The 2023 Upper Deck NHL Draft will be held June 28-29 at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The first round will be June 28 (7 p.m. ET; ESPN, SN, TVAS) and rounds 2-7 are June 29 (11 a.m. ET; NHLN, SN, TVAS). NHL.com is counting down to the draft with in-depth profiles on top prospects, podcasts and other features. Today, a look at the top eligible goalies. NHL.com's full draft coverage can be found here.
By the second round for sure. First round maybe. It definitely seems to be hard to draft goalies but you can get a high rank goalie prospect much later in round 1 or 2 and if it works out then you are laughing. If it doesn’t, then probably nobody will say anything unless you drafted him 3rd overall or something.
As someone who’s not paid terribly much attention to the draft crop this season, who would you look for in terms of going early, and to what team? Obviously the Caps have their troubles between the pipes, but anyone they draft now won’t be ready until after Ovi’s gone, making that rather a moot point, no?
I think Bedard and Fantilli will probably go 1 and 2. Carlson will probably be 3rd. After that I wouldn’t put money on anything.
Matvei Michkov is sort of the dark horse in the draft. He’s ranked high in skill but still has a contract in the KHL for a couple of years so he can’t play in the NHL. Teams might also worry that he would stay in Russia and never come, so I could see him drop and possibly picked up by the Caps. They’d probably be confident that Ovi would be enough to get him over here.
I should have clarified I meant on the goalie side of things. Obviously Bedard-Fantilli are 1-2, and Carlsson is almost certainly following to Columbus at 3. But I’m nowhere near knowing enough about the boys in net.
Sorry. With the goalies you probably know just as much as I do. I might do mock drafts for the next year and see how much worse I am than nhl teams.
Goalies are straight up voodoo, and I am not one of them (I play winger, actually), so I try to steer clear of talking about them too much just because it’s out of my depth.