2024 Draft Recap: New York Islanders
This talent-rich and diverse draft class provides what the Isles' thinning pipeline was sorely lacking
NASHVILLE (The Draft Analyst) — Those familiar with my work know how I feel about draft report cards, even if I’ve been guilty of feeding that beast throughout the last 10 years. But my thoughts on the latest 2024 results will be more than broad brush strokes, as pinning the rose on 12 uninterrupted months of in-depth analysis from both the team and prospect standpoints requires more than the standard letter-grade marking scheme acting as the rubric. Rather, draft hauls will be evaluated and labeled on the following criteria, which I think are both fair and reasonable:
Strong — Any four of potential franchise player(s) drafted; needs addressed; first-round caliber picks in the second or third round; multiple home-run swings in later rounds; point-producing sleepers; the majority of prospects were in top-line/top-pairing/starter roles (Ex. Buffalo’s 2022 draft)
Above-average - Any three of needs addressed; multiple home-run swings; acknowledged consensus favorites; the majority of prospects were in top-line/top-pairing/starter roles; making more with less; first-round quality in the second or third round. (Ex. Carolina’s 2023 draft)
Average — A solid first- or second-round pick but mostly unspectacular thereafter (Ex. Colorado’s 2020 draft)
Below-average — Quantity over quality; over-drafting of higher-round picks/reaching; four picks or less with no first-round selection; obsession with overagers (Ex. New York Rangers’ 2018 draft or Ottawa’s drafts from 2021-2023)
Poor — Any three of unpopular reach in the first round, no picks in the first or second round; needs not addressed, obsession with overagers, leaving upside on the board for projects, or bucking popular consensus choices (Ex. Arizona’s 2020 draft)
Outlook
It’s been exactly four decades since hysteria gripped Long Island during the last of five consecutive Stanley Cup Finals appearances for the New York Islanders, whose early-1980s dynasty was not only the last of its kind in the modern era, but one built almost entirely through the draft.
The current Islander lineup is nowhere near that stratosphere, and that’s perfectly understandable given the historical standards set by their forefathers in blue and orange. But deep and playoff caliber they are nonetheless, and even a handful of statistical oddities from a season ago shouldn’t mark the current group as problematic or destined for a large-scale collapse. Still, the Isles last season had three 30-goal scorers but finished 22nd in team scoring, while their penalty kill finished dead last despite owning the league’s eighth-best save percentage.
There were other team-related categories where things didn’t quite add up given the talent on the roster, but above all was how the Islanders somehow managed to secure third place in the Metropolitan Division with only 29 regulation wins to their credit. Not being able to summon quality prospects from one of the league’s weakest pipelines also didn’t help, but that has more to do with the general manager Lou Lamoriello convincing himself (and ownership) that the Isles under his watch will maintain a competitive roster capable of winning the organization’s first Stanley Cup since 1983.
Now, how far detached that objective is from reality is at the crux of an ongoing criticism that Lamoriello is stubbornly pressing forward in the face of evidence that supports the idea that a strategic pause would be more beneficial than another lunge at the Cup. Yes, the current roster is heavy on playoff experience — 13 regulars for the upcoming season are holdovers from the 2020-21 squad that reached the second of consecutive conference finals appearances, and that doesn’t include recent Lamoriello additions like defenseman Alexander Romanov and center Bo Horvat, each of whom cost the organization a first-round pick. But being “built for the playoffs” hasn’t exactly done the Islanders any good in recent years, as they failed to qualify in 2022 (with a top-10 defense) and were bounced in Round 1 in each of the two postseasons that followed.
This brings us back to the Isles’ offense and an interesting discovery that wasn’t all that difficult to discover, but interesting nonetheless. Remember when Isles’ center Mathew Barzal burst onto the scene with an 85-point rookie season in 2017-18, creating the reasonable scenario that it would be Barzal who would be a capable option to carry the Islander offense if and when team captain John Tavares left via trade or free agency? Barzal was only 21 at the time but outscored Tavares by one point, which was about all Islander fans could cling to after the latter unceremoniously bolted for the Toronto Maple Leafs as an unrestricted free agent that offseason.
So here we sit, more than six years after the fact, and the crucial problem confronting the Islanders during Lamoriello’s entire tenure as GM remains scoring, which certainly was not the case with Tavares as the team’s No. 1 center and power-play orchestrator. In the six seasons since Tavares’ departure, the Islander cumulative rank in goal scoring and power-play effectiveness with Barzal as their top-line pivot and focal point during the man-advantage ranks 25th and 29th, respectively, after placing eighth in goal scoring and 12th on the power play in the previous six campaigns with Tavares as the primary option.
