5-hole

Damn.

Would have been nice. If the Islanders won the lottery tonight, we weren't going to finesse it. Bossy was going to make it clear Stamkos was our choice.

Only thing that stinks is that our conference really didn't need another potential superstar, did it?

On the other hand, I'll take the fifth. Statistically, there was a greater chance of the NYI moving back a slot to the sixth pick than winning the first selection. That would have been annoying.

I like Garth's view of the Okposo draft choice: "Hey, I played on that team. We worked hard for that draft pick"!

I believe the top 4 will look like this. Forgive me if I'm not breaking much of a scoop here:

1. Stamkos to Tampa Bay

2. Doughty or Filatov to LA [keep in mind, LA reached back for the young dman Hickey last summer and, like a lot of teams, could use a game-breaker]

3. Doughty (if not taken by LA) or Pietrangelo to Atlanta

4. Filatov (if not taken by LA), Pietrangelo (if not taken by Atl) or Bogosian to St. Louis [the Blues already have their franchise dman in Erik Johnson]

That would seem to leave one of Filatov, Pietrangelo or Bogosian (soaring up Bob McKenzie's chart in recent weeks), plus Luke Schenn, Colin Wilson, Cody Hodgson and plenty more.

In other words, I'd say we're going to be just fine.