Draft Day Is Almost Here

HockeyProspect.com has the Saint John Sea Dogs selecting Nathan Noel and Luc Deschenes in the first round of tomorrow’s draft.

The website released their mock draft earlier today. They have Noel ranked fourth and Deschenes ranked 17^th in their 2013 QMJHL Draft Guide.

Most draft publications have the Sea Dogs selecting Noel, a centre who played at Shattuck St. Mary’s last season, third overall. Unless he is taken first by the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles - which now seems very unlikely - he will be available for Saint John.

The Sea Dogs have drafted quite a few Fredericton Canadiens players over the past few years, so selecting Deschenes, a defenseman who has been on the draft radar for years, at 17th would not be very surprising.

The top four in the draft will likely be Nicolas Roy, Jeremy Roy, Nathan Noel, and Anthony Beauvillier. The order those four go in is the big question.

Some other draft notes:

• Saint John will select three times in the first 22 picks of tomorrow’s draft. They’ll also pick once in the third and three times in the fourth, according to the QMJHL website.
• Stormin Norman, the QMJHL’s version of Eklund, continues to tweet that Saint John will select American defenseman Noah Hanifin third overall. Yeah… we’ll believe it when we see it.
• If you haven’t heard, Nicolas Roy will apparently go on stage tomorrow and put on his Screaming Eagles sweater but will not play for the team. This according to his father.
• Here’s a John Moore video on Deschenes and Rothesay Netherwood defenseman Will Thompson.

We’ll have all day coverage of the draft tomorrow here on the blog and on Twitter. Follow @station_nation, @SNCanucklehead, and @SeaDogsHockey for updates all day.