Worst case scenario for the Penguins in the draft?

Talking about uncontrollable but unfortunate situations

Something popped out in a lot of mock drafts that have been out there, but in best graphical form on this one from The Athletic. The expected top-six is what it is (Schaefer, Misa, Frondell, Desnoyers, Martone) for players that can’t be expected to last very long. But a bad scenario pops up for the Penguins if the picks before them break like this.

Going down that list, each selection lands like a thud as center after center go off the board, and then the big defender gets swooped up one pick before the Pens are up to make their choice at 11. Ouch.

That leaves the Pens to pick between Victor Eklund, Kashawn Aitcheson and Jackson Smith as the consensus highest ranked remaining players, unless they choose to go a little more off the board to consider names like Carter Bear, Braeden Cootes and Cole Reschny instead. Which, hey, might not end up being the worst thing in the world but losing out on the chance to add one of the top centers, or the top right-handed defenseman for players with more questions; whether that would be the lack of size on Eklund, the ceiling of Aitcheson or the bust potential of Smith. Having to settle for questions leads to more of a troubling and uneasy draft night development for the Pens sitting at 11th overall.

That could be the unavoidable challenge about picking at 11 — ten players get taken up before you pick and obviously some pretty alluring prospects are going to be snatched up. It’s a bit of a helpless situation, but the Pens’ draft day outlook improves if there could be something of an unconventional pick (like Eklund or an extra defender in Smith or Aitcheson) sneaking into the top-10. Such a scenario would mean a center in the Jake O’Brien/Roger McQueen/Brady Martin would be there for the taking at 11, which would have to lead to much rejoicing at Pens HQ. Or, of course, Pittsburgh could cut out the middle man and simply trade up the board on draft night in order to avoid such worst case scenarios unfolding to ensure they put themselves in position to get the target that they are interested in.

The Pens will have to plan for a number of contingencies and game plan for all kinds of scenarios in the next week before the big event. We’ll see what kind of draw they end up getting in eight days away for Round 1. Maybe they sit tight and are comfortable taking from the Eklund/Aitcheson/Smith type of profiles if it comes to that. Perhaps they can pull of a trade to get in position for the perceived better type of prospects in the Mrtka/Martin/O’Brien type of range. The possibilities become pretty wide open in a draft like this where there looks to be a fairly clearly defined tier of prospects in the 7-12 range.