WWYDW: Do You Draft For Need Or Best Available?

When it comes to the first handful of picks in the NHL Entry Draft, you’d have to be crazy not to pick the best available kids at the spot you’re up at.

In 2016, the Winnipeg Jets had a pretty nice collection of good, young talented forwards already and likely needed to add to their somewhat shallow prospect pool on defense which is why a Mikhail Sergachev or a Jake Bean would have been a fine pick had the team not won the lottery draft.

But the Jets did win the second of three lotto drafts that year which gave them the second overall pick and obviously at that point what the team needs goes absolutely out the window and you take the crazy sniping kid from Finland.

But as the draft goes on and the talent level starts to balance out even later in the first round and for sure into the second round. As sure-fire, “can’t miss” blue chippers give way to “project” players who are at the very least a good two maybe even three years away, the question becomes do you draft best player (as deemed by your scouts) available or do you draft for organizational needs?

We all just recently found out what newly minted Toronto Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas prefers…

But that said, if you have a surplus of quality left wingers in your overall depth chart but a significant lack of left handed defenseman, would you look to draft a left handed d-man that your scouts may have ranked lower than a forward that is still available?

That’s the scenario we’re putting to you all today.

You’re an NHL GM drafting in the third round of the draft. You have a highly ranked kid still available to you, but he’s playing a position that your team is already well stocked with and has three highly developed players in the system already. Do you skip that player and look towards a position that lacks ideal prospect depth, or do you pick the highly rated kid anyway and hope to fill out the gaps in your system in other ways? JetsNation, what would you do?

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