Carolina Hurricanes What Could Have Been: Elite Players Selected Directly After a Canes Pick

The Carolina Hurricanes have some regrets from previous drafts

In every draft, there’s a handful of players that develop into elite NHL All-Stars. Here are five guys that were draft directly after a Carolina Hurricanes pick.

It is easy to look back on a draft and say what was X team thinking when they selected this player this early and how did X fall that far but you have to remember they’re teenagers. NHL scouting staff are tasked with the difficult job of projecting how these young kids will perform or fit in the NHL level.

Often after the first round teams are just hoping the players they draft will just make it to the NHL is some capacity. To have an NHL All-Star is just icing on the cake.

While the Carolina Hurricanes seem to have done better with their drafts the past couple of years, there was a time where their selections left a lot to be desired. A time where the players they selected almost always turned out to be bust, while the prospects picked directly after them, blossomed into elite all-stars.

For the sake of this article, we are just going to look at guys selected one pick after a Canes selection. In every draft, there are late-round gems and undrafted players that turn into stars but every team passed on these guys multiple times. Because of this, we are going to exclude them.

In some instances, Carolina opted to draft for need rather than the best player available, which is never a smart idea, and in others, they were a bit turned off on certain qualities of an individual, i.e. a player is a bit undersized or isn’t the best skater.

Without further ado, let’s take a look five guys the Hurricanes, in hindsight, should have drafted in chronological order.