Congratulations to all of the draft
eligible prospects who are here in the Bell Centre.
Good luck
Congratulations to all the players
are going to hear their names in the next two days.
Understand that it's just the beginning.
It's probably the easy part.
What's ahead of you is going to be much harder
You just keep pushing.
You match work ethic with will.
You can accomplish anything.
For Minnesota, driving the net.
Bjugstad sends it back to Kulikov across they score!
Kevin Fiala
and Minnesota's on the board.
Fiala stays hot.
13 goals in his last 19
games and the Wild cut the lead to 2-1
[Yannetti] Well we had an inkling you know
that the first the first pick was going to be in play.
The amateur staff is providing the next level of our thing with and with
with NHL currency and Rob took two forms of NHL currency, a draft pick and a player,
and turned it into a top nine or top 12 five-on-five guy in the NHL.
One touch back to Gaudreau. Gaudreau to Fiala, he scores!
If you tell me I can have ten 19th overall picks
I probably don't think we're going to find a top ten five-on-five guy in the NHL.
I'm excited to see Kevin Fiala play in LA.
He sounds like a player who's very fun to watch
and I'm now even more excited about the next two weeks
because of what I think this trade means for the rest of the roster.
For Eriksson Ek, back to Zuccarello, Fiala Scores!
What a win for the Wild!
We had shifted a little bit earlier.
We left some of the work at 19 to be done late on purpose
and we were able to do a little bit more work on 51, a little bit more.
A little bit more focus there.
For sure, right, you love him?
Jack, Jack Hughes
they'll tell you when, they'll tell you when.
Los Angeles selects from Northeastern, Jack Hughes.
You heard some cheers here.
Inside Bell Centre, 51 Jack Hughes
Jack you son of Kent Hughes, now the general manager here in Montreal.
So he's heading west to LA.
Our top thing with Hughes is he's got a hockey IQ.
He's got instinct and feel, the way he sees the game,
the way he moves the puck, the way he recognizes space.
He played in a league he shouldn't have played in this year.
Score! A rebound goal, Jack Hughes.
You know, I think he might if he wasn't the youngest.
He was the second youngest guy in college hockey
and his sense got him through that league.
I assume Jack would go between 26 and 33.
So when you get a player like that at 51, pretty happy.
All right.
A lot of movement down there on the draft floor
and a lot of time going off the clock here for the LA Kings.
So something might be developing down there.
We're going to move back to 10...
Yeah, yeah.
103 and 169.
103 and 169
yeah.
I have a trade to announce.
Los Angeles has traded pick number 86, the current
pick to Tampa Bay in return for picks number 103
and 169.
At 86,
we were looking at very similar players at 86.
Los Angeles selects from Dubuque, Kenny Connors.
It allowed us to do a little bit of a blanketing in the late rounds
and take some guys with some higher potential.
You got Booth, you got Salin still so one of those guys
he has Salin really high I would I would take him
we had a couple of the area guys who felt really strongly about our later picks.
I'm trying to get Salin and Booth.
What if we go Salin and hope that Booth's injury pushes them back one more round.
Here is Angus Booth putting on his Kings sweater at 116.
Gus just came out of the Memorial Cup championship.
He's a transportable defenseman, moves the puck,
but he always keeps the play in front of him.
It'll be interesting to see.
Making those moves allowed us to get Salin, who fell considerably in the draft.
He had a couple of injury problems he had long Covid.
His season was derailed multiple times.
If he ends up going towards the higher side of his potential
and where he's kind of ranked before the injury, it would certainly
then you certainly think moving back paid dividends.
You also have Lawrence and Sparkes left. You want this big kid in the bank?
You know who might like to hit? Pick 180 Jack Sparkes for the LA Kings.
You want to talk about size six foot eight.
233 pounds. That's a big boy.
Our list kind of went
and you know, we don't have a whole lot of size in our system.
We don't have you know, Sparkes can really skate like
really skate.
When you're looking at sixth
and seventh round picks, you're looking at a single digit success rate.
So why not let our development staff
arguably top tier development staff for 15 years.
You know, if anybody can develop
a later round guy,
it's them.
You need the right type of prospect, like and then you need
the right type of development staff.
It's really easy to predict what type of player they do well with,
what type of things they can fix, what type of things they can enhance.
So when you give a player with attributes and a burning desire
to reach the top of what they can reach, when you give them the curriculum
and the people on the development staff that are that good at their job,
that's why you get success like that.
As I said, you know, there's
a lot of projection in the picks and there's a lot that has to go right,
but you just need one or two of those guys to make it
and they fill in a hole that's going to be left
by what we're going to do in our next three to four years
of turning in from bottom feeder to playoff team to contendership.