Draft Lottery Deep Dives: The Left Defenseman Conundrum

With so many excellent forwards and top right-shot defencemen available, the left-shot defenders are getting left behind. But should they?

The NHL Draft Lottery concluded a week ago and it was somewhat underwhelming in that everyone stayed where they were. No surprise jumps up to first, no reshuffling of the top five, everything stayed like it was when the season ended, just like it did before the lockouts.

But that doesn’t matter. We now know where every team will pick, so we can start looking at who everyone will take. And that is far more exciting than a half-hour event of general managers on a Zoom call and Macklin Celebrini being made fun of for not knowing what Zillow is.

That led Ethan Carter and I to put together a guide for every team with a pick in the top half of the upcoming draft that looked at each team’s top prospects, trends at the draft, and which prospects they were likely to target with their pick. Then, for those who wanted a bit more, you could access the premium deep dive to see an in-depth look at team needs and how that might influence their decision-making at the draft.

2024 NHL Draft Lottery Big Board: Profiles For Each Team in the Top 16

To help me keep track of which prospects could fit with each team, I created a rough mock draft through the deep dives. It was supposed to be a look at which players fit each general manager’s preferences rather than a projection of how the draft would go, but it still led to some intriguing pairings. But, as we finished up, I noticed something slightly odd about our list. See if you can spot it as well.

The Mock Draft:

1. San Jose - Macklin Celebrini

2. Chicago - Artyom Levshunov

3. Anaheim - Cayden Lindstrom

4. Columbus - Cole Eiserman

5. Montreal - Ivan Demidov

6. Utah - Anton Silayev

7. Ottawa - Zayne Parekh

8. Seattle - Konsta Helenius

9. Calgary - Tij Iginla

10. New Jersey - Michael Brandsegg-Nygård

11. Buffalo - Berkly Catton

12. Philadelphia - Carter Yakemchuk

13. Minnesota - Terik Parascak

14. San Jose (via Pittsburgh) - Trevor Connelly

15. Detroit - Lucas Pettersson

16. St. Louis - Alfons Freij

Yup, that’s right - Sam Dickinson and Zeev Buium were not selected in the top half of our 2024 mock Draft. We certainly didn’t intend to leave off two of the most talented defensemen available, but it also didn’t make sense to put them with many different teams, especially based on needs. I only listed Dickinson as an option for three teams, and Buium only showed up once.

Now, to be clear, I don’t believe either player will fall out of the top 16 picks, but the fact that each of those teams could prioritize a player that better fits their system certainly raises some questions. It’s something that I’ve come to call the Left Defenceman Conundrum; because there has been such an intense focus put on acquiring right-shot defencemen, talented defencemen who don’t have that attribute get overlooked. While it’s existed for years, it’s become much more overt in recent years and has the chance to become painfully egregious at the 2024 NHL Draft.