St. Louis Blues: What you need to know about the NHL Draft First Round

The St. Louis Blues have a lot of balls in the air right now, with the draft and free agency coming just days apart. For now, their focus is on the draft, which begins tonight (October 6).

The St. Louis Blues might have several decisions to make regarding their 2020-21 NHL roster, but unless they make a trade, that will not be affected this evening. Tonight is the first round of the 2020 NHL Entry Draft and it’s all about the picks.

The Blues have a total of seven draft picks going into the event. This evening, there will only be one pick since the first round will stand on its own.

The 2020 Draft is expected to be reasonably deep. So, whomever the Blues select, could have a good NHL future.

The flip side of that is this is not expected to be a deep draft in terms of immediate talent. In fact, most project all the picks outside of the top three to not play in the NHL next season.

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With the Blues drafting 26th overall, they don’t have much to worry about there. Almost nobody expects a player from that deep in the draft to make the pros immediately after.

For those curious, here is the order of the entire first round (barring late trades) from NHL.com:

1. NY Rangers

2. Los Angeles

3. Ottawa (from SJS)

4. Detroit

5. Ottawa

6. Anaheim

7. New Jersey

8. Buffalo

9. Minnesota

10. Winnipeg

11. Nashville

12. Florida

13. Carolina (from TOR)

14. Edmonton

15. Toronto (from PIT)

16. Montreal

17. Chicago

18. New Jersey (from ARI)

19. Calgary

20. New Jersey (from VAN via TBL)

21. Columbus

22. NY Rangers (from CAR)

23. Philadelphia

24. Washington

25. Colorado

26. St. Louis

27. Anaheim (from BOS)

28. Ottawa (from NYI)

29. Vegas

30. Dallas

31. San Jose (from TBL)

In case you forgot how the picks were decided upon, since 2020 has been as long as a lifetime, there were several rounds of figuring out how the selections would be made.

Round 1Picks 1-15: Determined by Phases 1 and 2 of 2020 NHL Draft LotteryPicks 16-27: Teams eliminated in Rounds 1 and 2 of 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs, in inverse order of 2019-20 regular season points percentagePicks 28-29: Teams eliminated in 2020 Conference Finals, in inverse order of 2019-20 regular season points percentagePick 30: Team eliminated in 2020 Stanley Cup FinalPick 31: 2020 Stanley Cup champion

The interesting thing about this evening, from a Blues perspective, will be whether any trades are made. I fully expect the Blues to utilize their first-round pick, so any trade tonight would include players for later round picks or picks in another draft.

However, I might not put your hopes too high that happens. With this draft not factoring into the potential trade, the Blues are under no rush to get a deal done – other than the fact they need to know if they can clear space prior to Alex Pietrangelo turning free agent in three days.

Nevertheless, I think the Blues make their pick and that’s it. If there’s a trade, we’ll report on it and discuss it, but don’t go into tonight’s draft thinking there has to be a deal made.

Adding difficulty to any potential trade will be the fact that tonight’s draft will be virtual. If you saw the 2020 NFL Draft, it will be similar to that.

So, Doug Armstrong cannot just walk over to the next table and put the squeeze on another GM. It’s all over phone and text.

The draft begins at 6 p.m. St. Louis time. The first round of the draft will be televised on NBCSN.