It wouldn’t be a day before an NHL Entry Draft without some transaction that stirs up some drama around the league. On Thursday afternoon, the San Jose Sharks managed to raise some eyebrows.
Announced by the team, the Sharks acquired the 11th-overall pick in Friday night’s Round 1 of the 2024 NHL Draft, in exchange for their 14th overall, and the 42nd-overall pick. A very typical trade-up scenario where a team just goes up a couple spots for a decent second-round pick.
Why would they do this now, over 24 hours away from when the first round actually takes place? Teams should be hearing what prospect other teams like by now, as they all arrived in Las Vegas at some point through the last few days, and probably where the cut-off is to be able to target a certain player that they really like. With this knowledge, they can kind of map out where a prospect can land and then end up targeting that specific selection.
Aside from that, specifically with the Sharks, since they also have first-overall and are taking a franchise cornerstone in Macklin Celebrini, they can now be a little picky when it comes to their picks that follow as they try to build a contender around this player. And with our Philadelphia Flyers owning the 12th-overall pick — now just one pick below where the Sharks are now selecting — things are so much more interesting when it comes to who might be available for our favorite hockey club.
And generally, this is good news, depending on who you want the Flyers to take with that pick.
Generally speaking, the word on the street was that with the No. 14 pick, the Sharks were going to nab a defenseman. Whether that was an Adam Jiricek, or someone who slipped out of the top group like a Carter Yakemchuk, was still to be determined but the positional need was obvious. With Celebrini and considering they have used their most recent top selections on forwards Will Smith and William Eklund, some top-end blue line help was needed. It all makes sense, with multiple first-rounders, you can be positionally focused.
So now that they have moved above the Flyers, they might really aim for one of the top-end defensemen that might fall in that range. The previously mentioned Yakemchuk should be available there, but so could offensive wizard Zayne Parekh, steady two-way Sam Dickinson, or all-around blueliner Zeev Buium. One of those guys should be there, and they more or less now guaranteed it. It is a smart move by Sharks GM Mike Grier to really cement that.
What does that mean for the Flyers, though? If you were hoping that one of those players would fall to pick No. 12, we are so sorry. But what it does mean is that it’s one more team who most likely isn’t going to take small-but-excellent center Berkly Catton, who could really bring that high-end talent the Flyers desperately need more of. Now, we can more easily predict who is more likely to be available for Philadelphia for at least one team.
If Buffalo still had that pick, things would be much less clear. They have a fairly stable blue line filled with high-end guys like Owen Power, Rasmus Dahlin, Bowen Byram, and the stabilizing force of Matias Samuelsson — all of those guys are under 25 years old, why would they want to draft a Yakemchuk or Parekh to further complicate things down the road? So, most likely they were going forward and Catton could be a reasonable pick, and so could center Konsta Helenius. But thankfully, we know that the Sharks are most likely not to be picking one of those very good forwards that we so desperately want in the Flyers organization.
This is, of course, just an estimation. With our luck, every player we want will be gone before the Flyers pick and we will be performing mental gymnastics to hype ourselves up.
