It's been a while since last year draft and it's been a while since I wanted to write about Tomas Jurco but I thought I'd be doing so as him being a Sens prospect. The St. John Sea Dogs failed to win the memorial cup for a second year in a row but once again, Jurco was the one player that amazed me on the star stacked St. John team. He is smooth, great defensively and absolutely lethal on the offensive end. Erik Condra He seems to score 9,9 times out of 10 when he is given some space to challenge the goalie 1 vs 1 and obviously is a beast in the shoutouts.

The one area where he could really improve heading to this year was his skating and I thought he did just that. His offensive production benefited from it greatly and the best part of that offensive improvement is that he successfully maintained the same level of excellence on the defensive side of his game in a rumored offense inflated QMJHL.

I was anxious everytime a team approched the podium to announce their pick last summer because even if he wasn't ranked that high, I thought Jurco would be going in the top 20 and I wanted us to draft him bad.

We all know how it turned out to be. We drafted Stephan Noesen (Who at the time was compared to Maxim Lapierre by the TSN experts) with our 21st pick than we traded two of our three secound round picks (35th (Jurco) & 55th (Ouellet)) to snag Puempel.

I've watched Matthew Puempel play only twice and I know very less about him than I know about Jurco or even Ouellet. They both haven't played a single NHL game yet so this is not a who is better than who case.

Detroit knows something about drafting good players late and as I previously pointed out, Ottawa has excelled under Bryan Murray's tenure at drafting good players in the second round too so I've had a hard time trying to understand why Murray have traded so many second round picks in the last couple of years. If the Red Wings accepted to pass on Puempel (or whoever they were going to draft with the 24th pick), it's because they knew that something at least equally special was available down to the second round.

Detroit is my second favorite team so I obviously won't mind if Jurco and Ouellet pan out as long as Puempel pans out too. As it's often the case, I think it's Ouellet, the third element of that trade, that is going to determine who clearly won down the road.

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Matt Puempel: 6.00pi - 190lbs - Left winger

last year with the Peterborough Petes: 55gp - 34 goals - 35 assists - 69 points - minus 33

This year with the Peterborough Petes: 30gp - 17 goals - 16 assists - 33 points - minus 3

This year with the Binghamton Senators: 9gp - 1 goals - 0 assists - 1 points - plus 1

Puempel hasn't appeared in a single playoff game for the last 2 years and as we know have been injured often during that time.

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Tomas Jurco: 6.02pi - 193lbs - Right winger

last year Regular season with the St. John sea Dogs: 60gp - 31 goals - 25 assists - 56 points - plus 46

last year Playoffs with the St. John sea Dogs: 19gp - 6 goals - 12 assists - 18 points

This year Regular season with the St. John sea Dogs: 48gp - 30 goals - 38 assists - 68 points - plus 46

This year playoffs with the St. John sea Dogs: 16gp - 13 goals - 16 assists - 29 points

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Xavier ouellet: 6.00 - 187lbs - defenseman

last year Regular season with the Montreal Juniors: 67gp - 8 goals - 35 assists - 43 points - plus 27

last year Playoffs with the Montreal Juniors: 10gp - 0 goals - 8 assists - 8 points

last year Regular season with the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada: 63gp - 21 goals - 39 assists - 60 points - plus 16

last year Playoffs with the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada: 11gp - 3 goals - 7 assists - 10 points

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On another note, I loved and still love Brian Lee as a player and I was one of the first to claim that we traded him for nothing but can someone tell me what the Sens scouts saw in him that motivated them to draft him instead of Anze Kopitar?