The case for, and against, trading the 2nd overall pick

The New Jersey Devils have stumbled into another high pick. What should they do with it?

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By CJ Turtoro (@CJTDevil)

When the New Jersey Devils were slated to draft somewhere around 6th overall, it was a popular opinion that we could trade the selection for an NHL-ready asset.

Then the Devils moved up to 2nd overall and the value of their draft pick increased dramatically. This made many second guess the narrative of the trade and reconsider who might be available during the draft. 

I’m going to do my best to make a case for both opinions: for and against trading the 2nd overall pick.

The case for trading the pick 

Regardless of what you want to get in exchange for the pick, the motivation for trading the 2nd overall selection has to start with a simple assumption: there isn’t a great #2 pick in the 2022 NHL Draft.

Of the 12 sources that EliteProspects cites in their draft rankings, all 12 listed Shane Wright as the #1 overall selection. I’ve talked before about how he’s an offensively underwhelming 1OA forward and it’s surprising that no one is taking a shot on someone else, but, to be frank, no one walked through the door that he left wide open in the beginning of the season. If anything, he separated from the back in the latter half of the year. He was the #1 entering this season, and after an underwhelming start, he finished stronger than his competition and retained the #1 position.

Among those 12 draft services, Logan Cooley was the #2 pick on half of them, but the other half were split among 6 other players. Jiricek, Nemec, Kemell, Savoie, Lambert.

Furthermore, if you look at NHLe-based prospect models (ex: Bader($)), Yurov’s MHL production was even more impressive than Wright’s season.

If you ask Twitter, you’ll probably see that Slafkovsky’s international play has made him a favorite at 2OA as well.

That is a list of seven guys that could be chosen at 2OA; and that’s without considering the possibility that a team could go off the board completely. 

In recent years, there is typically a consensus #2 pick. Generally, scouts had Byfield, Kakko, Patrick, Svechnikov, Laine, and Eichel as 2s in their respective years. In some of those cases, a particularly daring service might have even put them over the consensus #1. 

That doesn’t exist this year.