St. Louis Blues Draft Dominik Bokk With 2018 First Round Pick
By Todd Panula
The St. Louis Blues did the expected and unexpected in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft’s first round. They made a trade and a pick to kick off the offseason.
The St. Louis Blue were highly expected to make a trade at the 2018 NHL Entry Draft. That was the move they made that was completely expected.
However, in typical Blues fashion, they did the unexpected as well. They ended up making a pick in the first round.
St. Louis merely traded picks, trading two later picks to move up. They ended up with the 25th overall pick instead of the 29th.
With the 25th pick, the Blues selected German forward, Dominik Bokk. It was not a bad pick, but it was surprising that no further moves were made given all the chatter going in.
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You may think of Bleedin’ Blue as Nostradamus, since we did an article about Bokk being the Blues selection. Alright, in fairness, it was only an article discussing someone else’s mock draft. Quit ruining things for me.
Bokk projects to be a solid player. The television crew predicted he could end up being a top-six forward. The only issue is the timing.
Bokk is only 18, so he has several years in front of him to develop with no pressure to get up to the pros right away. His stats are hard to read since he’s playing over in Europe.
He had 99 career points playing in the German equivalent to the CHL, which is major junior hockey. Then, he switched to the Swedish Elite League, but also on the junior side. Bokk registered 41 points in 35 games.
He has good per-game averages for points, clearly. It is more an issue of being able to tell how that translates. Patrik Berglund put up good numbers in Sweden and he’s been a third line type player.
He only has 15 professional games under his belt in the Swedish league with two points. He does do well against his peers though, scoring five points in five games at the recent World Junior Championships.
The bottom line is that this was one of the best players available at the pick the Blues had.
There were arguments about trading an extra pick to move up four spots, but what else could you do? There were many teams engaging in trade talks on the floor, so clearly players were not going to be moved at that point.
What would you truly expect to get with the 76th overall pick anyway? Sure, there have been later round picks that turned out great. Statistically, it just is not likely though. It becomes even less likely in a draft class that was not seen as very deep, even in the first round.
So, just take the best player available and move on with life. In that moment, the Blues felt Bokk was the best available and were not concerned with their spots later in the draft. Besides, Doug Armstrong is likely to make more moves to restock a pick in that particular round, so it will likely be a moot point.
For now, I’m fine with the Bokk pick. We can’t be overly excited because we don’t fully know what we are getting. I’ll take him over almost any of the players that came afterward though and that is about all you can look at right now.