Preds Amateur Scout Meetings: 2023 NHL Draft Presents 'A Good Challenge'

Nashville Predators amateur scouts from across the world descended on SMASHVILLE this week to begin preparing evaluations and compiling their wish list of prospects they hope are available at the 2023 NHL Draft.

It's a "beginning of the end" of sorts for the year-long scouting process that will culminate at the draft, which will be held on June 28-29 at Bridgestone Arena.

"There's definitely a lot of excitement with our guys here," said Assistant General Manager/Director of Scouting Jeff Kealty. "We haven't had this in quite a while, so I'm excited for it. Guys are waiting for it all year and preparation has been good so far."

By "this," Kealty was referring to the sheer amount of draft capital the team has this year, which gives him and his staff the opportunity to hit the fast-forward button on retooling the team moving forward.

"At the trade deadline, we kind of knew we were going in that direction with the picks and young players that we added," Kealty said. "We've set things up pretty well for ourselves going forward here. We know that the opportunity is there over the next couple of years to really set ourselves up. If you look back 20 years ago, we had the draft here [and] we really set ourselves up with Ryan Suter and Shea Weber going forward with that. So I think that we look at this as the same type of opportunity, and we're doing the work now so we'll be ready to go."

Thanks in large part to their busy trade deadline, the Preds have amassed 13 picks in this year's draft - including two in the first round, two in the second round, three in the third round, three in the fourth round, two in the fifth round and one in the sixth round.

"When I was down here for the trade deadline, we were going along and I was texting the amateur [scouts]," Kealty said. "I kind of just said, you see what's going on here so let's dial in. Let's be ready to go work hard the rest of the way from a scouting standpoint the rest of the way through the season and then also into the spring and the meetings in the preparation as well. So there's definitely a level of excitement. It's a good challenge."

Based on their record of 42-32-8 at the end of the 2022-23 season, the Predators will have their first of many picks in the first round at No. 15 overall. Picking in the middle-third of the draft order presents a unique set of challenges for Kealty and his staff when it comes to drafting and developing future franchise players.

"At No. 15, if [a player] was identified as franchise-changing, he wouldn't still be there," Kealty said. "But that's our job - to try and see through it, to try to project, and I think there'll be a lot of players available to us at that point that we view as guys that can really develop. And we always try to say that you want to try to out-draft the slot that you're in. The 15th pick isn't the third pick today, but the job is to try and find a player that we think will develop and become more than the 15th pick. So that's the challenge for us."

The Preds haven't drafted a defenseman in the first round since they selected Dante Fabbro at No. 17 overall in 2016. That pattern is unlikely to change this year, given the plethora of high-end talent at the forward position in the 2023 draft class.

"Every year is different with the players that are available to you, the depth of it, the different drop-offs and those sorts of things," Kealty said. "[This year] it's more forward-heavy than it is defense-heavy, but there's a lot of players and we know they're all assets. No matter what we do, we've got to get the right players, good players, because they all become assets going forward. And that's our job - to collect assets and build a team as best we can. Then down the road, there's different trades and certain things that you can do so that's the good news. We feel there's a lot of talent, a lot of depth, and we have a lot of currency."

The word "depth" is used frequently to describe this year's draft. This is good news for the Predators, especially with the bulk of their picks coming in the third and fourth rounds.

"We want to use the whole draft," Kealty said. "If you've looked through our history, we've got players from every round that have played for our teams over the years. And that's the job of the staff and the group to be prepared all the way through the first round. We've got two first-round picks, and the first one is going to get all the limelight… Obviously that's important, but there's a lot of good work that's done on day two as well."

For an example, one need look no further than the 2019 NHL Draft, when the Predators drafted an 18-year-old forward out of Hämeenlinna, Finland, by the name of Juuso Parssinen. In the seventh round, at No. 210 overall, when the majority of teams were already packing their bags and getting ready to leave the draft floor, the Predators selected a player who would become an integral piece of their future.

"That's the challenge for our group," Kealty said. "That's what we try to do. We try to use the whole draft. Obviously we have a lot of picks and a lot of bullets this year. I like to term it as currency, and with that, you can do a lot of different things. You can move up in the draft. Maybe we'll look to move some picks further down the road if you don't like what you're seeing on the list… And that just gives you more currency moving forward. So those are all the different things that we're going through right now - We're building the list but we're also talking about strategy and how we're going to implement that strategy with what we want to do."

Much like scouting, formulating a draft strategy is an inexact science. But Kealty has the utmost confidence in his staff and their ability to make the most of Nashville's ample draft capital next month.

"Our guys really know what they're doing," Kealty said. "They work hard, they work well together as a group. I like to equate it to a team. We have different guys that do different things. But we have really good chemistry, we have belief in each other, and that's why we work well together. That's why the results are good."