Article submitted by Max Power

The Calgary Flames opened up the first ever CMHL rookie draft selecting Ryan Suter, who they announced days earlier they were taking.

This would open up a lot of options for habsfan93 whose Blue Jackets held the 2nd pick, but days before the draft they traded the pick to the New Jersey Devils in a monster deal that sent the 2nd pick, two 4th's and Steve McCarthy to New Jersey in exchange for Scott Niedermayer and Keith Primeau. New Jersey now without their captain would select one of Canada's top prospect centres in Jeff Carter.

The third pick belonged to the Chicago Blackhawks, but for some reason, their GM wasn't there, And this was a critical pick as it was quite early in the draft. But never-fear, Canucks was there and stated that Chicago had given him a list of what he thought the order would be, so Canucks stated that Stajanfan might want Braydon Coburn as that's who he said was third on the list...and that's who Chicago got, and everyone was happy...BZZT...Stajanfan came on to find out the news, and it wasn't pretty. But he later dealt Coburn and was content for the time being.

Edmonton, Tampa (Who got the pick from Toronto), NYR and Buffalo would fill out the next couple of picks selecting Robbie Schremp, Ryan Getzlaf, Lauri Tukonen, and Stephen Dixon. Buffalo's selection of Dixon raised some eyebrows but nothing too big.

The Isles held the 8th pick but were nowhere to be found, a la Chicago. This time no one spoke up and his pick would be skipped for a few days until Beezer popped up later in the week, and selected Lukas Kaspar around the same time people were grabbing their third round players. Ouch on him.

Chicago would hold another pick and snagged Andrei Kostsitsyn, who, before getting injured this season, was tearing up the league and even won the player of the week award for Week 3 of Season 2.

Tampa, Boston, St.Louis, San Jose, Phoenix, and Florida held the next couple of picks and would select: Rostislav Olesz, Alexander Radulov, Jeff-Drouin Deslauriers, Mark Stuart, Boris Valabik, and Patrick O'Sullivan. O'Sullivan got a couple ARGH's as a few GM's were hoping he'd slip to their spot.

Minny (one of the O'Sullivan ARGH'S) would take Alexander Steen, Ottawa Would grab Anthony Stewart, Buffalo would hold picks number 18 and 19 and select Corey Perry and Mike Richards, and New Jersey would use their second first rounder to select Eric Fehr who, like Kostsitsyn, has been on fire leading the Devils in points, while being on the second line.

Carolina, Washington, LA, Pittsburgh, TB(again), Edmonton would select their players next: Brent Seabrook, Dustin Brown, Ryan Whitney, Wojtek Wolski, Anderi Meszaros and Drew Stafford.

Atlanta would select next and take Maxime Talbot. This confused some guys, as he was 7th on on Pittsburgh depth chart at HockeysFuture, yet he's doing very well for Quebec in the ICHF. Buffalo would finish the first round slecting quality d-men Shea Weber and Shawn Belle.

The rest of the draft was relatively quiet. No guge steals were seen (maybe Grigorenko getting taken mid-second), few deals were made, the first was the money-round. Funny seeing Tampa try their damndest to get all those firsts yet of the three players they selected, Getzlaf is now a Flame, Olesz is with the Blues and Meszaros is a Bruin. Everyone seemed happy with their selections. The next draft however will be huge just for the fact that Sidney Crosby will be eligible. Quite an exciting draft and I hope that next year will be bigger.

For a full recap of all ten rounds, see below.