NHL Draft 2018: 15 first-hand takeaways from a weekend in Dallas
By Josh Clark
10. The Red Wings did a solid job, as well
The NHL Draft is a prime time to build the future of your franchise. It’s also time for teams that struggled in the year prior to make some big decisions that might help set them up for a quick bounce back.
The Detroit Red Wings finished 2017-18 in disappointing fashion, so the first round was a perfect opportunity to try and fix things. They passed with flying colors.
Like the Islanders, I thought the Red Wings did a fantastic job at stealing away Round 1. The Wings owned their own pick at sixth overall as well as the Golden Knights’ pick at 30th. And when a team has two first round picks, it’s even more critical that they capitalize. Detroit did.
The Red Wings spent their first pick on right winger Filip Zadina. Regarded by many as a top-three talent in the 2018 NHL Draft class, Zadina fell out of the top three to sixth. Montreal, Ottawa, and Arizona (teams in need of offensive help) all passed on him, and it came as a bit of a surprise. So, it turned out to be a great add for the Wings. And on top of that, Zadina had a message for the teams that skipped on him.
“I’m telling my agent if they will pass on me, I will fill their net with the puck,” Zadina told the media shortly after being selected. “Yeah, it’s just I want to prove [to] them that they have done, like, a bad decision. But I’m so glad that I am in Detroit right now, so I just want to prove to Detroit that they have got a pretty good decision.”
And after adding a solid goal scorer, Detroit went one step further and used their 30th pick on another offensive threat in center Joe Veleno.
This was a surprising pick solely because of the value. At 13th overall, many analysts had the Stars picking Veleno. I was particularly high on him after scouting him and even wrote a piece talking about how well-rounded of a prospect he was. I thought Dallas was going to draft him and was perfectly okay with that, considering he was ranked as a top-five center in the class.
But he fell all the way to 30th overall, giving the Red Wings another top-15 talent for their system. It was a great way for Detroit to quickly strengthen their prospect pool and pick up two game-changing forwards.