Bruins NHL Draft Preview: Blue Line Depth In The Final Round

The Boston Bruins currently have five picks for the 2020 NHL Entry Draft that takes place next Tuesday and Wednesday. The Bruins won’t draft in the first round next Tuesday night after trading their first round pick in the trade for forward Ondrej Kase in February. Their first 2020 NHL Draft pick will come on Wednesday morning in the second round. The Bruins will then pick in the third, fifth, sixth, and seventh rounds. 

For the past week, BHN has reached out to some NHL amateur scouts for their insight on draft eligible prospects and more specifically who could be available and be a fit for the Bruins each time they go on the clock at the first ever virtual NHL Draft. Let’s kick things off deep into the draft and go down from there as the NHL Draft approaches. 

Round 7, Pick 212

There will only be four more picks in the 2020 NHL Draft after the Bruins pick at 212th overall. So one could successfully argue that whomever the Bruins pick here won’t have a chance of sniffing the NHL for another three to four years or even more. However, as we’ve seen with teams like the dynasty Detroit Red Wings teams, good scouting can still grab you a diamond in the rough this late into the NHL Draft. 

The Bruins are very much focused on staying competitive and replenishing their system at the same time and three different scouts mentioned Swedish prospect Casper Gillberg as a ‘deep sleeper pick’.  The 6-foot-7, 197-pound rearguard had three goals and ten assists for the Malmo IF Redhawks this past season and will turn 19 on October 14. 

“This kid’s huge and still growing,” one scout said. “He could be a little faster but for his size, he’s mobile enough. I think he might actually get scooped up before this pick.

Another scout had this to say:

“I’ll put it this way, we’ve got a guy on our staff that’s been pushing hard for us to keep an eye on him as we get into the later rounds.”

With the Bruins about to lose Torey Krug and potentially captain Zdeno Chara, they will be looking to some of their top defensive prospects to make the leap to the show this coming season and beyond. If they could snag a solid blue line prospect in the seventh round of the 2020 NHL Draft, they will do it.  

The last time the Bruins picked a defenseman in the seventh round of the NHL Draft was in 2017, when they drafted Viktor Berglund who also played in Sweden with Modo Jr. The Bruins took forwards in the seventh round in the last two drafts. They selected winger Jake Schmaltz (Chicago, USHL), in 2019 and center Pavel Shen (Khanty-Mansiyik, Russia Jr.) in 2018.