Aaron Ekblad – Maybe Not the Best Choice

Well I’ve been away for a while but just because I’ve been away doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention. While there is plenty of talk about offseason moves, who to trade, who to sign, etc. At this time of year the biggest question is who to draft.

The Oilers once again find themselves with a great draft position (third overall at this June’s draft, but you already knew that) and there has been some great debate on who the Oilers should select when Craig MacTavish and Daryl Katz’s son step up to the stage to make their selection. There are a few good options on who they should take, will Ekblad the big rangy defenseman be available at 3? Will Sam Reinhart make it by Florida and Buffalo? What about talented center Sam Bennett or the Deutschland Dangler Leon Draisaitl? Could the Oilers take one of those two?

If you’ve read my end of the season article or pay attention to my opinions on social media (I wouldn’t pay attention to much of my drivel so I wouldn’t expect you to) I’ve been on record as saying that the Oilers would be best suited drafting Aaron Ekblad if available when they pick. Well I’ve changed my mind and this article is going to explain why I’m flip flopping on this.

A month or so ago (a little after I wrote my last piece here on theoilersrig.com) I started thinking about previous drafts and how and when defensemen were selected, then I asked myself; “Self, how many times is the first defenseman picked turn out to be the best rear guard of his draft class?” well I finally got around to looking into it, and from what my searching has taught me the answer is “not very freaking’ often”

There are some obvious ones out there that came to mind rather quickly;

Chris Phillips drafted 1^st overall in 1996, now Chris is from my home town, I played baseball with him as a teen (he was really good at that sport too) he’s a favorite of mine and carved himself out an amazing career in the NHL. But, he never turned in to the player he was hyped to be when he was with the Prince Albert Raiders and the Senators took him with the top pick in the draft. Not only that there’s a few players selected after him that I think could be considered better at the position overall, including Sami Salo, Pavel Kubina and of course one of the best defensemen in the NHL today, Zdeno Chara (3^rd Round).

Besides that season there have been many more instances where this is the case. I looked back from the 2003 draft up to 2010 and here is what I found;

2003

What an incredibly deep draft for defensemen! This seems to go in cycles, every few years there is a glut of talented d-men and of all those year this might be one of the greatest.

Ryan Suter was the first rear guard selected, then Braydon Coburn, and Dion Phaneuf as 7, 8, 9 overall respectively. Brent Seabrook was taken 14^th overall, followed by Matt Carle at 47^th overall and then of course Shea Weber at 49^th overall in the second round.

You can make an argument for any of these guys being the best, hell, Ryan Suter is great, Dion Phaneuf has more points than any of the defensemen drafted this year and Brent Seabrook has 2 Stanley Cups, but Shea Weber, the last of the picks I mentioned, is IMO clear and away the best d-man from the 2003 class, and among the best defensemen in the NHL today.

2004

2004 wasn’t nearly as strong a draft class as the year previous, the first D-man selected was the infamous pylon Cam Barker and we all know how that turned out. Next rear guard to go was former Oilers and now Calgary Flame Ladislav Smid, Mike Green was the last defenseman to go in the first round. Right there shows that Barker wasn’t the best player selected.

In fact if you look at the later rounds of the 2004 draft you will find that it had some pretty good players too, Nik Grossman and Alex Goligoski were second round selections while Alex Edler was taken in the third and Nikita Nikitan and Mark Streit picked in the 5^th round. Hmmm I see a trend.

2005

This year’s draft also provided some good NHL’ers, Jack Johnson was selected 3^rd overall by the Carolina Hurricanes. Johnson is with his third NHL team since being drafted which says something about his talent level, until this year he hasn’t really been that star guy manning the blue line that Carolina had hoped.

Johnson isn’t the guy I would call the best d man from this class that title in my opinion goes to Marc-Edouard Vlasic. Not a lot of people were talking about Vlasic up until the Olympics this season but he’s played 600 games in the NHL and is the top guy on one of the best teams in the league (regular season wise).

There are other names that you will recognize and many of you would put those guys ahead of Johnson and some would say they’re better than Vlasic. Mark Stall, Matt Niskanen, Kris Letang, Keith Yandle, Nik Hjalmarsson, and Anton Strahlan round out the list. Pretty good options for any team if you ask me.

2006

06’ was a weak year for defence, and that’s putting it lightly. Looking back at this draft I could only find 3 notable NHL defensemen. The first picked was Erik Johnson by the St. Louis Blues, they later traded him to the Avalanche. This is one of those rare cases where the first guy selected might just be the best in the NHL so far.

The second first rounder picked was none other than the argument inspiring Jeff Petry, IMO he’s going to turn into a decent ¾ guy going forward, whether it’s with the Oilers or not. The only other real notable guy is Andy McDonald who just recently signed a CA-RA-ZAY contract extension with the Philly Flyers, I’d like a guy like McDonald on the team but if I had to pick between him and Petry well I’d say yep yep on keeping Jeff with the Oilers.

