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Craig Custance, ESPN Senior Writer 10y

Blackhawks keeping the pipeline full

Like many of his colleagues, Blackhawks director of amateur scouting Mark Kelley traveled to Buffalo on Thursday to check out super-prospect Jack Eichel and his teammates at the All-American prospect game. The plan was to then drive over the Windsor and catch Connor McDavid against the Spitfires. Two days, the two best players in the 2015 draft.

Kelley was looking forward to seeing these franchise players on consecutive nights to observe how their games had grown since the last time he watched them live. As the guy in charge of amateur scouting for one of the best teams in the league, Kelley’s opinion on these guys may just be for entertainment purposes only. The days of Chicago picking at the top of the draft ended when it grabbed Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane and called it a decade.

Every once in a while though, he’ll remind GM Stan Bowman just how good the top of the draft is this year. You know, just in case

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