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Warriors looking to make most of high CHL Import Draft pick

Lack of NHL Draft to complicate process, but Warriors aim to land elite player with sixth-overall selection
Warriors Millar
Moose Jaw Warriors general manager Alan Millar is confident the team will land a top-flight pick in the 2020 CHL Import Draft.
It’ll be a bit of challenge even with all the due diligence in the world, but the Moose Jaw Warriors remain confident they’ll land a top-flight player when it comes to the 2020 Canadian Hockey League Import Draft on June 30.

The Warriors will carry the sixth-overall pick into the annual selection of players born outside of North America, a spot that has in the past landed world-class talent. And in a normal year, odds are Warriors general manager Alan Millar and his scouting crew would have a pretty solid idea of who would be available and the kind of player they could bring to Moose Jaw.

But, once again, this isn’t a normal year.

With the COVID-19 pandemic having thrown almost everything involving sports into disarray, the Import Draft is no exception. And that’s made it even more difficult to pin down player intentions, especially when it comes to the elite ability a top-10 pick brings.

“There are some challenges with the Import Draft when you don’t necessarily know when you’re going to start and there’s potential that European leagues could open up earlier, so players may be looking at other options,” said Millar.

“We certainly have a challenge of no NHL Draft before the Import Draft, which again adds another level of adversity. Traditionally as you go through the NHL Draft and European players are drafted, you’re able to gather a lot of information from NHL teams if players are interested in coming to the CHL or the NHL team would like them to come over.”

That’s exactly what happened with Tampa Bay Lightning prospect Oleg Sosunov. The 6-foot-8, 220-pound defenceman immediately turned heads when he joined the Warriors from Ryazan, Russia at the request of the Lightning, who wanted to see what their late-round prospect could accomplish in the WHL.

The NHL Draft is just one tool, though, and the Warriors have put in their time to find other avenues to identify prospects.

“We continue to work through those challenges and feel we’re in pretty good shape and will look to take the best player available at six that we’ve got to know through tournaments we scouted last year,” Millar said. “(Assistant general manager) Jason Ripplinger, our coaching staff and myself are doing a lot of video scouting and working with agents… It’s the same for everybody, though, and we’re going to grind through it. We have to be prepared to hopefully add a good young player and go from there.”

You don’t have to look very far back into history to see what an Import Draft sixth pick can accomplish.

The Vancouver Giants selected forward Milos Roman sixth overall in 2017, and the Slovakian centre crafted a decent career for himself, posting 32 points in 39 games as a rookie before racking up 27 goals and 60 points in 59 games during the 2018-19 season. A fourth-round pick of the Calgary Flames in the 2018 NHL Draft, Roman closed out his Giants career as their assistant captain, again putting up 20-plus goals in his final junior season.

And then there was the 2016 pick.

The Halifax Bulldogs used their sixth selection to land Swiss-born forward Nico Hischier, a choice that turned out fairly well: 38 goals and 86 points as a rookie, the first overall selection in the 2017 NHL Draft by the New Jersey Devils and NHL All-Star Game appearance three years later.

The pick will be the highest selection the Warriors have had since 2009 when they landed Czech forward Antonin Honejsek with the fifth overall selection. Honejsek would go on to have two solid seasons with the Tribe, scoring 36 goals and 82 points in 113 games.

Traditionally, the Warriors would have two picks in the draft, but Czech National Junior Team prospect Martin Lang has locked down one of those slots after a solid showing since joining the team in the Brayden Tracey / Adam Evanoff mega-deal. He put up eight goals and 24 points in 26 games before COVID-19 brought the season to an end.

“We’re really pleased with Langer in terms of how he played, he essentially averaged a point a game on a team that was very young and very banged up, we feel he’s a guy who will be a real offensive calayst for us this upcoming season,” Millar said. “He’s a great kid, he’s 100 per cent committed to coming back to Moose Jaw so we’re happy to have him back.”

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