The Bruins have the 20th overall pick in Friday night’s NHL draft, which could be one of the most unpredictable drafts in a long time.
While the Sabres taking Owen Power No. 1 overall seems like a pretty safe bet, the rest of the top 10 could shake out in pretty much any order. After that, things are even less set in stone, with a wide range in rankings -- from mid-first round to mid-second round or later -- for numerous players.
A lot of that lack of consensus is because of how unique this past season was for scouting departments. Some top junior leagues didn’t play at all (like the OHL), some played shortened seasons (like the WHL and NCAA), and many of them had restrictions of scouts attending games.
Meeting with the media via Zoom on Thursday, Bruins general manager Don Sweeney explained how the team has prepared for the draft and some of the challenges they’ve faced.
“Yeah, the process has certainly been unique,” Sweeney said. “There are a number of players in certain leagues that we didn’t get to see live nearly as much as in years past. You’re relying on a smaller sample size, underage projections of players and their own growth and development, so it presents some challenges. We’ve done an awful lot of video work, a lot of background work and sort of diving below. I think every team’s probably trying to go in the same direction on that front.
“As I said, I think it presents probably a little more variance in terms of what the projections are for players as you go through. Outside of the top-end players in the draft that people probably feel comfortable with, I think you’ve got a spectrum of players probably from there on through the second and third rounds that may have greater variance associated with them. That’s just associated with, as you described, the challenges and uniqueness of what we’ve all been dealing with and the lack of dealing with live in particular.”
This is just the second time in the last four years the Bruins have had a first-round pick. They don’t have a second-round pick after trading it to Buffalo for Taylor Hall at the trade deadline, but they do have a third, fourth, fifth, sixth and two sevenths. Round 1 begins at 8 p.m. Friday on ESPN2, while Rounds 2-7 will be Saturday on NHL Network beginning at 11 a.m.
For a look at 10 players the Bruins could take with the 20th overall pick, click below:
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