Drowsy Draft

For a franchise that’s made clear its intention to embrace a youth movement, sitting on the sidelines for the first two rounds of the 2017 EHE Entry draft was surely less than ideal. Nevertheless, the San Jose Sharks came away from draft week satisfied they added enough solid prospects to the organization.

We caught up with Sharks GM Kyle Phillips for a quick Q&A about his team’s performance on the draft floor.

On having to wait for Round 3 to make their first selection:

“Obviously it wasn’t great, and I can promise it won’t happen next year. But our first-round pick was traded before I was hired, and the three second-rounders I’ve traded brought back high-ceiling assets. So as painful as it was being stapled to my chair, I was able to live with it.”

On selecting centermen with their first three picks:

“We’re more than happy to stock up at such a critical position, but it was just a coincidence. Our philosophy is to always take the best player available.”

On the perceived reach to take Eetu Luostarinen at 132nd overall:

“We appreciate that Eetu isn’t that highly regarded in the wider scouting community, and we were patient until the fifth round. But at some point we had to take into account that our European scouts are fully professional, while our local scouting team is just one guy at a computer being paid in sandwiches and motivational Facebook memes.”

On the league-wide trend towards overagers:

“Frankly we were surprised at just how many repeat-eligible players were taken this year. It’s an understandable strategy, and we certainly had some of those guys on our radar. But aside from the last pick [21-year-old goaltender Gilles Senn] each time our turn came around the name at the top of our board happened to be an 18-year-old.”

On the lack of trades by the team:

"Well, of course we kept tabs on the asking prices for various assets. Our first choice would have been to move down to add a few more picks, but there was just never a fit for what we thought was a fair-value deal. And in the end, the top priority was to focus on getting the best player possible with every pick we did have."

- with files from the San Jose Mercury News