Is Dylan Strome Back In The Mix?

For a while now, we haven’t really talked about Erie Otters centre Dylan Strome.

That doesn’t mean that Strome tumbled down the draft rankings, or that we at TLN soured on him… We actually stopped talking about him because it’d been suggested to us pretty strongly that the Arizona Coyotes were pretty much set on drafting him with the third overall pick. 

We stopped talking about Strome in the same way we’ve never really talked about Connor McDavid or Jack Eichel. It was irrelevant.

That might be changing pretty quickly.

This has major implications for the Toronto Maple Leafs, who have long been tied to Mitch Marner and Ivan Provorov. Toronto certainly knows by now that Arizona covets Strome, but if they do choose to move down and another team grabs Boston College defender Noah Hanifin, Strome is suddenly and unexpectedly available.

Do the Leafs take Strome if they get the chance?

A 6’3, 185 centre, Strome lead the entire draft class with 129 points in 68 games this season. He is in every way the prototypical big first line pivot that every single team covets, with high end offensive skills and intelligence, and a knack for leveraging his size and strength to protect the puck. While his skating isn’t at the same elite level as others players expected to go around him, it’s also far from being a concern – Strome moves around the ice just fine. Still, some may argue that, statistically speaking, Mitch Marner is the better forward prospect. 

Strome ranked fourth in TLN’s own 2015 Draft Rankings, one spot behind Marner. Personally, I ranked Strome third – higher than any other writer on this site. So yeah, I do think the Leafs should draft Strome if he’s somehow available to them. Big centres are a lot like unicorns in that they don’t appear very often. When they do, it’s not a bad move to take a chance on them. Marner is a fantastic prospect, but I don’t believe the London Knights winger has so much more upside (I think it’s pretty much a push) that you can ignore Strome’s size and positional advantage.