Three big takeaways from Round 1 of the 2023 NHL Draft
By Jim Lynch
3. If Round 1 was any indication, we are in for a long day today.
Today is going to be a long day, especially if the NHL phone lines are as calm as they were yesterday. Right before every team goes on radio silence for the next three months, the draft is usually the place to see some fire works with teams getting deals done. That was not the case to kick things off on Wednesday.
It took the NHL over three hours to get 32 players selected through the NHL Draft. Now we have to do another six rounds of that on Thursday. Obviously I know things speed up a bit in the later rounds, but overall I think the draft was a bit dragged out longer than it needed to be.
I did enjoy watching the interviews of the draftees during the broadcast. It was cool hearing Will Smith sing “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” during his interview, but overall the draft ran a bit long on Wednesday night.
https://twitter.com/SanJoseSharks/status/1674204472455872513?s=20
Heading into Round 2, I think things will heat up. We have not seen a handful of teams draft yet, and there are a lot of teams with a very few amount of draft picks in the next six rounds. Overall, teams might be more open to making deals now than they were to start things off when they had a certain player in mind to draft.
The 2023 NHL Draft starts back up again at 11 a.m. ET.