Lightning General Manager Julien BriseBois has been pushing his chips into the middle of the table over and over, doing whatever he could to make the Lightning’s chances better to win a Stanley Cup. His first big moves were aquiring Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow in 2019-20. He went out and got David Savard in 2020-21. Then it was Brandon Hagel and Nick Paul in 2021-22. Last year it was Tanner Jeannot and Michael Eyssimont. In doing so he burned through a ton of draft picks and a few prospects.
But he never went quite as all-in as he did in 2022-23, giving up picks outside of the first and second round to get Tanner Jeannot and depleted the stock of draft picks for the 2023 NHL Entry Draft. In 2020, he didn’t have a first round pick, but ended up with two seconds, two thirds, and two sixths, and nine picks overall. In 2021, he didn’t pick until the third round, but had two extra seventh round picks for seven picks total. In 2022, he didn’t have a second or fourth round pick, but had an extra seventh and made six selections.
How is he looking for the 2023 draft? Julien BriseBois has just a sixth and two seventh round picks to use. The first round pick went to Chicago in the Brandon Hagel trade. The second round pick went to the Blackhawks in the Tyler Johnson for Brent Seabrook trade. The third, fourth, and fifth round picks went to Nashville in the Tanner Jeannot trade. The extra seventh round pick came from Anaheim during the 2020-21 season when the Lightning sent Alexander Volkov out west for Antoine Morand and the seventh rounder.
Add this all together, and there’s really not much for Lightning prospect watchers to get excited about for this draft. Three picks, all in the last 50 picks of the draft. 179th, 193rd, and 211th overall out of 224 picks. Projecting who the Lightning might pick this far in the draft is like throwing a dart at a dartboard while flying by in a jumbo jet at 10,000 feet. Near impossible [not that we won’t try – JG]. There’s no way of knowing who will be available that late in the draft, and there’s no way of knowing what the Lightning’s draft board looks like that far down.
A lot of people think that a team’s NHL draft boards is 200 players long to match the length of the draft, but the reality is that team’s whittle their list down to something more like 75 players long. There will be plenty of players out there that other teams will like, but that the Lightning scouts won’t or won’t feel like fit the organization. There will be plenty of players that the Lightning have looked at and other teams haven’t and vice versa. Especially when you start getting down into the depths of the European leagues. These picks are being made in a range where nearly everyone that’s called out, a lot of people are going “Who? Alexa… search Google for… Mark Donk, hockey player.”
What we can do though, is look at what this scouting staff has done in recent history with sixth and seventh round picks. It can give us an idea of the kind of players they end up targeting deep on their draft boards. We may not be able to narrow it down to specific players, but we can come up with a few fictional players that might come out of those draft picks.
History of the sixth and seventh rounds
Going back to 2011, the first draft class under Al Murray, and the last 12 draft classes for the Lightning, the team has ended up selecting 34 players in the sixth or seventh rounds, averaging almost three players per draft. The team drafted 14 NCAA bound players, 11 players from the CHL, and nine players from Europe. A fair even mix of players. However, over the last eight drafts, going back to the 2015 draft, the mix has shifted heavily towards NCAA bound players, with 12 NCAA players selected compared to six each from the CHL and Europe. In the four draft classes before that, only two NCAA players were selected compared to five from the CHL and three from Europe.
Some of those European players did end up coming over to North America after being drafted, and I imagine that their plans to do so were probably already known. For example, Oleg Sosunov and Niko Huuhtanen both went to the WHL after being drafted. Klavs Veinbergs went to the USHL and will be starting in NCAA this coming season. Amir Miftakov and Mikhail Shalagin from Russia both signed to play professionally for the Lightning organization, though both only lasted for a season before returning home.
There’s been a clear trend for the Lightning towards NCAA players late in the draft. They are often also overaged players, players that were passed up in their draft years. Nick Perbix is a good example of this, going in the sixth round of 2017 after being passed over in the 2016 draft.
One of the benefits of leaning towards NCAA and European prospects late in the draft is that the team is given more time to evaluate the player as they develop before having to make a decision on signing them. A player drafted out of the CHL is only under team control for two seasons. If the player isn’t signed they either re-enter the draft or become free agents depending on their circumstances. Of the 11 CHL prospects in this group, the Lightning have ended up signing five of them, though one is still under team control for another season.
For the European players, the team retains control of their rights for four years, though with Russian players, the team retains their rights until they are 27 on July 1st (i.e. when an NHL player would normally become eligible to be a UFA). The player can stay at home where he is comfortable and develop, and the team gets two extra years where they are probably playing professional hockey to see how they develop. Of the nine European players, the Lightning have signed four of them. Nikita Gusev’s rights ended up being traded and he did eventually sign in the NHL with the New Jersey Devils. I also expect that Huuhtanen will sign eventually, and the team still has time to get Daniil Pylenkov and Klavs Veinbergs to sign down the road.
The NCAA players are another group where the team gets to watch them develop for longer as the team retains the players rights through their senior season. Which usually means five years after being drafted as a lot of players will play another year in the USHL before going to NCAA hockey. One downside, and the Lightning have seen this play out, is that all an NCAA player needs to do is wait until August 15th after their senior season, and they can sign elsewhere. Sammy Walker and Cole Guttman both decided to do that recently.
Of the 14 NCAA picks, only five have ended up signing with the Lightning, though Ty Taylor ended up signing an ECHL deal with the Orlando Solar Bears at the organization’s suggestion. He didn’t stick past his tryout with the team and went overseas. However, the Lightning have fiver players still under team control as they are still playing out their NCAA careers. Over the next year, McKade Webster and Nick Capone will have to make a decision along with the Lightning on whether to sign with the organization as they’re headed into their senior seasons.
So what should we expect?
My guess is that of the three players, we’ll end up seeing one to two NCAA bound players and one European player and we might see one CHL player. Position is a big guess, as the Lightning have been pretty balanced in their positional selection in the 6th and 7th rounds. There’s also a high likelihood that at least one of the players will be an overager, possibly even a double overager. I also wouldn’t be surprised if one of the players is ready to come to the AHL and play for the Syracuse Crunch right away if he wants to.
But the other side of the coin is – don’t expect much. It’s very rare for sixth and seventh round picks to be home runs. The reality is that Ondrej Palat is the only player the Lightning have selected under Al Murray in the last two rounds that ended up being a home run. While a good number of these players have made it to the NHL for the Lightning, outside of Ondrej Palat, only Jake Dotchin has played more than 100 NHL games, though I expect that Nick Perbix will hit that mark this coming season as well.
When you’re picking this late in the draft, you’re really just buying $1 scratch off tickets. Generally you’re just hoping to win your money back, which in this case means a player that fills a spot in the AHL and maybe makes a handful of appearances in Tampa. Still, there is always the chance you scratch off a million-dollar winner, and that’s what the Lightning hope to do this week.
