Player agent Allan Walsh rips the NHLs plans for June Draft.

The National Hockey League appears intent on moving forward with a plan to hold a draft in early June of this year in spite of all the concerns surrounding such an event, but it sounds like many of the league's key figures are against the idea, or so one player agent would have you believe. 

In recent comments made to the Associated Press player agent Allan Walsh of Octagon Hockey, who represents players like Marc Andre Fleury of the Las Vegas Golden Knights, insinuated that the plan to move forward so early with the draft in June was not want general managers around the league wanted. Although Walsh did not say that every general manager in the National Hockey League shared his opinion, he certainly went out of his way to make it clear that it was a strong majority.

“I have not talked to one GM who likes it, and I talk to almost all of them,” said Walsh as per The AP.

“The draft serves a lot of different purposes in giving GMs the tools to build their roster for the next year apart from just drafting seven rounds of players,” Walsh said. “The cap teams — the Torontos, the Tampas — are going to have to move at least one big contract to make it work. And the time to do it is at the draft. But you can’t do it under a first week or second week of June scenario when you don’t know if the season is canceled or whether we are really going to come back and play.”

There's no denying that the points made here by Walsh are true, but the problem with his criticism of course is that it comes without a solution to the problem. The NHL is not doing this because they want to, it is clear that the league will struggle to compress its schedule for the remainder of this season into a timeframe that would not disrupt the start of the 2020 - 2021 NHL regular season and adding a draft onto the back end of that compressed season would only create more problems in that regard.

Walsh criticism is entirely valid of course and how this bizarre draft is viewed by fans of the league will likely vary based on how it impacts individual teams.