NHL Draft: What rhymes with ‘first overall’?

FanSided’s hockey bloggers recently completed an NHL mock draft, in advance of the NHL’s real entry draft taking place in Los Angeles this weekend. Since FanSided is missing bloggers for a few of its team sites (including Edmonton, which has the Number One overall pick), and since (sob) my Flames are unencumbered with a first-round pick this year thanks to a very ill-advised trade (is it wrong to wish Olli Jokinen would impale himself on a hockey stick?), the FanSided hockey braintrust asked me to handle the first-overall pick on behalf of the Oilers.

Now, being a Flames fan – which, by definition, means loathing the Oilers with every fibre of my being, and wishing them bad luck in everything they do  – my natural temptation was to trade the Number One pick to Calgary for, say, Ales Kotalik. (and then, of course, have Kotalik refuse to report, forcing the Oil to trade him for a bag of pucks and and old skate sharpener.) OK, done. “With the first overall pick, the Calgary Flames select…”

But FanSided’s leadership refused the transaction. I offered to make it more realistic – Jay Bouwmeester, Matt Stajan and, oh, I don’t know, next year’s first-rounder – but they wouldn’t budge.

So, the Oilers were stuck with the first-overall pick, and they were stuck with the enemy picking it for them. So, I tried to be conscientious. Admittedly, I took all of 10 seconds to make my decision, but that’s all I would have needed even if it wasn’t the Oilers.

Taylor Hall. Windsor Spitfires. No question. No debate.

OK, so no debate for me. Others have debated it plenty leading up to the draft. Hall is considered neck-and-neck with Tyler Seguin, another OHL scoring machine, as the top choice. Hall is considered the better goal scorer, Seguin the better playmaker. Hall is a left wing, Seguin a centre.

Now, some people have been saying it makes way more sense for the Oilers to take Seguin. They have lots of quality prospects on the wings, but are desperately thin at centre. They have young guys who filled the nets in junior, and they need a guy to set them up. The playmaking centre is the guy for them, they insist.

Hogwash, I say. When you’re blessed with the Number One pick, you take the best player, regardless of position. And Hall is, no doubt, the best player.

And I say this while citing a quasi-legal NHL draft precedent known as “Lafleur vs. Dionne”.

In 1971, the Montreal Canadiens wrestled long and hard over whether to pick Lafleur – an electifying right wing (and occasional defenceman) who had led the Quebec Remparts of the QMJHL to a Memorial Cup victory (almost single-handedly establishing “the Q” as a legitimate top-flight junior league in the process ) while breaking every goal-scoring record in sight – or Dionne, the slick little centre who had left Quebec to play with St. Catherines of the Ontario Hockey Association, winning two scoring titles in what was generally considered a higher-calibre league.

The Habs chose Lafleur – even though Dionne might have been the safer pick and filled a critical need in Montreal’s front lines (remember, Jean Beliveau had just retired after the Habs’ 1971 Cup win).  And while history tells us that both he and Dionne were outstanding NHLers – indeed, Hall of Famers – the fact is that Dionne could never match the excitement that Lafleur’s lightning-fast speed, electrifying skills and on-ice flare generated. (Not to mention the five Stanley Cups Lafleur contributed to.) Guy Lafleur was the NHL’s unchallenged superstar, its most recognizable hero, for several years in the mid-to-late 1970s; Marcel Dionne was a pale challenger to his throne.

And all this despite that fact the the Habs spent more than a decade trying to find a centre who was a good fit with Lafleur, to fill that hole on their top line – never with any great success. It turned out Le Demon Blond, and the Canadiens, didn’t need an A-list centre; Lafleur dominated the ice and made those around him better from the wing, and put on a hell of a high-speed show in the process. He was a 1970s equivalent of Alex Ovechkin.

Taylor Hall may be the Alex Ovechkin, or Guy Lafleur, of the 2010s. All you have to do is watch him once to see it. The guy takes your breath away. When he skates with the puck, he isn’t just fast with it; he travels through time with it. He’s mesmerizing.

Like Lafleur, he has also carried his junior team to the Memorial Cup championship on his shoulders. In fact, he did it twice – back-to-back titles, and back-to-back tornament MVPs for Hall.

I don’t care that he’s not a centre. The Oilers need help everywhere; focusing on a lack of centre is like the captain of the Titanic focusing on a lack of caviar.

This guy is going to be amazing. He’s got tools that Seguin, everyone else in the draft, indeed all but a couple of guys in the NHL – as good as they might be – can only dream of. He’s magical. He’ll fill buildings. He’ll fill nets. He’ll fill youtube. Just watch – and enjoy the show.