After a strong 2013 NHL Entry Draft, the 2014 edition had a big act to follow to keep the talent pipelines flowing. Done away with one or two-player hype machines of years past, the 2014 draft provided us with a four-horse race, with the likes of Sam Bennett, Leon Draisaitl, Sam Reinhart and the exceptional Aaron Ekblad. This draft was also notable for the amount of draft-eligible players who were sons or nephews of former players and managers such as Ryan MacInnis, Ryan Donato and William Nylander. Grab a coffee and have a look though the 2014 draft, ten years on!
by TylerBlozak
40 Comments
“Why the Sabres will be tremendous by the end of the decade” and it’s next to a giant picture of Tim Murray
Of all the years we finally decided to pick someone in our own backyard, it had to be Jake Virtanen 🤦‍♂️
It’s just agonizing how the team decided to pick a guy who was bullying around other players on the ice because of his size. Hockey IQ just so fucking bad and while the skill was decent was not worth passing on Nylander or Ehlers. I knew he skates fast but pick Ehlers then since he actually skilled his way to his rank.
Brayden Point at 42 lol
Really sad Honka never panned out (would have been an all-time great hockey name). Luckily, the Finnish defenseman we selected in the first round a few years later turned out much better
They were spot on with Larks.
Ehlers <3
Crazy how all 4 of them were on the ice during the Cup Final
There was a clear top 4 in this draft and besides Ekblad who was pretty much a number one lock they could have gone in any order. In hindsight obviously Draisaitl is the guy here but a massive miss on Pastrnak here. This draft has produced some of the best players in the league right now.
Top three are Draisaitl, Pastrnak and Point in a redraft?
Why haven’t other teams tried having 3 of the 4 top picks on their team to win the cup? Are they stupid?
Not a single Rinat Valiev to be seen in the top 100.
Wow they were not high on Kempe huh?
Vancouver really dropped the ball on this draft. Thank god we got Demko at least
Taking Connor fucking Bleakley 2 picks ahead of Pastrnak when we needed a scoring winger prospect in the system anyway is going to piss me off until the day I die.
Just force either him or Rants to play LW instead and we could’ve had a top line of Rantanen/Mackinnon/Pastrnak. Filthy.
They have the top 4 guys in the wrong order.
I always forget Pasta and Nylander were once teammates.
They definitely didn’t care enough to put the right pins on the Czech maps.
“Just put it somewhere in the middle, no one’s gonna know”
They didn’t get Prague and they absolutely didn’t get Pasta’s Havirov.
Islanders came out of this with dalcolle and hosang. Yikes
That’s a good draft class.
So many incredible names and Ron Francis really forced the canes to draft Haydn Fleury
Another day another half hour at work spent reading these
A goalie that was picked 118th in that draft not even mentioned.
But damn that’s a good draft
And the top 3 won
Zito must have had a subscription
I distinctly remember when I was drafting for my dynasty league that year, I had 9 and 15 and I had zeroed in on Fiala and Pasta because of the positive way Draft Twitter had been talking about them. Needless to say I was STOKED that I landed both lol, Pasta turned out to be even better than advertised and Fiala has been a very solid top 6 forward.
(sadly that core didn’t quite pan out due to me sitting on my damn hands too long and i had to move them on, but i got good value for both.)
Fucking Dal Colle.
Nikita Scherbak…
God I crave to be in the universe where he panned out. Too bad he didn’t have the right mindset and was drafted by an organization that seemingly had complete disdain for young developing players.
Nick Ritchies evaluations were damning and accurate. Not sure wtf Bob Murray was thinking!
Bennett with head full of hair and no facial hair is more shocking than his ranking
They were clearly wrong about Draisaitl. He’s a second line centre
Dynamic point producer is the term of 2014
Damn, I’ve never heard of Chart Toppers before, must have been a bust
Definitely an all time draft fail by Jim Benning. So many great players available and he just couldn’t help himself
I have been loving these posts but this one takes the cake. Lots of big names, solid top 4, all entering/in their prime now so their skill is fresh in your mind.
lol. Jake Virtanen only 7 spots behind Draisitl
This is going to sound like sour grapes from a Boston fan but I don’t give a shit.
Ritchie is one of the worst players I’ve seen in a Bruins sweater in a long time. He routinely made me question what it meant to be a Boston fan, he tested my patience and my ability to root for my boys on a routine basis.
I can excuse a lot, that’s what sports fandom is, right? It’s a place to be biased and petty and stupid in a safe little sandbox of biased petty stupidity. But suck me sideways Thick Dick Nick made it a chore. I can handle guys lacking talent but playing with heart, I can handle a lack of heart in crazy talented guys, I can handle the staggering room temperature milk mediocrity of guys like Lee Stempniak, but Thick Dick Nick is none of those things.
He plays the game like someone trying to egg you on into taking a swing at him. He skates with the urgency of an old lady shopping for canned beats, but with half the speed. His hockey IQ is on par with Brett Favre’s. I’m assuming Brett Farve has never played hockey, correct me if I’m wrong. Nick constantly skates around like he’s surprised he’s at an NHL game and then glides back to the bench (probably from the penalty box for a stick infraction) with the dim look of Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Then he sits there like a melting chocolate Santa, with his hair inexplicably sticking up through the vent in his helmet, waiting to be surprised by his next turn to get on the ice.
Consider this: He scored 15 goals last year, found some dangerous ice as a PP scorer, and Bruins fans were debating if he would be a good 4th liner or not this year, because our 4th line was that fucking bad, and Ritchie was the only skater who could conceivably make it worse. He scored 15 goals for us and we weren’t sure if he would be a good replacement for Chris fucking Wagner, the surly hobbit of the TD garden.
Nick Ritchie is a bigger contributor to the decline in cardiovascular health in Boston fans than smoking and obesity. He’s the equivalent of a double bacon cheeseburger on your system. He is hockey diarrhea. The guy takes the stupidest retaliatory penalties you’ve ever seen. He is complete invisible until you need a momentum swing, goes “Got ya boss” and cross checks someone in the neck and bumbles off the ice like Abbott and/or Costello while simultaneously shrugging and bitching to the refs and the guy he blindsided.
I’m sure he’s not a bad guy IRL, I don’t mean for this to be a character assassination. I’m sure he has family and besides Brett they probably don’t suck. This isn’t about kicking a player on their way out; let the record reflect that every Boston fan has a few memories of cursing his name and that we started kicking him long before he was down. (See also the general well wishes for Kuraly upon his departure.)
Nick isn’t a goon, he’s a bad boyfriend. He’ll score a couple of goals one week and you’ll think he’s turned a corner and then he’ll hit on one of your friends and tell you to chill out because he’s just being friendly. Don’t buy the hype, be fucking aware.
I am ecstatic that Ritchie wasn’t held onto as a sunk cost, and that Toronto signed him. There you go, that’s your analysis.
Tuch’s a guy that I keep waiting to blow the doors off but he just never does.
Josh Ho-Sang .. woooooff
That’s the harshest write up on a kid I’ve seen lol .. got it right on the money though
And the Anaheim Ducks select……Lumpy Nick Richie at # 10. This is a Bob Murray pick, brilliant!
Yeah we were pretty tremendous in 2020 weren’t we?