To be fair, the Islanders in the post-Tavares era have had more playoff appearances (five) and series wins (five) than they did in the nine years prior (three and one, respectively). And it isn’t like Lamoriello hasn’t tried to address his pop-gun offense through trades, signings, or even at the draft itself, as nearly all of his skater picks within the first three rounds between 2018 and 2023 classified as offense-first types. But actually promoting these kids from the AHL affiliate in Bridgeport and seeing them develop into consistent NHL regulars has been another box that’s gone mostly unchecked these last six years, as only three Islander draftees in that span have played a 70-game NHL season, and all were selected before 2020.
As you can see, rebuilding on Long Island will not be an option as long as Lamoriello is running the show, especially after he personally signed at least eight current players for at least another four years. But he began addressing critical prospect shortages at center and in goal in two of the three drafts heading into 2024 and swung an uncharacteristic picks-for-picks deal in May with the Chicago Blackhawks to add an extra second-round pick, which is probably the closest we’ll get to Lamoriello admitting his pipeline was already in bad shape to begin with.
MORE: 2024 NHL Draft Report (PDF Download)
Traded picks
I know what you’re thinking — here comes the first installment of a four-volume series detailing every draft-related trade Lamoriello has ever made in his nearly 40 years of franchise stewardship. And although the opportunity is juicy and I’m still plenty young with months to burn and an infinite character count, it’s probably best to limit the scope of this particular section to his last five drafts, with the consideration that two of them came after conference finals visits.
But before we begin, it probably helps to mention that Lamoriello in the December of his Hall-of-Fame career has rarely tinkered with the process by trading up or down, especially in what is now seven drafts as Islander GM. In fact, he’s only made two draft-day moves involving picks since 2018 — first in 2021 when he moved defenseman Nick Leddy to Detroit for a second-round pick that was used to draft Finnish center Aatu Raty, and again the following year when he dealt a lottery pick (13th overall) to Montreal for Romanov and a fourth-round pick used to select current Islander defense prospect Isaiah George.
Of course, the average draft weekend during his 28-year tenure with the New Jersey Devils usually was more eventful, as Lamoriello moved ahead or dropped back in the late first round in five of seven drafts between 2003 and 2009 before quitting cold turkey immediately thereafter. But his draft-day aggressiveness — during both pre- and post-salary-cap periods, for what it’s worth — has made a resurgence in recent years, and that includes this year’s pre-draft thievery of the aforementioned additional second-rounder (61st overall), simply by agreeing to drop from 18 to 20 in the first round, and from 50 to 54 in the second.
Although Hawk GM Kyle Davidson is running an extended rebuild and stood to benefit from his surplus of draft capital, the difference in upside between the actual prospects he chose — center Sacha Boisvert and winger Marek Vanacker (taken with Carolina’s pick at 27 which Chicago acquired for 34 and 50) versus New York’s selection of sniper Cole Eiserman at 20, two-way defender Jesse Pulkkinen at 54, and strong three-zone center Kamil Bednarik at 61 — is visibly negligible to anyone who covered them last season. It may not seem like much, but it marked only the second time in 13 years that the Islanders secured three picks within the first two rounds.
Additional Notes
-This was the first draft in team history that not a single player was taken from any of the three Canadian major junior leagues, although sixth-rounder Xavier Veilleux from the USHL’s Muskegon Lumberjacks is from Quebec and played for Canada at the 2022 World U17 Hockey Challenge.
- The third-round pick (83rd overall) the Islanders sent to Toronto for Pierre Engvall was moved two more times before the Vegas Golden Knights drafted KHL goalie Pavel Moysevich
- The St. Louis Blues drafted abrasive SKA-1946 winger Matvei Korotky with the seventh-round pick (211th overall) the Islanders used to acquire defenseman Robert Bortuzzo.
MORE: 2023-24 NHL Farm System Rankings and Assessments (Pre-Draft)
Draft picks
Assessment: Strong
Here you’ll find a thorough and entirely objective overview of what could become one of the strongest Islander draft classes in the last 15 years. Unlikely as that may sound to those noticing the lone top-32 selection and how half of their six-pick haul came from Rounds 4-6, cases can be made for the high quality and significant upside of each individual prospect -- cases stronger than for any singular Islander class since the John Tavares-led collection from 2009.
Leading the group is left wing Cole Eiserman at 20th overall, but the rambunctious sniper easily could have been a deserving top-10 pick. Skating for the U.S. National Team Development Program, Eiserman was sharp around the edges in both goal-scoring and on-ice demeanor. He is neither passive nor indecisive, and possessing an NHL-caliber shot release consistently helped Eiserman swiftly remedy any in-game quagmire the NTDP offense may have been embedded in. Granted, he tends to require a half-decent centerman or play-driving wing to set the shooting conditions for him, but Eiserman’s 127 career goals in 119 games against the USHL, the NCAA, and the top international entries during tournament play didn’t find the back of the net strictly by way of someone else’s hockey sense or accuracy.
