Alison Lukan

You can never have too many forwards.

You can never have too many centers.

Right.

And so what they decide the value is of what's available at their pick.

And to your point, what might be available elsewhere in the draft.

I think they're going to be very, very smart in terms of thinking about every possible angle.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's actually a little bit of both, right?

I mean, I think we're seeing the script start to flip in the East.

Of course, as much as Carolina is a wagon right now, it's after this round where things start to become a struggle for them historically.

So they haven't really answered any of those doubters yet.

But you see two teams, Colorado and Carolina, like you mentioned, just saying we are as good as we have been all year and it's going to be really, really hard to beat us.

But then you flip it around and you see names that haven't been in the playoffs from both sides of the league.

And you look at a Buffalo who seems to be getting more comfortable in understanding the demands of postseason play.

You look at an Anaheim that I did not think was going to be able to stand up to the test defensively.

But being the nerd that I am, I went in and I looked at some of the underlying numbers.

And if you compare what they're doing in the postseason, which is just a tournament, right, you just have to get hot at the right time.

They're among the top teams in terms of improving in terms of controlling overall shot quality and in reducing the shot quality they're allowing.

So are they maturing before our eyes?

So I think it's a really interesting study and proven talent versus proven by fire of being there for the first time.

And it continues to be a really interesting debate about how you build a team, right?