It has been a whirlwind few months in Tinseltown as Los Angeles GM David Covin has tried to put his vision of a winning ice hockey team to paper.
Coming out of the BEARD Dispersal Draft, Covin was very pleased with the results. The GM seems to be very selective of his comments and what cards he shows, but his only comments post draft were "we just took the best value available at every single pick."
Having the 31st selection in the Dispersal Draft, he knew he wasn't going to get the top superstars in the draft. But getting players like Kyle Connor and Elias Lindholm to build around has the city buzzing.
Looking at this assembled roster, it was apparent that he wanted players in their prime sprinkled in with some grizzled vets. The Hollywood buzz heading into this season has been hard to drown out but when you have this much love pouring in it’s hard to ignore. There are already actors clamoring to be in movies about some of the players moving to town.
Gaten Matarazzo has been rumored to be starring in a biopic about Jonny Gaudreau’s college and early NHL success. Also, Channing Tatum has been in the rumor mill about playing Jesse Puljujarvi chronicling his early struggles and his career resurrection with this change of scenery.
The Entry Draft was next up on the docket and Covin decided to take an out-of-the-box strategy by trading back most of his higher picks and loading up on late round picks.
With LA's only pick in the first 127 selections, he managed to land Brendan Brisson at #37 and pretty much ran to the podium with the selection. When asked about the selection Covin kept it simple.
“We were going to pick him at 28 so to see him at 37 was a no brainer,” he said.
Some of the notable late round selections that the scouting department is still high fiving over are Tyler Tulio and Artyom Galimov. With one of their 7th round selections they even managed to get the best name in the entire draft with Gunnarwolfe Fontaine (talk about potential movie deals!).
The pro shop hasn’t been able to keep up with the requests of his custom t-shirts, designed by notable designer Don Ed Hardy. With an astounding 16 selections he was able to fill up a very shallow prospect pool. With the core of this team being in the mid-20’s, I can see why taking on so many development projects made sense.
We are starting to get a good read on this new GM and while he doesn’t seem as aggressive as others in the BEARD league, he has made some great deals for the future. Acquiring a franchise goaltender in Igor Shesterkin was a massive move and although it did cost a great defenseman, it fills a hole many teams spend decades trying to fill.
The other notable move made was turning his late round 1st pick in 2020 into what we hope is a lottery ticket down the road, as well as a 2nd rounder just before the draft began.
The GM’s demeanor and overall “chill” attitude towards usual stressful office work has him looking like the son LA has been searching for years.
Looking at the current structure of this team it appears Covin will be rolling with 11 forwards and 7 defensemen to start the campaign barring any surprise deals. It seems his plan is to leave the kids marinate in the minors and the team looks poised to win with players like Dillon Dube, Dennis Cholowski, Jesse “Pool Party” Puljujarvi, Shesterkin, Max Jones and Casey Mittelstadt leading the charge.
Here are our projected pro lines for this upcoming season:
Connor – Lindholm – Gaudreau
Forsberg – Pageau – Simmonds
Baertschi – Galchenyuk – Vesey
Bourque – Shore
T.Myers – Dumba
Pesce – Alzner
Sbisa – P. Myers
Rittich
Talbot