Bruins assistant GM (and scouting guru) Jim Benning met with the media after the Bruins selected Lars Volden in the sixth round to break down the events from the last two days.
Warning- this video is more than 9 minutes long, so only the hardest of the hardcore draftniks will likely have the attention span to sit through it. Wish I had broken it up into two segments, but here is Benning's remarks in their entirety from Alex Khokhlachev (and he recaps Hamilton later on) to Volden.
*(Not affiliated with the Boston Bruins or the New England Hockey Journal)
I'll try and keep this short !
ReplyDeleteJust the fact of drafting Hamilton and Kkokhlachev makes this draft a huge win for the Bruins. Hamilton never should have been there for the Bruins and I think it caught everyone by surprise. He wasnt even a thought for me because I never would have expected this. It was a HUGE coup for Boston.
But Koko is more than just the icing on the cake. He made the draft cut by 5-6 days? Another year in Junior where he will push 50 goals and 100 points would have made him a top 10 next year.
Some people question him because he was left off Team Russia in both the Super series and the WJC and also the top prospects game (we've discussed that here before so I wont touch on that again).
But his being left off the Russian squads was just political. The KHL basically formed their new junior league around this kid and because of him. And his dedication to play in the NHL is unquestioned. He could easily be making Millions in Russia right now. It'll be 4 years before he makes that in NA.
Someone asked me this morning after watching everything he can on Koko in the last two hours if I saw the similarities to Jeff Skinner that he did. While I think there are some, lets let Koko have another year in junior before we go making that comparisson.
That said, there is no way I would have thought he'd be available at number 40. At best I thought he was a late first, at worst a very early second. These are two absolute steals for the Bruins and makes this draft a huge win IMO.