If you asked me if I would be writing this article in the first week of February before the season started I would’ve laughed and said we’ll be lucky to have our first-round pick in February as we chase the playoffs. Alas, the Sabres have a 5.5% of making the playoffs according to Hockey-Reference and are currently sitting at the 8th pick according to Tankathon. While we all hope the Sabres come out of the All-Star break on a tear and will be eyeing the points to climb the ladder towards a wildcard spot this month; I thought I’d at least get ahead of the curve in case we are eyeing another lottery pick come March. With many outlets publishing their mid-year rankings, and as we at Smaht get prepared to publish our own, I thought I’d give a brief primer on the lottery and the 2024 NHL Draft as a whole to Sabres fans. No 50,000-word scouting reports in this one. I promise not to break your computer/phone with this piece.

Let’s start by answering the first question I always get:

Is this draft any good?

This draft at the top feels a lot like the 2017 draft. While I’m more enamored with the talent that is available in 2024 compared to 2017; I’m also pretty confident saying that this is a draft where anyone in the top 8-12 picks could end up being the best player in the draft. Macklin Celebrini will be on top of almost all public scouting rankings at the mid-year given his fantastic collegiate season at Boston University and his impressive performance in the World Juniors with Canada. However, there are plenty of talented players who follow him in the next tier of players.

While Celebrini has been dynamic and deserving of the praise; he sits at 1.61 points per game this season. He’s about .17 points per game off from the pace of Eichel and Fantilli during their draft-eligible years. However, Celebrini won’t turn 18 until right before the draft in June and Fantilli/Eichel all played their draft-eligible years at 18 with October birthdates. His game isn’t predicated on skill/skating like the other two, but rather a combination of using skill, spatial awareness, and a dogged approach to generating offense on the top line of one of the best teams in the NCAA.

Zeev Buium and Artyom Levshunov are both collegiate, draft-eligible defenders putting up historic offensive numbers at powerhouse NCAA programs. Buium’s 1.31 points per game and Levshunov’s .96 points per game are offensive numbers not seen from draft-eligible defenders since the mid-1980s. Quinn Hughes finished off one of the best draft-eligible seasons of recent times with a .78 points per game mark in 2018 for comparison’s sake.

In the WHL, Cayden Lindstrom and Berkley Catton are lighting up the scoreboard. Lindstrom is a 6’3 center with the hands and feet of a much smaller player who is continually getting better with every viewing I’ve seen. Berkly Catton is putting up microstats that rival Bedard in some cases and is making a serious push for the #1 spot in my rankings.

As for the rest of the top 10? In Russia, you have a 6’7″, right-handed defenseman in Anton Silayev who skates like a player much smaller and who has been flashing offensive skills to boot. You have the highlight reel, and arguably the best skilled forward, Ivan Demidov who is nothing but a highlight machine and who could easily be the best player to come out of this draft if he puts it all together.

In the OHL you have left-handed defenseman Sam Dickinson who has been billed as a do-it-all defender who is averaging nearly a point per game for the always-talented London Knights. You also have one of the best point-producing CHL draft-eligible defensemen in modern times in Zayne Parekh who draws both awe and ire from the scouting community for his offensive and defensive zone work.

And that’s just the consensus picks! I’m a big fan of Liam Greentree out of the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires. On a historically bad team, Greentree possesses a tool kit and puck anticipation that is so rare to see in a draft-eligible player that I gravitate towards wanting to throw him into the consensus top 10, however, his skating does have a ways to go to pass at an NHL level pace. His microstats are very, very good, but I can’t get past the skating to say he’s a sure-fire top-10 pick. Konsta Helenius goes the opposite direction for me, as he’s universally a top 12 pick but I have a hard time seeing how his game translates to higher levels of hockey in North America.

What does this mean for the Sabres?

I’d start by saying that if we don’t get the number one pick in this year’s draft but win the lottery and end up with the second or third pick I will be 100% condoning us to trade back. Trade back. Trade. Back. TRADE BACK!

There’s a lot of talent in the top end of this draft and when you’re looking to infuse some immediate talent into a team there is no better asset or commodity than a high draft pick.

Second, I’ll never write a Sabres Draft Guide that has us drafting for need. I just don’t ever see the point of drafting for need. Draft to find players you’ll never get in free agency without severely overpaying in terms or dollar amount.

However, this is a draft where you can swing on some really good defenders in the lottery. I spent the weekend digging into Artyom Levshunov because my brain hasn’t been able to reconcile who he was last year in the USHL with Green Bay to what he is now at Michigan State. At Michigan State, Levshunov has yet to find a time when he doesn’t want to activate off the point. It’s at the point of reckless how aggressive he is chasing offense and it is not something I saw on tape to the point of concern at Green Bay last year. I’m at the point where I’d rank the defensemen I’d be chasing in this year’s draft in this order in the lottery:

1.) Zeev Buium

2.) Artyom Levshunov

3.) Sam Dickinson

4.) Anton Silayev

You land any of those four and I think you’ll be happy with what the public thinks the Sabres need. Buium and Dickinson are LHD with Levshunov and Silayev being RHD. Handedness be damned.

What do I predict I’ll be doing in the first round of the 2024 draft as of right now? I predict I’ll be screaming at Chad, Eddy, and whoever else joins us for the live stream for us to take Berkly Catton.

That’s all the draft talk for now. Let’s go hope that the Sabres break off an 8 game win streak to start us off after the break and we don’t ever have to think about the lottery again for a long, long time.