Chayka on Picking 5th: 'We Expect to Get a Great Player'

DALLAS -With the fifth pick in the 2018 NHL Draft, the Arizona Coyotes select…
Barring a trade, the name to finish that sentence will be revealed on Friday night at the American Airlines Center when Arizona takes its turn in the spotlight during the first round.

"That's the plan," General Manager John Chayka said after being asked if the Coyotes would keep the No. 5 selection. "We're pretty confident (picking fifth). We don't know what's going to happen with the four picks ahead of us, you never know, but regardless of how that shakes out, we've got five players that we really like at the top of this draft. There's always opportunities to trade down, and you never know what's going to come across your desk. We certainly have flexibility and we'll look at everything, but having said that, if we stay at five we expect to get a great player … We're looking at a handful of guys that we all feel confident have the ability to make us a better team in the long-term. It's not a big group, but it's a group that we feel very good about."

Chayka and his scouting staffs, amateur and pro, are in Dallas making final preparations for the seven-round draft, which will be televised by NBC Sports Network (Friday, 4:30 p.m., Arizona time) and NHL Network (Saturday, 8 a.m., Arizona time ). The Coyotes are slated to make seven picks, including five in the first three rounds.

Arizona, of course, made headlines at last year's draft when it made trades to acquire goalie Antti Raanta, center Derek Stepan and defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson just a few hours before the draft began. With this year's draft fast approaching, Chayka said trade talks around the league are heating up, per usual.
"We're always looking at different options and alternatives," Chayka said. "Now it's the week of the draft and you can feel the intensity of discussions picking up. Obviously, everyone's motivated. There's one team that's happy; they won the Stanley Cup. And there's 30 others that are looking to improve … This is one of the most active weeks of the year for player movement so we've had a lot of discussions leading up to this and there's a lot of preparation that goes into it. Now it's kind of time to execute and try to make some moves to make your team better."

The Buffalo Sabres are expected to select defenseman Rasmus Dahlin with the first overall pick at this year's draft. Forward Andrei Svechnikov likely will be selected second by the Carolina Hurricanes. After that pick, things will get much more intriguing for the Coyotes as they await the Montreal Canadiens, picking third, and the Ottawa Senators, picking fourth, to make their choices.
Defenseman Evan Bouchard, defenseman Noah Dobson, forward Barrett Hayton, defenseman Quintin Hughes, forward Jesperi Kotkaniemi, forward Brady Tkachuk, forward Oliver Wahlstrom and forward Filip Zadina are the prospects (listed alphabetically here) that most likely will round out the first 10 picks. Time will tell, of course, in what order they will be selected.
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"I think the top two players are very good players that are going to step into the National Hockey League and are going to contribute right away," said Tim Bernhardt, Arizona's director of amateur scouting. "I would be surprised if many teams didn't have those two guys as the top two guys. Then the next 10 or so are good players. I don't know if anybody really knows just how good they're going to be, but they're all players that can eventually become good NHL players."
Chayka was asked if he believes the No. 5 pick in this year's draft, whomever that may be, is ready to jump to the NHL next season.
His reply: "The way these kids come up now with all of their strength coaches and nutritionists and mental skills coaches, all of them (in the top five) pretty much have everything going in that sense, so I think they have a chance. Having said that, that's not going to impact our selection. We're going to get the best player, long-term for the Coyotes. They have to come in here and earn that spot. If we think it's best for their long-term development, which often the case with young players it is, to send them back to junior and keep them playing, then that's what we'll do."

Barring a trade, the Coyotes will then have to wait 50 picks between making the fifth overall pick and the 55th pick late in the second round on Saturday morning.
"We made a trade to get Lawson Crouse (in 2016) so we lost our (No. 34) pick in that trade," Chayka said. "Lawson had a great run for us down there in Tucson, and we're excited to have him. The second round, that's where things start to get a bit murky in the sense that different lists have different players in different spots. We think it's a deep draft. We think there are players there at No. 55 that we'll really like, so we're happy to have that pick."
The Coyotes acquired that No. 55 pick in a trade with Minnesota in 2016.
Arizona is slated to pick three times in third round (Nos. 65, 73 and 74), once in the sixth round (No. 158) and once in the seventh round (No. 189).
"Any scout will tell you the more picks you have the better chance you have of getting quality players," Bernhardt said.
"The guys have traveled a lot of miles throughout the season and spent a lot of nights in hotels. We've all put the work in so now you just try to go with the players that somebody on your staff has a real good feel for and a passion for. Obviously, you're not going to get a consensus in the later rounds so you just try to lean on the area people to come up with the names that they really believe in."