Photo: @Capitals

With their 31st pick they selected left-handed defensemen Alexander Alexeyev. There will be an in-depth look at him (and the other picks) in subsequent posts. In the meantime, there’s still rounds two through seven to go. 

Washington was able to grab a second 2nd round pick from their Philipp Grubauer and Brooks Orpik trade to the Colorado Avalanche. This gives the Capitals the 46th and 47th overall pick, which will make two great 2nd round picks. Following that they will have a 3rd (#93), 4th (124th), 6th (#186), and a 7th, which will be the very last pick (#217) of the draft.

Yesterday we went over who the Capitals should be selecting in the 1st and 2nd round then went in depth with each. Since there are so many players available left, We will simply list them and what round we think the Capitals should grab them.

The key here are the Capitals two 2nd round picks. There are still plenty of great players remaining that could even be considered 1st round talent. Here are players that we think could have easily gone in the 1st round:

We already wrote about Berggren, Marchenko, Wilde, and Addison here. If by miracle any of those drop to the 46th pick, then the Capitals need to jump on them. Thomas would be a great pick up as well. He’s a very smart two-way forward with good vision and an accurate shot.

These are the next group of players the Capitals should be looking to snag. They are high-end talents with immense skill. The middle two are undersized Russians that could be taken in the 3rd, maybe 4th round,but the Capitals should not take that chance as their upside is too high. Yloven and Wise won’t make it out of the 2nd round.

It’s worth bring up Nordgren, who is a Berggren-lite. He’s great at going to the net and getting those gritty goals, but also has the skill to make the pretty plays. Ranta is a high shooting Fin in the USHL that has size (6’2″). It’s always worth a gamble to grab shooters. Hutsko is a player with a lot of promise but with a lot of injuries already. He had knee surgery as an 18-year-old, but he’s very creative and highly skilled. If he didn’t have an injury history he’d probably be a 1st round pick.

Shafigullin has been on everyone’s sleeper list. He put up better numbers in the MHL, better than every other Russian in the draft, but he’s rarely ranked anywhere. Scouts either love him or think he’s overrated. He has size, speed, and skill. He didn’t play in International Tournaments so scouts didn’t really get to see him and in the MHL he played on a team that played their top six a lot, so his points could be inflated. Either way, once you get to the 3rd round it’s all about grabbing guys that are high risk high reward. Caps should grab him with their  #93 overall pick if the better names are off the board.

The 3rd round is also where we think the Capitals should take Miftakhov, who is the best goalie in the draft. He’s small, barely six feet tall, but he can move like the wind. He’s very much like Juuse Saros in Nashville: they aren’t big guys but they can read plays and go East-West quickly to get them out of trouble. Someone compared him to Marc-Andre Fleury. They seem like very similar goalies.

After the 3rd round it’s really hard to tell who will go where, so we just added all the prospects that have peaked our interest in this draft, and made one final list.

Kirk is an interesting prospect because he was born and raised in Britain. There aren’t many British-descent players, and he’s looking to be the first to actually be more than a depth player.

We spoke of Perunovich in our article from yesterday as one of the better left-handed defensemen available. He’s worth a pick, as he has a lot of great tools.

Weiss might be the best player in this last bunch. He has very high hockey IQ and skill to back it up but is small and doesn’t put enough effort in his game. He’ll need to learn to grind it out with his size to survive the NHL.

The Capitals have a chance to really grab some great players to restock their pipeline. They will draft by who is the best available, but you’d hope they grab forwards, as their defensive pool is pretty stacked. And if they are to take a defensemen it better be a right hander! The line for the lefties is getting too long.

By Luke Adomanis

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