WHL Draft: Royals have eyes on offence

Royals have eyes on offence

Victoria has two picks in first round of Thursday’s bantam draft

CLEVE DHEENSAW

The standard question about pro sports entry drafts — whether to take the best player available or draft for need — doesn’t really apply to the Western Hockey League’s draft of graduating bantams.

These are 14-year-olds, and even the best of them won’t fill a need until at least two years down the road and most won’t until much later.

So, in the bantam draft, teams normally take the best player available.

Yet, as with every general rule there are exceptions, and the Victoria Royals may be one of those as they ponder their war room strategy for Thursday’s 2012 WHL bantam draft in Calgary for western North America players born in 1997.
“You usually take the best player available in the bantam draft but we’ve got a lot of good young defencemen coming up so this could be a good year to pick forwards,” said Royals GM and head coach Marc Habscheid.

The Royals franchise, known before this past season as the Chilliwack Bruins, have taken defencemen with their first-round bantam pick the last two years — Keegan Kanzig in 2010 and Joe Hicketts in 2011.

With two picks in the first round this year — the second acquired in the big January trade that sent 19-year-old Buffalo Sabres-signed forward Kevin Sundher to the Brandon Wheat Kings — the Royals will select eighth and 13th in the opening round Thursday.

Brandon had Saskatoon’s first-round 2012 selection (No. 13) from the Brayden Schenn trade last season and that is the pick the Wheat Kings traded to Victoria as part of the Sundher deal. Brandon, however, retained its own 2012 first-round pick at No. 12.

“You want the best player available when it comes your turn to pick and you’re hoping to get the best player on the board at that pick,” said Gary Pochipinski, the Royals director of scouting.

Yet, this year it’s hardly a stretch to say that a forward will almost certainly be among those two firstround Victoria picks.

“We have solid defencemen on our depth chart and hopefully a top-end forward is available to us,” said Pochipinski, who utilizes an army of 30 bird dogs around western North America to scour bantam rep games and tournaments.
“That is certainly a consideration we have been talking about, but we don’t control what the seven teams do in front of us.”

The consensus top pick, forward Matt Barzal of the Burnaby Winter Club, will almost certainly be gone by the time Victoria picks at No. 8, but there appears to be some depth among bantam forwards this year.

“There should still be high-end players [at eight and 13] and we have an opportunity to get a couple of those guys if the draw works out in our favour,” said Pochipinski, based in Olds, Alta.

You won’t hear about these players until at least 2013-14, but the future for any WHL club depends on having a good day Thursday.

“With two picks fairly high up, this is a big draft for us, especially considering we gave up a pretty good player [Sundher] to get that second first-round pick,” said Habscheid.

The Seattle Thunderbirds, who won the draft lottery among teams that missed the playoffs this season, will select first. They will be followed by the Prince Albert Raiders and Prince George Cougars.

The draft begins Thursday at 7:30 a.m. PDT and will be webcast on the WHL site.