Still, Eiserman at this stage is mostly a one-trick pony, which in turn triggered chatter that he was destined for the same uneventful fate as previous NTDP-trained wingers Kieffer Bellows and Oliver Wahlstrom, each of whom struggled to reach their goal-scoring potential after the Islanders made them first-rounders in 2016 and 2018, respectively. These comparisons are mostly lazy and coincidental, however, as Eiserman was at one point a candidate for first overall and likely dropped a good 10 spots on draft day due to the usual bottom-feeders requiring defensemen to balance their already talent-rich pools. For now, all Eiserman can do is stick to what he does best when his college career with Boston University begins next fall.
For the Islanders’ next pick, let’s play around with hypotheticals by considering overagers to have no advantages from league experience or the added physical maturity over first-year eligibles, and that their extra year of development is merely an administrative formality that should have no bearing on draft positioning. Fifteen years ago, few would have batted an eye at the fact that 2004-born Finnish defenseman Jesse Pulkkinen was a year and a half older than most top defense prospects in his class and that his blend of size, snarl, skating, puck-handling, and playmaking during over nearly a full season of 20-minutes-per-game usage in a European elite league was enough to consider him a late first-round selection on most team draft boards. The fact that Pulkkinen ended up a late second-round pick could have been the result of various reasons (age and risky defense likely at the forefront), but that should be neither here nor there for the Islanders, as Pulkkinen vaulted over all of their defense prospects – 2022 second-rounder Calle Odelius included -- the second after his name was called.
The aforementioned circumstances regarding prospect depth at the center position is what likely compelled Islander scouts to draft NTDP center Kamil Bednarik with the extra second-rounder they received from Chicago, making it three-for-three in terms of high-upside draftees who ranked in the upper tier of NHL Central Scouting’s final list. A more important consideration, however, is that Bednarik centered Eiserman for nearly half the draft season, if not more. Although the chemistry level was more average than visibly spectacular, there certainly is familiarity and it can only help to have two of your top three picks come out of the same program, let alone serve as linemates. As for Bednarik himself, the future Boston University Terrier was an all-situations center for the NTDP, although the presence of 2025 draft phenom James Hagens cut into Bednarik’s time to run the power play and ability to showcase his plus playmaking and vision, which is how he racked up most of his points at even strength. He also has ideal size and plays with well-timed physicality, so both he and 2023 second-rounder Danny Nelson now provide the Islanders with two of the game’s top under-20 two-way centers.
Necessary steps were then taken to address the goalie situation by using each of the next two picks on netminders; first, CSKA triple-overager Dmitry Gamzin in the fourth round and 6-foot-6 Leksand J20 starter Marcus Gidlof in the fifth. Gamzin is a unique case in that he played as a backup for a quality KHL team but saw 30 or more shots while facing many of the league’s top teams yet still slashed an impressive 1.98/.937 in posting a 7-4-1 mark in 13 appearances. The fact that the 6-foot-3 backstop was in his third and final look should explain why he was considered closer to a free-agent option over being drafted, but credit to Islander scouts for scooping him up in the fourth round nonetheless.
Gidlof paid his dues as Leksand J20’s backup for two years before assuming the starter’s role last season, leading a younger lineup to winning records in both the divisional and Top-10 slates before bowing out in a tough series with eventual-champion Skelleftea. He certainly benefited from playing behind a good team, but Gidlof played some of his best hockey against the J20’s better attacks and finished with the second-best save percentage during the tougher top-10 portion. Lanky but confident, Gidlof is quite composed with a deep-in-the-crease style and will make tough saves look smooth and effortless. As for the Islanders, the drafting of two goalies in one draft was something they hadn’t done since 2014.
The Islanders for their final pick took an incredibly poised and mature two-way defenseman in lefty Xavier Veilleux, who will play for Harvard after his tenure with Muskegon is complete. He was the leading scorer among USHL rookie defensemen and did so without playing on the top pairing, although the Lumberjacks had a potent forward-centric attack that required Veilleux to grab the puck and move it without hesitation as often as possible. He did most of his damage at even strength, so expect his overall production and shooting numbers to increase with a well-deserved expanded role.
As you can see, this has the makings of the best Islander draft class since 2018, when they had five selections within the first 72 picks, and it likely ends up with more NHL games played than any group since 2009. The Isles basically acknowledged the need to rectify a punchless attack at the grassroots level and will now have the flexibility of letting all six mature in either the NCAA or Europe.
MORE: 2024 Draft: Round 1 Pick-by-Pick Analysis and Grades