I vividly remember Gary Bettman's announcement that the Canes had traded up for the 4th pick. It was really exciting, but in hindsight it didn't work out all that well for us - despite the constant barking by N&O's Luke DeCock that the Canes HAD to get Andrew Ladd. Still, it was an awesome experience.
Lots of future Canes in that draft though..Bryan Bickell, Andrej Sekara, Tim Brent, Kris Versteeg, Jakub Petruzalek, who played his only 2 NHL games for the Canes.
Ladd and Cam Barker were the top rated North American skaters in the draft, which goes to show how weak that class was. Barker only played 310 games in an injury riddled career. The rest of the Central Scouting too 10 was Alexandre Picard (drafted by Columbus with the pick they got from the Canes, 67 games played), Kyle Chipchura (482), Wojtek Wolski (451, his stock dropped because of an assault allegation), Boris Valabik (a 6’7” dman/pylon played 80 games), Drew Stafford (841), Dave Bolland (433, 2nd rounder), Mike Green (880 games, also an alternate captain in the 2011 All-Star Game) and Rob Schremp. The drop off on the International rankings after Ovechkin and Malkin was pretty steep too…Rostislav Olesz was next.
Yeah ... 4 absolute studs (Ovechkin, Malkin, Wheeler and Rinne) and a bucket full of sturdy contributors like Ladd, Barker, Zajac, Green, Edler, Polak, (and probably a few others) many of whom had injury issues. But aside from Rinne most of the long shots fizzled, a lot of the first rounders were duds and there was almost nothing from the middle rounds. As draft pools go, it sucked.
Devan Dubnyk was the 2nd rated North American goalie behind Montoya. The 3rd ranked goalie was David Shantz, picked by the Panthers 1 spot ahead of the Canes taking Peters. Shantz never played an NHL game but also ended up in the Canes organization, sort of. He played 43 games over 2 seasons for the Florida Everglades with Peters, Craig Kowalski, drafted by the Canes in 2000 and Kevin Nastiuk, a 2003 Cans draft pick. Thomas Greiss, Cory Schneider and another future Hurricane that I missed earlier, Anton Khudobin were also in that draft.
He did get a Slug to crap his pants and send a puck over the glass for a penalty in the 2006 ECF, so he worked out sufficiently well, if for only that one, shining moment.
