And it’s almost like the goalies now. You get those bigger, stronger, long, hard-nosed defencemen. And it’s the case like when I mentioned the goaltenders. When one of them starts to go, a bunch of them start to go. So we didn’t want to reach for any of them. But when we got there to that pick, we just said, we’re taking him now. Our U.S. guys were on board. He’s a long-term guy. We had [development staffers] Marty Gelinas, Ray [Edwards] in the room. So they know all about him. They know where he has to get to. So he’s going to University of Minnesota in two years. I don’t know if you guys talked to him, but what an engaging young man. Like he’s got a unique story too. He told us at the interviews in June that he was either going to go to Portland or Green Bay, but he’s going to wait to see which team drafted him and get their consult to make the final decision. So that’s where he’s going next year.

Then it wasn’t a sentimental pick because our guys really like this guy, the Wyttenbach kid. But it was a neat side story. A neat ribbon on top to have him win the first [USHL’s Gaudreau Award]. So smaller, skilled, smart, over point per game in the USHL, not an easy league to score in, especially at that size. So you have to have unique escapeability and evasiveness to be able to put those points up. He was a case certainly where our analytics department really helped because our guys were worried about his size early. And then they’re like, no, it matches up with what you’re seeing as far as the IQ and the tenacity and the skill. We just kept on tracking it all year. And then it came to that point, he was there and our analytics department was like, yeah, take that guy. That’s the guy.

Started at St. Andrews College. We saw him last year a lot when we were in to see Dean Letourneau. So he was on the radar from last year. Myself and [amateur scout] Terry Doran saw him early at St. Andrews College. And then he went to Brampton for a few games. I stopped tracking him a little bit, but Terry kept on him. And then you watch him through the playoffs. He’s going to Harvard next year. I think he could be a centre iceman, he’s played a lot of centre at St. Andrews, but they played him more on the wing at Brampton just because of his lack of experience there. But he’s 6’1″, he’s thick, he’s strong, and let’s say his core asset is his hockey sense. Really smart player.

A big rugged 6’4 defenceman. As our Swedish scout David Akerblom said, “You watch the playoffs, you see these guys on winning teams.”

[Amateur scout] Denis Grebeshkov, he’s been such a valuable addition to our staff in Russia covering them off since we haven’t been able to go there that much. We had [Matveiko] on the list. He tracked them last year and he watched him. He wasn’t on our list last year, but he tracked them and he said that the improvement from last year this year made him put him on the radar. Much like an Eric Jamieson that we did last year, same thing this year. So our guy, Denis was really happy with Yan and he said, “Great pick there.” I think 6’4”, 185 pound, centre iceman, has a chance to play in the KHL next year. So you just by that, you can tell he’s made some strides, right?