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The first round of the NHL Draft is a dream factory. The best kids in the world get to live out their dream of being drafted while their teams and fan bases dream of scoring titles, Norris Trophies, and Stanley Cups.
But at that stage, a dream is all it is.
All NHL first-rounders dominate the amateur levels, a level crammed with kids who aren’t prospects at all. Can these amateur stars shine someday against men, the best of the best, over an 82-game grind? Who the hell knows?
Even the finest NHL amateur scouts, with their high batting averages, can show you strikeouts where they missed by a mile.
For the Ottawa Senators, several of their recent first-round draft performances have been a struggle. Yes, they nailed it with Brady Tkachuk (2018), Tim Stutzle (2020), and Jake Sanderson (2020), but crystal-balling is a tad easier when you blow up your team and get to pick in the top five.
Here’s the full list of first-round picks by the old guard:
2016: Logan Brown
2017: Thomas Chabot, Colin White
2018: Brady Tkachuk, Jacob Bernard-Docker
2019: Lassi Thomson
2020: Tim Stutzle, Jake Sanderson, Brady Tkachuk
2021: Tyler Boucher
2022: Traded
2023: Traded
With their NHL dreams now faded, Logan Brown, Colin White, and Lassi Thomson have all been in the news this summer.
Thomson kicked things off by giving up (or pausing) his NHL dream. After four years in Belleville, Thomson opted to sign with a pro team in Sweden. It’s not known whether he’s closed his NHL door or not.
Colin White made the news this week, signing with the San Jose Barracuda, the Sharks’ top farm club. The Sharks were the worst team in the NHL last season.
Logan Brown missed all of last season with a reported hip injury. He was on a two-way deal with the Tampa Bay Lightning, and as we learned this week, the Bolts will reportedly bring him back on a professional tryout this season.
Except for getting stuck with the tab on White’s buyout, the Senators have nothing to show for those three players. Never say never, but they don’t appear likely to reclaim regular roles in the league. Unfortunately, their draft-day dreams are all but over.
And we could even shoehorn Jacob Bernard-Docker and Tyler Boucher into this discussion. They had their dream day as well, but in a re-draft, neither of them would come close to maintaining their past first-round status. However, their stories have yet to be fully written.
Six years after he was drafted, JBD finally became a full-time NHL player last season but remains on the fringe. Tyler Kleven is expected to move into a left-side, bottom-pair D situation, and we’re betting the team will favour a vet like Travis Hamonic on Kleven’s right side.
Even if JBD outduels Hamonic, who’s now healthy after knee surgery (and celebrating his 34th birthday today), he’ll still have to contend with a hungry Max Guenette, a dark horse candidate who’s now accomplished more at the AHL level than Bernard-Docker ever did.
Boucher is the kind of wrecking ball forward that every team could use. But wrecking balls need to be unbreakable. It will be interesting to see how Boucher might fare with a run of good health in Belleville this season.
He and the rest of this group would love a chance to pull themselves off this list and reboot the dream.