Flyers scrambling on Draft Day 1
The Philadelphia Flyers went into the OTHL Entry Draft with just 2 picks. #6 and #14 overall. During the day a number of trades were made – including trades to send away roster players Dmitri Kalinin, Fernando Pisani, other draft picks and younger Nick Foligno. All in all the Flyers ended up making 6 top-50 picks and held a hatful of picks for day 2.
Despite the number of selections GM Siemsen and his scouting staff left the draft table feeling frustrated after day one. Frustrated with themselves primarily. 4 times the Flyers felt the sting of seeing the main guy they had pencilled in for selection disappear short before their their pick. To make matters worse management at least twice had an opportunity to move up in the draft and get their man ... only to decline the trade possibility naively (and perhabs more accurately - greedily) thinking they’d still be able to get their man with the pick they had coming up.
The most costly blunder was to reject a trade under the assumption that Alexei Cherepanov would drop to our 6th position. We had the opportunity to make a trade with the Maple Leafs and we said no ... WE said no. The information we had gathered indicated strongly that Mr. Yu would pass on Alexei Cherepanov with the 4th pick and we felt sure that the Wild would not select him this early. We gambled on that information. We lost. We paid the price. GM Yu and Siemsen discussed afterwards and they agreed that he was the man to get in the draft. Congratulations to the Maple Leafs and Mr. Yu.
Drafting Sam Gagner at 6th position felt like a consolation price. Positive surprises on day one was the chance to draft Lars Eller at 12 and Joel Gistedt at 45.
Draft Day 2 not much better
Going into the second draft day, the last 4 rounds of the draft, the Flyers held another 7 draft picks but after seeing 2 of ‘our’ names taken in the first 4 picks on day 2 the Flyers decided to cut their losses and traded away 4 of the 7 picks ... to acquire veteran depth at center ... enigmatic Mike York and hard-working defensiveminded Domenic Moore.
Flyers Draft Class of 2007
6 – Sam Gagner, C
12 – Lars Eller, C
28 – Brendan Smith, D
30 – Simon Hjalmarsson, RW
41 – TJ Brennan, D
45 – Joel Gistedt, G
95 – Louie Caporusso, RW
98 – Bryan Cameron, C
123 – Scott Darling, G