The date and specifics of the 2020 NHL Entry Draft are still up in the air and fans from teams around the league are getting excited but we need to remember that these are kids and nothing is guaranteed. Ottawa Senators fans of all should know this.
Like many other Ottawa Senators fans on June 22nd, 2018, I was tuned into the 2018 NHL Entry Draft and I was pumped. It had been a rough year; the Sens stumbled mightily the year after their Cinderella run to the Eastern Conference Final the season before and were poised to pick fifth. Erik Karlsson’s status with the team was extremely tenuous and Sens fans were nervous about the summer to come, but he was still ours and there was a bit of optimism for the first time in a little while.
When it was the Ottawa Senators turn to select, many of us were jumping in our seats that Filip Zadina was still available and we couldn’t wait to hear Pierre Dorion say his name on stage. So when Dorion announced that the Senators were selecting Brady Tkachuk I raged and I wasn’t alone.
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Sens Twitter exploded with anger and nothing but anti-Dorion, anti-Tkachuk hate spewed out of the overwhelming majority of Sens fans mouths and fingers. We couldn’t believe that we’d let a “bona fide superstar-in-waiting” go in favour of a college player that many people wrote off as the kind of “character guy” that Pierre Dorion loves to talk about…someone that had name recognition and a bruising style of play but wouldn’t do much to help us put pucks in the net.
I bring this up because two years have passed and I’d be comfortable in saying that there isn’t a single Sens fan who doesn’t love Brady Tkachuk. He is absolutely that character guy, but he’s also a force on the ice and looks like he will only get better. We were wrong and this is what the title of this article is all about. Drafting, even “sure-things,” is a gamble every time and I feel that many Senators fans are falling into their old habits.
Which players are in the “consensus” top five? Alexis Lafreniere is going to go first; we all know that. Beyond that is where many fans are getting heated about online. Is Stutzle better than Byfield? Is Raymond a better choice than Drysdale? Statistics tell one story and I fear that too many people rely on them. Zadina had 88 points in 57 games with the Halifax Mooseheads in his draft year. Brady Tkachuk had 8 goals in 40 games with Boston University. Neither are spectacular stat lines but Zadina’s was the one we wanted; 44 goals is nothing to shake a finger at.
This year, Alexis Lafreniere had 112 points in 57 games before the season was cut short by the global pandemic. On paper, that’s exciting and whoever gets him should be charged up, but Sens fans once got excited for a consensus number one pick with 137 points in 53 games, *cough* Daigle *cough*.
I admit being exceptionally giddy by the idea of putting him in a sleek black 2D Sens jersey. He is forecast to be a franchise player and we haven’t had one in a little while.
With that said, we love to speculate. Nothing brings more clicks to TSN, Sportsnet, The Athletic, or fan blogs than prospect rankings and pieces about how unreal one of these kids is going to be. Nothing gets fans more riled up than somebody favoring a kid from the SEL or DEL or Liiga over a kid from the OHL or the QMJHL.
These pieces are fun, and this is a sport, a game, so we can have some fun. But please everybody, we need to relax, me included. The Ottawa Senators are going to get two great players in the first few picks. We all favour one or the other, we all would be “okay” with one or the other, and we all fear one or another being chosen off the board by Dorion. Let’s just wait. We’re stressed out enough as it is.