NHL teams
Corey Pronman, Special to ESPN 8y

NHL mock draft: Auston Matthews first, then who?

NHL, NHL Draft

With the draft lottery completed, it's time for an updated look at who I see being taken in each of the top 30 slots of the 2016 NHL draft.

Some caveats:

  • This is a projection of the first round, not my personal ranking of the players mentioned (my updated rankings come next week). This is meant to reflect the top 30 draft prospects as viewed by the industry.

  • Team tendencies, philosophies and depth charts are taken into account.

  • While we'll probably see trades on draft night, I'm not projecting any in this mock.

Given that we're not yet at a point where teams have their entire board finalized, I hope to accomplish two things with this mock: First, this gives fans a rough idea of what range of players their team probably will be considering, and two, this shows who could be available at their slot. Any thoughts on who I think a team likes are based on informed speculation from this season, or from getting to know a team's personnel over a longer period of time.

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