nhl draft 2021

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Michigan Hockey Rocks the NHL Draft
Alex.Drain • July 27, 2021 • 3:42pm

This past weekend was the 2021 NHL Entry Draft, held a bit later than normal due to the COVID-induced NHL schedule, but it still happened, and well, uh, if you missed it, here's a small summary: 

Yeah, that happened. Michigan Hockey landed four of the top five picks in the NHL Entry Draft, something we thought was a small possibility, but I myself didn't think was likely entering draft day. And when combined with incoming freshman Mackie Samoskevich going 24th overall to the Florida Panthers, Michigan became the first NCAA team to ever produce five first rounders in a single NHL draft. It's been awhile since I wrote a Michigan-hockey specific piece, and since we're currently in the summer doldrums, I thought I'd put together this article looking at who each player was picked by, what it means for their NHL futures, and what it all means for Michigan Hockey's 2021-22 season. We'll go player by player for this: 

 

Owen Power

The towering defenseman went 1st overall to the Buffalo Sabres, the first Michigan player to ever be picked 1st overall in the NHL Draft and just the sixth Michigan athlete to go 1st in any of the big four (NHL/NBA/MLB/NFL) drafts, joining Jake Long (2007), Chris Webber (1993), Cazzie Russell (1966), Elmer Madar (1947), and Tom Harmon (1941) in that rare company. First and foremost we should send our sincere condolences to Owen for being picked by the Sabres, a franchise that has been stuck in a perpetual rebuild for nearly a decade now and has a long track record of messing up their prospect development. It's definitely not the team I would want to be drafted by, but Power will join fellow young defenseman Rasmus Dahlin on Buffalo's blue line and the Sabres seem to be accumulating lots of young talent and future draft capital to help put a core together, so it may not be as bleak of a future as it seems in the present. Especially if Buffalo can land, say, Shane Wright in next year's NHL Draft. That said, it's hard to trust the Sabres to play any of their cards right when we've just watched them repeatedly go bankrupt at the poker table. 

The Sabres bet high on Power's potential to develop further as an offensive player in drafting him at the 1OA slot. Pretty much everyone (your author included) sees Power as a future top four defenseman in the NHL who can handle tough defensive assignments and munch minutes. He was arguably the draft's safest prospect and in a year with tons of COVID-related scouting uncertainty, going safe with such a high pick seemed optimal. The question is about Owen's NHL upside. Part of the reason he was picked 1st is that he's tall and there's nothing that Hockey Men love more than Big Tall Defensemen, seen this weekend in Philadelphia paying a king's ransom for Rasmus Ristolainen, a defenseman who is objectively awful at hockey, but apparently it doesn't matter because Risto is tall. Same logic here. No matter how Owen develops in the NHL, no one will ever be able to take away the fact he's tall (unless Rick Moranis still has his electromagnetic shrinking machine) and for some reason, to a great many institutional NHL scouts, that has some special value. 

At this juncture it appears very likely that Power will return to Michigan for this coming season. He was listed on Michigan's 2021-22 hockey roster that was discreetly slipped out to the public sometime in the last few weeks, which shows all of Michigan's freshmen from last year returning (and with their grade years all bumped up one). Nearly all Internet Scouts who I follow and interact with agree that Power will benefit from playing one more year in the NCAA, and since Buffalo appears to be stripping their roster to tank for Wright in the 2022 Draft by trading several key players, they have no logical reason to rush Power to the show. In fact, the incentive is the opposite direction, to keep him off the roster, if the goal is to lose as much as possible next year. Scouts are most looking to see a more dynamic element in Power's game, an ability to rack up points and drive offense from the back-end. With Cam York gone, there will be a hole on Michigan's top PP unit, and perhaps Power could try and fill it. Power himself has indicated a return to Michigan was more likely than not and given the way Buffalo is behaving as a franchise, it seems extremely probable at this point in time that #22 suits up in the Maize and Blue again, though I'm not sure when we will know officially. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Lots more draft picks]

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