A good year or bad for Edmonton Oilers to land yet again with the Top Entry Draft Pick –NHL Special
Edmonton Oilers have show how truly lucky they are after the Canadian hockey club won the National Hockey League (NHL) draft lottery and were awarded this year’s overall draft pick yet again, making it three in a row now.
As the draft takes place each and every year, teams that fail to make any significant progress in the regular season and remain ousted of the playoffs, definitely look forward to the annual entry draft to pick up some fresh and talented players.
2012 will be Edmonton’s third straight time getting the top draft pick despite have a less than 20 percent chance of getting it as they rank 29th overall with 74 points while Columbus Blue Jackets hold the 30th number spot with just
65.
"We're disappointed, but this draft is challenging," Blue Jackets general manager, Scott Howson, said about losing out on the top pick. "I know we're going to get a really good player at No. 2. ... It's really a good chance for us to move our franchise forward
in a positive direction."
Edmonton certainly needs the pick, but over these past few years, despite getting the first selection twice back-to-back, Oilers have still not been able to make any impact on the league and still stay in the bottom of it all.
Oilers picked up Taylor Hall instead of Tyler Seguin in 2010 and followed up with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, the Canadian sensation from Alberta during the 2011 entry draft, but general manager, Steve Tambellini, terms it to be a part of the rebuilding process
and that the results should start showing soon.
"We articulated a plan two years ago that we felt we had to develop and draft our own," Tambellini said. "We knew that in our market that we weren't going to attract the A-plus free agents just to come without us being a good hockey club. We know that this
is our only way to really, as a core, to get better.”
What Edmonton might regret later on is that there are practically no Taylor Hall’s or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’ to be participating this time around and could possibly end up in another lose-lose situation for the team. Taylor Hall and Nugent-Hopkins are without
a doubt very talented but grabbing players that are better the previous picks just might not be possible.
Many hockey observers have termed this year to be a bad one for the top draft pick with some sources even citing anonymous NHL executives to be saying that the upcoming draft could make a lot of teams miserable.
At the moment, there is no consensus on who should be number-one this year either by the analysts and NHL scouts, unlike last year, when Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was the clear choice to go with. Nail Yakupov, from the Sarnia Sting of the Ontario Hockey League
(OHL) has been cited to be the most looked at player at the moment.
But is he Taylor Hall or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins type talent? Only time will tell whether the player will live up to the challenge and what the Edmonton scouts are the telling the Oilers management.
The Oilers are also getting bored of being selected as number one as they are shifting towards focusing more on developing their current team full of youngsters rather than added newer ones. This even might be a chance for Edmonton to initiate some big trades
for that first overall pick, but we will have to wait till June for that.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
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