Flyers GM Holmgren confident heading into NHL draft
PAUL HOLMGREN has been at enough NHL entry drafts to know that he is participating in a giant roll of the dice and that after the first 10 selections, most of the players have an equal chance of being solid, big-league players.
So he is not concerned about being the 21st general manager to announce his team's selection this year.
"Our stance has always been to take the best player available, and that's where we are," Holmgren said recently. "I think it's a good draft. We believe that certainly with our first pick we'll get a good prospect."
But that is only if he stays in the first round, and that essentially is the Flyers' biggest question going into tonight's draft in Montreal.
The Flyers have only one pick in the first round. After that, they drop like a bucket of cement to the third round and the 81st overall pick. According to Holmgren, the Flyers will first look to move up but are more likely to move down. As of yesterday afternoon, Holmgren said he has had conversations with teams but that nothing is likely to happen before the draft actually begins.
"Other than teams asking would you have any interest in moving up or down, a lot of that happens as you get closer to your pick, or the teams you're talking to get closer to their pick," Holmgren said yesterday.
"The teams that are ahead of us, they probably have a certain player or two players that are no longer on the board, so they might be in a position to move back and we might be in a position to move up.
"Similar to us, as we get closer to our pick, we might say to whoever, 'Do you have any interest in this pick for something later on?' "
Holmgren said moving down is more likely, especially if the top players on his list are gone before the 21st pick.
"To move up it usually costs additional assets," he said. "To move back you're usually gaining assets. Right now picking at 21, the odds of us moving up probably aren't very good. There is probably a better chance or a better opportunity to move back."
There is little argument about who the top two picks will be. The only difference in opinion is which will go first.
Most polls and scouting reports have London Knights center John Tavares as the first choice. The 6-foot, 198-pound, Ontario Hockey League center is a deft puckhandler and explosive offensive player.
In one evaluation, E.J. McGuire, the NHL's director of central scouting and a former Flyers assistant coach, said: "He is probably better than any other player in the draft from the top of the circle down at being a threat to score. He's an offensive player who is reliable in his defensive zone and getting better at that, but yet not asked to do that very frequently. He is pure offense and for his first years in the NHL will probably be asked to do just that."
Tavares is expected to go first. But that will depend on what the New York Islanders think they need most. The Islanders pick first and many project that they will go with Victor Hedman, a puck-moving Swedish defenseman who Holmgren said "is one of the top young defenseman in quite a while, in my opinion."
Tavares and Hedman are expected to step right into the NHL and be impact players. That is not likely to be the case for the Flyers' pick - if they stay at No. 21.
Still, last year the Flyers took Luca Sbisa at No. 19. He was not expected to play right away, but did. It's just unlikely. But good players are taken deep into the first round.
"We think it's a good draft, just like last year," Holmgren said. "Like I said last week, you never know what's going to happen. I'm confident that we're going to get a good player at 21 if we do exercise our pick there."
The Flyers have done well picking later in the first round, and they have picked busts. After trading up to the fourth pick for Joni Pitkanen in 2002, the Flyers gave up on the defenseman and traded him to Edmonton.
But consider this list of names who were taken by the Flyers at 21st or lower: Simon Gagne (No. 22), Claude Giroux (22), Mike Richards (24), Scott Mellanby (27), Justin Williams (28), Peter Zezel (41) and Rick Tocchet, who was the 125th pick in 1983.
There good young players ranked 21st or lower but only the Flyers know who they like and what they are looking for. Mock drafts are all over the place. Two have the Flyers picking Chris Kreider, a 6-2, 200-pound American center out of Phillips Academy, Andover, in Massachusetts.
Two others have the Flyers taking American forward Jeremy Morin, a 6-1 left wing who comes out of the U.S. National Team Development Program and will play for the Kitchener Rangers in the Ontario Hockey League next season.
"There are two or three guys that we like that we think will be there, but you just never know," Holmgren said. "Nobody has a crystal ball that's that clear."
Snap shots
The Flyers continue to look through the free-agent market to upgrade the team, and Florida defenseman Jay Bouwmeester is still a target. However, Paul Holmgren said he does not think anything will happen before the free-agent market opens next Wednesday. He said he has had talks with teams about trading for the contract rights to Bouwmeester and others, like he did 2 years ago with Kimmo Timonen and Scott Hartnell . . . The Flyers will be making a change in goalie coaches after electing not to renew the contract of Reggie Lemelin. They would not say who would replace him. "We didn't renew Reggie's contract and I'm not in a position to comment on anything other than that," Holmgren said. "I just felt like we needed a change. That's all." *
