NHL Draft

The NHL Draft is coming up this week in Columbus, so I'm going to try to have as much coverage as possible, including my second annual attempt at a Mock Draft, which this year, should provide you with plenty of ammunition for mocking.

We'll start things off with some great articles written by CSTV's Elliot Olshansky that you should check out.

First off, he talked about Pat Maroon's situation, and had some interesting quotes from front office people in the NHL. The general consensus is that nobody really wants to push a player towards one option or the other, for fear of alienating the other side.

North of the border, people are still pushing the old "our game is closer to what you'd see in the NHL." So note to all of you fantasy hockey gurus out there: Pat Kane will score 2.5 points per game in the NHL next season. Also, there will be a lot of defenseman with the strength of a 16 year old.

Here's some more talk with NHL front office guys on drafting college players.

And an article covering signing players early.

Finally, CSTV created a handy reference table showing how many college players NHL teams have drafted, along with how many have made the NHL, and how many left early. There's also an article to accompany it.

Also of note, CSTV had a great feature on Alaska's Dion Knelsen and Colorado College's Billy Sweatt.