Hockey.Kings.2008_Draft

So the draft is tonight.

Lots of speculation surrounding my beloved L.A. Kings. Tampa has already pretty well come out and said they're taking Stamkos with the number 1, but no one is quite sure who the Kings are looking at.

There are several schools of thought here, but they all pretty much boil down to...

1) Play it safe, possibly waste the 2nd overall pick and take Zach Bogosian or Drew Doughty?

2) Trade down a couple of slots and take Filatov?

3) Figure you're pretty well set up at the farm level for the immediate future and trade down a bunch (in a relatively shallow draft) and get what you can?

1 is a really boring option, but it's got the least likely chance of not paying off, which things being what the are in L.A., is why I think they should do it. By all accounts, Doughty and Bogosian are both blue-chip prospect defensemen that are as unlikely to be busts as anyone. Defensemen typically take longer to mature, but you've got an insurance policy in Jack Johnson that is already starting to pay off, so why not wait a couple of years for Doughty/ Bogosian to mature and learn the big game? Assuming they reach their potential along with Johnson, it'd be akin to having a couple of Prongers- good size, offensive upside, responsible play- on your team without all the dirty hits.

And for what it's worth, I'd pick Bogosian over Doughty. They're both great and very similar, but Bogo is from the U.S. and he ought to get on well with The Jack.

2 is the sexy option. Filatov has seen his stock rise a bunch the past year and he's starting to get mentioned in the same breath as some of the other recent Russian arrivals- Ovechkin, Malkin, and Kovalchuk.

I think it's unlikely that he'll make as big of an immediate impact as any of those guys, but it's possible he could be an Alexander Semin type who will take a little longer to mature but be a really solid player in a couple of years. This option isn't bad, but it does have a chance of missing and is somewhat unnecessary. For all of their flaws, one thing the Kings actually did do well last year was put the puck in the net. Scoring isn't a problem for this team, so adding somebody like Filatov isn't all that necessary when you keep in mind there are much more severe problems to be addressed- like defense and goaltending. However, if Mike Cammalleri does end up being traded this weekend, you can make more of a case for this line of thinking.

3 I think is a bad idea unless the Kings are being offered some solid prospect talent or young players in exchange for the number 2. This draft, according to most "experts" is a fairly shallow draft- there's a lot of talent in the first seven picks or so, then some decent talent down to the middle of the draft, but after 15 or so, it's all pretty relative. There's no point in trading the number 2 for multiple deeper picks unless you end up snaring multiple top 15 picks which probably won't happen.

The Kings still need to address holes in their team. This draft could go a long way towards doing that assuming Lombardi and Co. are smart about it.