After months of speculation, the ZSC Lions confirmed what many had been expecting. Auston Matthews, the consensus choice as the probable No. 1 pick of the 2016 NHL draft, will spend his draft year playing in Switzerland’s top professional hockey league:
It’s a groundbreaking decision.
It’s typical for European teenagers to come to North American junior leagues both to raise their profiles with NHL teams and get a head start on adapting to the game as it’s played on this side of the Atlantic. It’s extremely rare for the flow of talent to go in the other direction.
Matthews’ choice raises a lot of issues, but perhaps the most critical is what this does to his value on draft day next year.
At this point, he’s the consensus No. 1 selection, but there’s a lot of ground still to be covered in the race to the 2016 draft, and he’ll need to confirm that status with a strong campaign in Switzerland. What would such a season look like?
The obvious answer would be to go back and look at what top Swiss players have done in their draft years. Ther ...
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Article written by Jonathan Willis
Auston Matthews’ Blueprint to Be the No. 1 Pick of the 2016 NHL Draft
August 7th, 2015 by Jonathan Willis Leave a reply »
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