Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Atlanta Thrashers Draft Preview

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First Round Position: 4th

Best Picks of last 3 Years:

Zach Bogosian-D-1st 2008
Paul Postma-D-7th 2007
Bryan Little-C-1st 2006
Ryley Holzapfel-C-2nd 2006
Chris Corrazzi-G-6th 2008

Coming Down the Pipe - Atlanta sold a ton of their future in 2007 when they made the post season for the first time in team history. They dealt former first round pick Braydon Coburn as well as their first round pick from that year and because of it, the Thrashers don’t have as many high level players as a team that’s finished near the bottom so many times should. Bryan Little has been great, as has 2001 first rounder Ilya Kovalchuk is a star, but Alex Bourret (traded), Boris Valabik and Kari Lehtonen have yet to pan out as pros.

Draft Trends – The Thrashers are pretty neutral when it comes to CHL/NCAA. Of their last 19 picks, 7 have been from each league, with the rest coming from Europe.

Millard: Magnus Paajarvi-Svensson-After taking defenceman Zach Bogosian last year the Thrashers need to grab an impact forward. MPS will be a nice wing man for 31 goal man from 08-09 Bryan Little.

Flaming: Magnus Paajarvi-Svensson – Atlanta has decent prospect depth but is lacking a scorer and the Swede may partially fill the void left when Kovalchuk inevitably leaves.

4 comments:

speeds said...

Here's a report from ATL that suggests ATL is looking at (probably) Kane or Schenn

Guy Flaming said...

The suprise in Dean's write up was that he didn't list Spence Machacek in his top 5 picsk for last 3 years... I like him.

Interesting little article speeds. Pretty rare for a GM to reveal his cards well before the draft like that... assuming he's being honest.

We're still a month out from our final mock list so we'll keep this one in mind.

speeds said...

Yeah, I suppose it's a bit unusual, and it's possible there's a bit of deception going on, but because of where he is in the order I think there's a good chance he's being honest because there's no harm done by doing so. He doesn't say who he thinks is the other guy to potentially go in the top 3 is (I think Duchene is a pretty good guess given everything I've read).

Even if he's revealed that he's imagining he'll have to decide between Kane and Schenn, it doesn't really impact any potential moves around him.

Pretty unlikely that anyone is going to move ahead of #4 overall to get ahead of ATL and take Kane or Schenn, since if they move up that far it's probably because they want Duchene (or Hedman or Tavares, depending on how far up they move). If they do, it means one of the "consensus" top 3 slips to ATL at #4.

The Falconer said...

I think the Thrashers are very unlikely to take a European at that spot.