Avs Draft Review

Draft day 2022 was a monumental day for the EHE’s Colorado Avalanche. 

“I think almost everyone comes out of their draft day liking the players they picked, this isn’t lip service. We couldn’t be happier.” 

With the 12th overall pick Colorado selected Matt Savoie. “We didn’t expect him to be here plain and simple, to get a player outside of the top 10 with his ceiling is rare.” 

Minutes later Lycar took to the podium to select D man Denton Mateychuk. “So when I say we didn’t see Savoie shaking out like this, it’s exactly how we envisioned 13. We were fairly certain Denton would be here for us and was actually our second ranked d prospect.” 

Pick 20 is where things kind of went off the rails for the Avs - Lycar not one to shy away from bold moves went slightly off the board selecting D man Lane Hutson. “He was a guy we identified and wanted from the go, had we not acquired 3 other firsts we may have went a different direction here, but having done so well with 12 and 13 we felt we could take a boom / bust type risk, talking with other gms we felt he wouldn’t be around for our pick at 31 and we wanted to move on this. 

However before the Hutson pick was made  Lycar was desperately trying to move up - why? Noah Ostlund “We couldn’t believe he was still around, we strongly considered him at 12 had Savoie not been there, when you look at his IQ and his skating, we think he has all the tools necessary to be an NHL centre ice man.” 

At first the Avs were not able to move into the 21- 25 range so a decision needed to be made, Hutson or Ostlund? “We wanted both so badly but went the Hutson route, once Ostlund still hadn’t been picked at 25 we knew it had to be done now if we wanted the player!” 

Colorado then traded up with Pittsburgh and got their guy at 26. 

“To grab Noah here was just incredible and capped off what was an amazing first round for our organization.” 

“When you go into it, you don’t necessarily know how things will play out and you need to make adjustments on the fly, we were incredibly prepared and had a pretty good idea of how the top 10 would shake out, but from that point on we had to act on the fly and make calculated adjustments.” 

Despite the first round being done the work wasn’t over for Lycar, the Avs rounded out the day selecting in total 8 players all within the first 80 picks. For a full list as well as their NHL draft selection numbers, see below: 

Matt Savoie #12 (NHL #9)

Denton Mateychuk #13 (NHL #12)

Lane Hutson #20 (NHL #62)

Noah Ostlund #26 (NHL #16)

Matvey Petrov #43 (EHE Overager)

Christian Kyrou #57 (NHL #50)

Artyom Duda #62 (NHL #36)

Dylan James #79 ( NHL #40)

Shaun Stephens

Well done, really like Kyrou at the 57!

Avs Draft Review
“Luck favours the prepared & fortune favours the bold”

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