For the longest time it seemed like a forgone conclusion that 17 year old forward Jack Hughes would be the 1st overall pick at the 2019 National Hockey League Entry Draft, but for the first time that I can remember there is now talk of a legitimate contender to that throne.
Now to be clear it still appears that Hughes will be the consensus number 1 pick at the 2019 draft and in fact you can hear some fan bases in the National Hockey League openly hoping that their team will "tank for Hughes." That being said though some amateur scouts have walked away from the World Junior Championship with another name in mind in their heads for the top of the draft and that name belongs to 17 year old Finnish forward Kaapo Kakko.
Columnist Aaron Vickers recently had the chance to catch up with Dennis Schellenberg, the head European scout for Future Considerations, and surprisingly Schellenberg admitted that Kakko had really blown away many of those paying attention to the World Juniors.
“I absolutely see Kakko as a legit No.1 pick, and I’m still a bit surprised to hear so little debate, although the chatter has increased since the World Juniors,” said Dennis Schellenberg as per Vickers.
“Hughes was the undisputed No. 1 to start the season, and it usually takes a while to evaluate if a player is just having a prolonged hot streak or he’s for real, and I believe lots of scouts are in the transformation from considering Kakko being on a hot streak to being the real deal.”
Now to be fair here Future Considerations currently still ranks Hughes as the number 1 pick on their draft board which indicates that in spite of Schellengerg's views on Kakko they still believe Hughes to be the better player right now. That being said though the fact that anyone has emerged to challenge him at all for what once looked like a locked in pick at number 1 is very surprising.
With the World Junior Championship already in the rear view mirror the only chance that NHL teams will get to scout Kakko now will be when he rejoins his team, TPS Turku, where he has 9 goals and 11 assists for 20 points in 28 games this season.