2007

Thomas Hickey was the first blue line guard to be taken in 2007, so you can see where this is going to go. The LA Kings must be extremely disappointed in this pick, at 4^th overall you would hope to see him as an NHL regular making an impact in games regularly, instead he is still having trouble sticking with the big club.

The other d-men taken in the first round were; Keaton Ellerby, Ryan McDonaugh, and Kevin Shattenkirk. If I had to pick between the five first rounders I think McDonaugh would be my guy. However there was a player picked in the second round that has already won a Norris trophy and is currently tearing it up in the playoffs, that man is none other than PK Subban.

Some note able names from later in the draft are Alec Martinez (fourth round), Jake Muzzin (fifth round) and Carl Gunnarson (seventh round). Again proving that my theory.

2008

Ok well 2008 maybe another exception to the rule, but that is debateable. There were ten, yes ten defensemen selected in the first round on the 2013 draft, in fact from all the years looking back I had a really tough time finding a draft where this many good defensive players were picked in the first round. This will be considered a historic draft year.

Ok so here are the first round selections; Drew Doughty, Zack Bogosian, Alex Peitrangelo, Luke Schenn, Tyler Myers, Erik Karlsson, Jake Gardiner, Luca Sbisa, Michael Del Zotto, and Jon Carlson. WOW, see what I said.

Drew Doughty is who I would give the top defenseman vote to, but a lot of people would argue for Peitrangelo. Doughty has played 442 regular season games, has 59 goals, 162 points for 221 career points, He also has a Stanley Cup ring.

Alex Peitrangelo spent an extra two seasons in junior after his draft year, and while he could have made an impact right away in the NHL, a lot of people consider how the Blues handled his development should be the template for bringing in D-men to the NHL. He’s played 305 games, has 39 goals and 135 assists for 172 points, he also has dramatically less penalty minutes compared to Doughty (105 compared to 347) his points per game is also higher than Doughty (0.56 to 0.5). The argument is there for sure that Peitrangelo may in fact be the better player.

2009

With the 09/10 drafts its getting tough to say who the best defenseman is only because these folks haven’t played too many NHL games yet. With defenseman it’s always a few years and many games played before you can make an official call on who is the best of the bunch. For this reason I’m only going to talk about first round picks.

In 2009 there were four highly touted defensive prospects selected in the first round and they were; Victor Hedman, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Ryan Ellis and Dmitri Kulikov. Out of the four Hedman has played the most games (333) and this year finally showed that it may have been worth taking him at first overall.

Kulikov has played the second most games (313) mostly because he’s been forced in early on a bad team, sound familiar? He’s been talked about in trades now that he’s an RFA and hasn’t played to his potential but I’d say he’s still a very good prospect going forward.

Ellis finally has played 144 games as he had trouble cracking the line up with Nashville until Ryan Suter left town, but that’s probably a good thing, giving him another year in Junior and a year of seasoning in the AHL.

Now, as far as I’m concerned OEL is the best man selected out of this draft. He’s playing great in Phoenix, in fact, he’s jumped ahead of Keith Yandle on the depth chart. I’ll even go so far to say that OEL is a top 10 defensive talent in the NHL right now.

2010

In 2010 defenseman Erik Gudbranson was the first D taken. He’s a hell of a prospect and had a decent year on a bad team in Florida. That being said there next guy selected to tend the blue line is Cam Fowler. Fowler coming of a Memorial Cup victory with Taylor Hall stepped right in to the NHL with the Anaheim Ducks and had good first season, followed by a sophomore slump but since then has emerged as a leader for the Ducks on the blue line, especially on the power play.

There’s another player that deserves a mention on this list and that player is Justin Faulk of the Carolina Hurricanes. Like Fowler he was touted as an offensive defenseman that can skate and get the puck out of the zone quickly and crisply, Faulk has been up and down between the AHL and the NHL but is still trending upwards on the Hurricanes depth chart.

So What Does it All Mean?

Had to steal that line from our friend Lowetide, sorry Alan. But what this shows us is that there is a very good chance that Aaron Ekblad is not going to be the best defenseman drafted this June. By the numbers and only for the 8 drafts I went back and looked at the chances that Ekblad comes out on top is 25%. I’m sure that if you went back further and looked that number would end up a lot lower.

I’m not saying the Oilers shouldn’t take young Aaron if available, he’s still a hell of a prospect and I think eventually he’ll turn into a player. But is the risk worth it, the Oilers might just be better suited taking one of the few good centers available. If there is one thing that experience has taught us it’s that a top two center is just as hard to come by as a top end defenseman, and the Oilers prospect list at D is starting to get fairly deep. Sure we’ll have to wait for these guys to develop but hell, one of them could very well turn out to be the best of their draft class, if we’re lucky.

Thanks for Reading