The
2015 NHL Draft has been busy for trades as well as for the actual drafts. Amongst the "non-draft" news:
a) Last night, during the televised first round of the draft, 5 trades were made/announced. As of this post, it's the second day of the draft, and already another 5 trades have been announced. One interesting thing is that several goalies have been swapped (Cam Talbot, Antti Niemi, Robin Lehner, Eddie Lack, Martin Jones will all be with new teams next seasons).
b) As expected, Conor McDavid and Jack Eichel went first and second in the draft.
c) Speaking of trades, even though they ended up with 3 consecutive picks in the first round (13, 14, and 15), the Boston Bruins likely pissed off a few of their fans by trading away Milan Lucic, Dougie Hamilton, and Carl Soderberg for draft picks.
d) A few teams showed off some new threads:
- Edmonton took the opportunity to introduce their
new orange 3rd Jersey.
- We also got to see the
new, less monochromatic jerseys that Arizona will be wearing next season.
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Montreal added a white collar, white neck laces, and a french version of the NHL logo to their "new jerseys".
- Washington is changing their
3rd jersey, sticking with the retro jersey, but switching from white to red (no doubt so that they could be worn at home games).
2015 NHL Draft -
http://www.nhl.com/ice/eventhome.htm?location=/draft/2015NHL TRADE TRACKER -
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=738676EDIT:
One more bit of news...
First Chinese-born player drafted in the NHL chosen by Islanders
Saturday, 06.27.2015 / 3:29 PM / 2015 NHL Draft
By Adam Kimelman
SUNRISE, Fla. -- Andong Song became the first Chinese-born player to be selected in the NHL Draft when the New York Islanders chose him Saturday in the sixth round (No. 172).
The 6-foot, 161-pound defenseman, who plays at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, had three goals and seven assists in 26 games. He said he patterns his game after former Detroit Red Wings star Nicklas Lidstrom.
More important than Song's statistics is the significance of his birthplace: Beijing.
"I am the first," he said. "Hopefully what I want to do is rally people behind me. Not focus on myself but do something good for Chinese hockey."
Longmou Li of Chinese television station CCTV was part of a camera crew that's been following Song for three years. He said there was a lot of anticipation in China to see when Song would be picked.
"We didn't go live for the first round but we're live for the second round," Li said. "And on a Saturday night at 10 p.m., I heard it reached 2.5 million people waiting for his news."
Song said having the camera crew recording his every move already has him feeling like a star, but said he didn't mind the pressure.
"To be the first Chinese player, it's a lot of pressure from people back home," he said. "Good pressure. That'll motivate me to become a better player and hopefully I'll make them proud."
Song came to hockey almost by accident.
"When I was 6 years old I kept getting sick as a child and my mom tried finding a sport for me and hockey came up," Song said. "I tried it out and fell in love with it."
Song said finding places to play hockey in Beijing required some improvisation. There were two ice rinks, but neither was close to NHL size. At times, he had to practice on a speed skating oval.
"There was a big loop and the section in the middle would be all concrete," Song said. "We used to section off part of the track, put a net in there and start shooting pucks around. We had to improvise a lot growing up."
Song said his team won a tournament in China when he was 10, and that's when his family moved to Oakville, Ontario. He began playing with the Oakville Rangers minor-hockey program; that attracted the attention of Lawrenceville, one of the top prep-school programs in the northeastern United States.
He graduated this year, and said next season he'll play at Philips Academy in Andover, Mass., another top prep school, as a post-graduate. He plans to use 2015-16 to earn a spot with an NCAA team.
Song also will continue to play internationally; he's played the past two years for China at the IIHF Division II-B World Under-18 Championship; he was the captain of the team at the tournament this year and had two assists in five games.
China isn't close to being ready to challenge the traditional international hockey powers, but Song said he's noticed the level of play growing rapidly.
"When I started playing there weren't a lot of people there," he said. "There wasn't much support for the game. Last year when I went back, it had been eight years since I'd seen Chinese hockey and it was tremendous how far it's grown. I'm sure they'll keep trying to catch up to Europe and North America and Russia. There's still a gap between them, but I'm sure if we focus on hockey we can catch up."
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http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=772672
Topic: Official NHL Thread (Read 546152 times)