Revisiting the 2019 NHL Draft: Cole Caufield, Kaapo Kakko and lessons learned

It is NHL Draft season. As we prepare in the weeks and months ahead to debate various names for the 2024 draft and the implications those players could have for NHL franchises, it’s worth looking back to five years ago. The 2019 draft was the last normal draft before the world shut down, and we’ve had the chance to see how some of the major decisions made have aged. What have we learned from that draft and how could it apply to future years?

Reflecting on a loaded U.S. NTDP team

Probably the biggest story in the 2019 NHL Draft was the USA age group — in particular, the national team. It’s one of the most loaded program groups in their history. On top of the No. 1 pick in Jack Hughes, they had seven picks in the top 15, and that’s excluding the fact that future No. 2 pick Matty Beniers came up to play with them toward the end of the season. Some wondered whether the team was being overhyped. Were they the collective product of the Hughes hype? They didn’t even win their U18 World Championship — how could they be so good?

As it stands, four of the top five scorers from the 2019 draft are from that USA team in Hughes, Matt Boldy, Trevor Zegras and Cole Caufield. Defenseman Cam York has become a very good young defenseman in the league as well.

Overthinking Cole Caufield

The 2019 team was always thought of as Jack Hughes’ team. Hughes was a budding play-driving star center with elite skating and skill who could dazzle on any given shift against junior and college players. But on that NTDP team, Caufield scored 38 more goals than Hughes did that season and was just as impactful at their U18 worlds, being named the tournament MVP. Hughes was a far superior skater to Caufield and is several inches taller.

Height would come to define the conversation about Caufield. The comparisons to Alex DeBrincat were inevitable and constant. There were a lot of risks discussed about Caufield: His size. Is he just a product of always playing on Hughes’ wing? His skating isn’t elite for a small guy. There’s only one guy in the NHL who looks him. He’s not a super competitive type like DeBrincat.

All those concerns are anywhere from valid to extremely valid. And if Caufield were just a very talented, small winger, he would be a replaceable piece. He needed to score in big numbers as a pro, and he has because he was more than just very talented; he had special qualities. His hands and shot are special and he has strong hockey sense. That USA team was so good in part because of how good Caufield was, not just because he happened to be put on the right line.

I appreciate the risks a 5-foot-7 wing who is not an elite skater can present when projecting him to the pros. There are plenty of shoot-first players who were high picks in the last decade or so and haven’t panned out. Hence why there is reasonable apprehension in the league on now NTDP winger Cole Eiserman. There were reasonable arguments to not take Caufield ahead of some of the true no-doubters, but his drop to No. 15 seemed excessive at the time and has not aged well. The distinction for me between Eiserman and Caufield is that I thought Caufield’s skill and shot were both superior and, frankly, he was a leading player on a team that won games.

Even though the player style is very different, the one guy whom I can best analogize Caufield to in this year’s draft is Berkly Catton. Catton measures in at 5-foot-10, but everything else about his game is excellent. He’s a high-end skater. He is extremely skilled. He competes well. He put up huge numbers in his draft season. He had very good numbers as a 16-year-old. He led his Hlinka Gretzky in goals and points. He was one of the best players at his U17 challenge. Like Caufield, I don’t think it’s worth overthinking Catton; just pick the supremely talented player who has dominated his age group for years and, yes, is a bit small.

The Alex Turcotte pick

Turcotte was the No. 5 pick in 2019, and a player who I believed in a ton at the time. The argument for Turcotte was he was a very fast, very competitive center with a strong offensive skill level. He was a very likable player. He didn’t play a ton in his draft season due to injury, but he had been a top player in his age group alongside Hughes for years and was very productive when healthy.

The pick looked problematic almost from Day 1 when Turcotte left junior hockey for college. He hasn’t played great versus pros either, looking like a bottom-of-the-lineup type of forward at best. Turcotte’s been often injured, so that surely played a variable in his development, but there were issues in his projection, too. He wasn’t the biggest center, and while talented, he didn’t have any true high-end offensive traits. His speed and compete versus juniors helped him stand out, but against bigger men, there were other guys his size who could skate well and worked hard, so he became more ordinary.

It’s not like scouts didn’t see this. They were aware his skill, vision and finish weren’t anything special. I think it was a combination of him being a top player for that great USA team and his game style being so likable — who doesn’t like an elite competitor who could fly? One player who could be a high pick in this draft is Guelph center Jett Luchanko, and I see quite a few rhymes between him and Turcotte. He’s a burner who works hard but doesn’t point or finish at high rates.

Sweden’s U18 gold medal team was systematically overdrafted

The 2019 draft season featured a fantastic U18 World Championship. There were a ton of potential high picks in that event. The aforementioned stacked USA team got topped in the semifinals due to an elite goaltending performance by future top-15 pick Yaroslav Askarov. Russia then lost to the host Swedes in overtime in the gold medal game, which featured a Lucas Raymond hat trick.

That Swedish age group played well but certainly didn’t dominate u18 international play that season. They lost 6-1, for example, to the U.S. team in the same tournament. But they got hot in the medal round and were probably fortunate USA got bounced.

