This draft has a lot of good playmakers, but Jake O’Brien might be the best one of them all.
Analysis
This is a forward and center-heavy draft; one where the middle of the top 10 could go any number of ways thanks to the injury-laden talents throughout. There’s a world where after Michael Misa and Jimmy Hagens, Jake O’Brien goes 4th overall. There’s also a chance he goes 10th! Which would be entirely understandable; there’s just so many good skaters in this draft that it ultimately comes down to personal choice and what you personally value more on a player. Do you want overwhelming scoring talent? Blinding speed? Playmaking potential? Size and skill? You can get it in the top 10 in this draft.
When you pick Jake O’Brien, you pick for playmaking.
O’Brien plays in the OHL’s Brantford squad; one that played an exceptionally strong season off the back of a number of players, but O’Brien was at the center of it all; being 3rd on the team in points and 2nd in assists; well over a point per game in league play.
He got there through some phenomenal playmaking; O’Brien sees defenses extremely well and can slow any game he’s in down on the fly; able to find holes in defenses quickly and using his frame and his strong hand-eye to either find a seam in a defense that hasn’t been covered yet, or beat a defender one-on-one by using his tricky stickhandling and impressive body control to either open up a chance for himself, or far more likely his teammates; turning his shifts into an abject nightmare to defend as he first finds the weaknesses in his opponent’s backcheck, and then immediately starts pressing against those weaknesses in different ways; either by finding ways to stretch the ice out, force board battles against mismatched defenders, or just flat out beating them with speed if he needs to. The casualness of which he does it can be a real danger for these OHL kids; who simply aren’t expecting a pass to be sent to extremely good players that quickly and that smoothly at this level; giving his very talented teammates a chance to just wire the puck home without much thought; O’Brien’s already done the hard part for them.
While he is a playmaker and his statline this year reflects that, he can do a lot of scoring on his own; that stickhandling isn’t just for slick passes; he can absolutely hammer a shot with very little windup on his shots and it does not take much movement on his part to start picking corners; augmented by his very crafty ability to adjust his place on the ice in scoring position veeeeery subtly, happily catching defenders moving even slightly out of position as he rips one home, because he is rarely if ever going to take a shot that a stick could block. This of course, only forces teams to treat him with an outsized amount of respect or spend the entire game trying to contain him…which opens up lanes and forces players out of position, which feeds back into his playmaking game.
His ability to think the sport also helps him tremendously in the neutral zone and defensive zone; being responsible in his own end and active in trying to break up and pressure his opponent into coughing up the puck; usually so he can get it and create an opportunity. It’s this level of play recognition and intelligence with and without the puck that has him moving up draft boards at breakneck pace; as he really seemed to come into his own after the World juniors finished; with him mercifully away from Hockey Canada’s disaster of a world junior campaign to allow him to not be immediately held to higher scrutiny.
Is there anything he struggles with? Well, if there’s one area of the game he doesn’t currently control, it’s his faceoffs, which he’s not been great at. He’s also a skinny 6’2, so getting either his weight up or his speed up to avoid getting mulched is probably something he’s gonna have to focus on for the future.
And really, that’s kind of it. If the worst you can say about a prospect is that he’s skinny and prefers playmaking, then you’ve already got a pretty damn good player to start with. If there’s anybody who can
Personally? I’d draft him in a heartbeat.
The Bruins get a kid who’s active concerns are, at best, nitpicks if he’s healthy, and seem like easy fixes; unlike something like skating form. He really feels like a player getting lost in the shuffle on account of being almost so complete as a player it feels like there’s little room to grow. He starts good and will likely stay good. So he’ll lose some faceoffs. That’s fine. He’s got enough skills to get the puck back.
If you wanted an easy pick to get everybody on board, there’s really only a few players you could pick ahead of him to get a universally positive reaction.
Rankings
Ranked 4th by NHL Central Scouting among North American Skaters
Ranked 10th by EliteProspects.com
Ranked 9th by TSN’s Bob McKenzie
Ranked 10th by TSN’s Craig Button
Ranked 14th by The Hockey News’ Tony Ferrari
Ranked 13th by McKeen’s Hockey
Ranked 10th by FC Hockey
Ranked 8th by DailyFaceoff.com
Ranked 11th by Dobber Prospects
Ranked 15th by Smaht Scouting