What should the Detroit Red Wings draft board look like?
By Bob Heyrman
The Detroit Red Wings and their fans are waiting anxiously to find out where they will pick in the upcoming 2019 NHL Entry Level Draft. The draft lottery takes place tonight in Toronto, Ontario tonight at 8 pm.
With Jack Hughes and Kaapo Kakko on the line, franchise changing talent the Detroit Red Wings are hoping for some lottery luck tonight in Toronto. It’s March Madness season, while Texas Tech and Virginia were anything but a pair of true Cinderella teams’ neither are named Duke or North Carolina. The Wings are hoping for a Ping-Pong ball to bounce their way and provide a little Cinderella magic tonight.
Although the city of Toronto doesn’t necessarily owe Detroit anything they did take Mike Babcock and Brenden Shanahan from us so this would be the ideal time to repay the debt. The Detroit Red Wings finished the season with a bang. The team was blown out by the Buffalo Sabres to the tune of 7-1, but it pushed the Wings towards having the fourth-best odds at landing the top pick in the upcoming draft. The Wings will have a 9.5% chance of acquiring the top pick in the draft while there bitter rivaled Colorado Avalanche own the top odds via the Ottawa Senators at 18.5%.
The Detroit Red Wings, although struggled for much of the year, played exceptionally well down the stretch to close out the season. The teams top line of Dylan Larkin, Tyler Bertuzzi and Anthony Mantha dominated its competition and proved they can be a legit top line in the NHL for years to come.
Andreas Athanasiou will anchor the teams’ second line, and if all goes well, he will have the talented Filip Zadina and Taro Hirose who came on nicely for the Detroit Red Wings after joining the team out of college way of Michigan State. When you mix those forwards with the potential of adding forwards; Joe Veleno, Evgeny Svechnikov, defencemen Filip Hronek, Dennis Cholowski, Jared McIsaac and whoever the team drafts this summer to the lineup, we start to once again see the sun begin to shine through the thick clouds over Detroit.
The Detroit Red Wings should be able to add an impact player through the draft, in this piece we take a look at the top five draft options, plus the ideal situation in the second round.