The Sheet Blog: How to improve the decentralized NHL Draft
NHL teams have made the unfortunate decision to once again stage their draft in a decentralized format, despite widespread opposition from the hockey world and the NHL’s own desires to maintain control over the event, which it has consistently executed flawlessly.
The league doesn’t want it this way. The prospects don’t want it this way. The media doesn’t want it this way. The agents don’t want it this way.
And most importantly, the fans (you know, the ones who have the nerve to keep this sport afloat) don’t want it this way.
But hey, it’s inconvenient and expensive for the teams. So they’re gonna’ run it back. So much for ‘good of the game’ that we’ve heard so much about over the years.
Now, as I’ve mentioned before, getting the Stanley Cup playoffs out of June would solve this issue once and for all. With no final clogging up the June calendar, the draft could take place in the middle of the month, allowing the team plenty of time to organize themselves accordingly for free agency. But as it’s laid out, the NHL calendar features this annual scramble to the finish with the Cup final, the draft, and free agency opening.
But that ain’t happening. The sport is running in the complete opposite direction and adding games, which, once the players signed off on salary linkage, was always going to be the way.
It’s not just the draft that suffers here, but the NHL no longer features an event where everybody gets together in one city. A celebration of the game at the end of the season. That’s out the window now.
Steve Mayer will once again be tasked to shine up a presentation that was once the envy of other sports leagues and the first issue he’ll have to deal with is…time. This year’s draft dragged on and on. I know what they were going for and what they tried to do so I’m not going to join the pile-on. The league got handed a bad hand by the teams and tried to make it an entertaining event.
How to Speed Up the NHL Draft
So, a couple of quick suggestions from my little corner here.
As I mentioned on Twitter/X over the weekend, if you want to speed up the draft have GM Tim Murray make all the picks. Nobody, and I mean nobody, understands and appreciates brevity quite like the former Buffalo Sabres GM.
Can you imagine every pick like this?
We can all dream.
As a matter of fact, Murray once told me he wanted to set the record for fewest words used for a selection at the 2015 NHL draft in Sunrise, Florida. He wanted to walk up onstage, point at who he wanted, and then walk off without uttering a single word, but the team wouldn’t let him.
How glorious would that have been?
I miss Tim Murray.
Another idea…
The teams can’t be bothered to show up to the draft, so they don’t get camera time. Simple. No more GMs talking to their new first-round prospect in the NHL Draft House.
Teams don’t seem to want to spend any money attending the event either, and seeing how it’s the kids who pay for their way there (agents do help some players and families out) makes it all about the kids. Have two-minute vignettes ready to roll as soon as the pick is made, telling us why fans should be interested in this pick. Maybe let the kid say a few words about his parents, teammates, coaches, whatever. The draft is for the people who showed up.
Or maybe just do the whole thing on NHL.com and let the players stay home just like the teams picking them.
Maybe Brady Martin was on to something.
Jarry to Edmonton?
With the Pittsburgh Penguins acquiring Calder Cup MVP netminder Arturs Silovs in a trade with the Vancouver Canucks and Joel Blomqvist poised for a significant role next season, we start to wonder where Tristan Jarry will end up and how much the Pens will have to pay to move him.
Could this be a deal for the Edmonton Oilers?
What’s Next for the Canucks?
The Canucks faced a dilemma with Silovs, who was excellent for AHL Abbotsford last season. He needs waivers in 2025-26, and the presumption was that he wouldn’t clear them. So they took their best offer from a team management they knew best.
The next question is Linus Karlsson, who was also excellent for the baby Canucks. He put up 39 points in 32 regular season games and another 26 points in 24 games in the playoffs. He also requires waivers to be sent down.
As Hart Levine of PuckPedia reminds us, Karlsson needs to play 51 NHL games next season, or he’ll be a Group 6 UFA. Do the Canucks have a spot for him next season? Do they hope they can sneak him through waivers? Do they have to trade him as well, so they don’t lose him for nothing?
Sticking with Vancouver, if Thatcher Demko and Filip Chytil stay healthy (the whole roster, actually), they should be in the wild card conversation. One problem is that it’s exhausting when you have to grind for every goal, which is probably what the Canucks are looking at next season. It’s always nice to have a player who can fly down the wing and snap home a couple of easy ones.
Does anyone know if Phil Kessel is still skating?
CBA Thoughts
I’ll write something about the CBA a little later this summer, but my initial thought is this is a win for the NHL. And it’s a major win for the league when you consider there is four billion dollars sitting there with the rumoured two new expansion teams coming and the league can now enter negotiations and sell labour peace as part of the package.
Rink Fries
Amazing how, inside of six weeks, the New York Islanders have become one of the most interesting teams to follow. Matthew Schaefer is as charismatic off the ice as he is dynamic on it, GM Mathieu Darche had a strong draft, it looks like Mathew Barzal is going back to center, you can start the see a deepening of the prospect pool and in a division like the Metropolitan the Isles may even make the playoffs…wondering if it’s possible that nobody from this past draft sticks in the NHL next season past perhaps playing a few games? That hasn’t happened since 1989, when Dave Chyzowski played 34 games for the New York Islanders and ended up getting sent back to the Kamloops Blazers, while Kevin Haller played two games for the Sabres before heading back to the Regina Pats. I guess technically the 2004 draft class is the real answer but…expect Mathieu Turcotte to coach Team Canada at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup in August. Turcotte had most recently coached the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada and was on the U-18 bench that won gold in Frisco, TX…
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