It’s interesting looking back at the players on that Swedish team: Lucas Raymond has become a star and looked like one all season as an underage player that year. Simon Holmstrom has become an OK middle-six wing; whether the late first-round pick will have a long NHL future or not is to be determined. But it’s reasonable to argue a lot of the players on that team were taken too high.

Alexander Holtz (No. 7 pick in the 2020 draft), Philip Broberg (No. 8 in 2019 and named defenseman of the tournament), Victor Soderstrom (No. 11), Tobias Bjornfot (No. 22), Karl Henriksson (No. 58 and the center between Holtz and Raymond), Albert Johansson (No. 60), Albin Grewe (No. 66) and Hugo Alnefelt (No. 71) have all played very few NHL games or, in the case of the high picks, would get picked later in a redraft of their classes. All of these players played important roles on that Swedish U18 team.

Where am I going with this? A part of me wonders if that Swedish team essentially falling into a gold medal artificially bumped up the perceived talent level of their players. I don’t think this year’s Swedish U18 team is an overly talented age group but it has won games against the U.S. NTDP in November and February in part because of abysmal goaltending from Team USA.

There’s been a ton written about Detroit using the No. 6 pick on Seider in the years since the pick, so I won’t go long here. The key points were that Seider was a high-end athlete: a big, mobile defenseman who was highly physical. He didn’t play a ton on a top German pro team in his draft season, but he had played very well for Germany in international play at the U20 and senior level and showed more offense than he did in his club play. The DEL, the league he was drafted out of, also had little track record of being a place longtime NHL players were picked out of.

While I don’t think these two prospects are of the same caliber, there are certainly parallels in the cases between Seider and Norwegian defense prospect Stian Solberg. Solberg is 6-foot-2, skates well and is mean as hell. He’s a hyper-physical shutdown defenseman. He also plays in Norway at their pro level, with almost no precedent of NHL teams drafting career players from that level. Solberg has also had his offense/sense questioned when he’s played at different levels.

Arthur Kaliyev and Bobby Brink go in Round 2

One of the biggest stories in Round 1 of the 2019 draft was two players who didn’t go in the first round: Hamilton and Sioux City wingers Arthur Kaliyev and Bobby Brink. Kaliyev had already won an OHL championship and was coming off a 50-goal, 100-point season. Brink was the best forward in the USHL in his draft season.

Both Kaliyev and Brink were considered supremely talented offensive players. Kaliyev was seen as a super smart goal scorer with an elite shot. Brink was a high-end skill and vision winger who created tons of scoring chances. But they both had substantial risks in their games. Kaliyev was a so-so skating winger whose compete worried teams. Brink is very small by NHL standards and had a technically flawed skating stride. Their detractors saw too many risks for them to be regular NHL forwards. Their supporters saw too much talent that they would overcome those issues.

Five years later, both sides seem to have merit. Worse players were picked ahead of Kaliyev and Brink, who went No. 33 and No. 44, respectively. They’ve both played a considerable number of NHL games and have shown they have the talent to score in the league. But they’ve also been healthy scratched, had their ice limited or sent to the minors recently due to the aforementioned issues in their games.

I think you can look at both players and ask reasonable questions about whether they are going to be legit middle-six forwards in the league five years from now, but you could also see a path on which they get to 300+ career points. From this year’s class, I could look at wingers like Liam Greentree and Terik Parascak as high producing CHL forwards with skating issues that I think will give NHL teams some pause.

Kaapo Kakko doesn’t live up to the hype

Kakko was the clear No. 2 prospect in his draft class. Some NHL scouts thought it was a conversation between him and Hughes and that his game could translate better. That obviously has not been the case.

Kakko was extremely impressive in the years leading up to the draft. He displayed a unique combination of high-end skill and a strong power game. He looked like the classic “player you can win with in the playoffs” type of forward. He played very well versus men in Finland and then at the World Championship.

Kakko’s main issue was his skating. He was, at the time, considered a below-average skater by NHL standards, but the hope was he had so much offensive talent and high compete that his feet wouldn’t hold him back.

It proved to be a bigger issue than some expected, which was compounded by the fact the projection on Kakko’s skill plus hockey sense wasn’t met as well in the NHL. Projecting hockey sense is the hardest thing to do for NHL scouts. When a player is big and fast — more obvious traits to see and project — but the projection on their sense is a bit off, they’ll still be a big NHL body and skater. When the player is driven by his puck play, if they’re a bit off on that, the evaluation can go sideways quicker. This is what NHL scouts sometimes refer to as having a “backup game” when projecting NHL players.

Kakko had to score a ton with his feet to be a top forward. He didn’t, so he hasn’t become that. This is why teams get nervous when players at the very top of the draft have major risk factors. Think size issues for guys like Eiserman, Ivan Demidov and Konsta Helenius; hockey sense for Cayden Lindstrom or compete for Zayne Parekh. Teams picking right at the top of the draft tend to prefer players with cleaner evaluations.

(Photo of Mortiz Seider at the 2019 NHL Draft in Vancouver: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)