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2023 NHL Draft: No Alimony for Adam Fantilli

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Conor Bedard is always the first name that comes up when talking about the 2023 NHL Draft. He’s been the subject of many fan-invented hashtags, promoting his favorite NHL team’s tanking efforts. Due to this way draft years are set up, the GMs of these particular teams aren’t even secretly watching the bottom of the league standings with great interest.

While Bedard gets all the hype he deserves, struggling NHL teams hope their misadventures will lead to a franchise-changing windfall in the draft lottery. This season. Even if the team at the bottom of the NHL standings doesn’t bounce the lottery ball, the 2023 NHL Draft can provide a franchise-changing, cornerstone player that makes the pain of a lost season more manageable.

The two players who will earn status as the main “consolation prize” should the team lose the No. 1 pick are Russian scoring sensation Matvey Miszkov and the University of Michigan’s freshman, giant center. This is Adam Fantilli. Swedish forward Leo Carlsson is also making headlines for his strong start in the Swedish hockey league.

Fantilli now appears to be building a stronger inside track for second place. He has so many tools in the center that the team covets on a frame he’s already proud of. You can even find a few scouts bold enough to suggest that Fantiri is a greater threat to Bedard.

As for Fantilli himself, he’s certainly not playing to be the second pick this season. He told TSN at the end of the summer that he feels he can challenge Bedard and that his goal is to finish first.

Fantilli is letting his play tell the rest of the story at this early stage of the college season. In his first four games for Michigan, Fantilli has scored his eight points, including his seven assists, leading the NCAA at this early stage of the season.

The Wolverines and Fantili will travel to Lake Superior State this weekend to face the Lakers in NCAA non-conference action on Friday and Saturday nights, streaming exclusively on FloHockey.

2022 Michigan vs Lake Superior – Men

Fantilli’s eight points to start the season equals the total scored by Jack Eichel in the first four college games of the 2014-15 season. Aichel scored 71 points that season at Boston College, marking the best season by a first-year draft-eligible freshman since Paul Kariya scored 100 points in 1992-93. In 2015, Eichel finished second overall behind Connor McDavid in the 2015 NHL Draft year, with multiple teams tanking hardest for his shot at McDavid, and even the No. 2 pick significantly upgraded the franchise. I felt like

In hindsight, the gap between McDavid and the rest of the field was even greater than we knew at the time. , which makes Fantilli’s positioning this season particularly interesting.

At 6-foot-2 and approaching 200 pounds, Fantilli is a completely different player than Bedard. Fantilli’s physical edge and strength give him a distinct advantage over many other players in this class, especially Bedard, who is 5-foot-10 and 185 pounds.

Given the accomplishments Fantilli showed early on, hopes are only rising as to his long-term NHL prospects and how impactful he can be as a freshman in the short term. A season like Aichel’s is not out of the realm of possibility, as we’ve already seen them dominating at all levels of the USHL, especially last season in the USHL.

In the 2021-22 Chicago Steels, Fantilli scored 74 points in 54 games. This tied him with Kyle his Conor for the most points by a player in a draft-minus-one season in USHL history. Meanwhile, Fantilli averaged 0.05 points per game, higher than Connor. Coincidentally, Conor followed up an impressive USHL career by producing 71 points as a draft-plus-1 freshman at the University of Michigan, matching Eichel’s raw point output.Now Conor is in the NHL. Winnipeg finished the season with 47 goals for his Jets. As such, Fantilli found himself in notable companies early in his career.

It’s still a long season and anything can happen, but Fantilli has shown he’s not going to be anyone’s comfort. It retains its position as no worse than the top two picks, but has a chance to do something special at the college level. After celebrating his 18th birthday two weeks ago, Fantilli said five of his players (Matty Beniers, Owen Power, Kent Johnson, Thomas Bordeeau and Nick Blankenburg) left last season, leaving him almost immediately. The NHL team will be considered for de-programming in Michigan. Closing out the season.

Most teams can’t sustain losses like that all at once. Michigan continues to attract top talent, but it will take a special effort for this group to be as young as it is now and honestly aim for a national championship — ending his NCAA title drought in men’s hockey. The Michigan Expedition is now in its 25th year. With his freshman players like Fantilli playing at a particularly high level, national title ambitions are a little more real, but the road ahead remains bleak.

Since Rick Dipietro was #1 overall in 2000, Achel has been the best player drafted straight out of the NCAA, so it’s hard to avoid seeing similarities between Achel and Fantilli. , narrowly losing to Providence College in its magical 2014-15 campaign. Eichel became the second freshman in his Hobies to win his Baker Memorial Award as the top men’s college hockey player. If Eichel had done the same thing he did in BU the other year, he would have been his No. 1 pick pretty easily. He just so happened to be in the same draft with the greatest player in the world since Sidney Crosby a decade ago.

Fantilli could be in a similar boat in that regard. Bedard isn’t a skater, but neither is McDavid or any other skater, but he’s the best pure man I’ve ever seen since I beat Prospect, including Matthews. Goal could be him one of his scorers. If Fantilli wants to be number one, this will be very difficult to overcome.

Teams continue to enter the market for players with top center upsides, especially if they have the size. Fantilli has shown in recent years that he has a bright side. Each year he continues to add or improve elements of the game to make it the complete package the team is looking for. He can probably afford to try and force a play here and there, brushing away some of the pack’s decisions, but there’s not a lot missing in his game.

As a result, the Michigan Wolverines still have to feel crowded to contend for the top prize in this year’s NCAA, and Fantilli is still on track to become one of the most influential young players of all time. You must feel that you are progressing to some drafts. It doesn’t sound like an alimony profile to me.

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