Beyond Center Ice

Welcome to my first round mock draft ahead of tomorrow! I will be doing draft coverage here so keep an eye out!  The 2023 Draft Class is extremely deep. This could genuinely turn out as one of the greatest draft classes in a long time, and that's partly because of who's at the top, but it just doesn't get worse from 2 to around 20, and even that dropoff is very minimal. Every player taken in the first round could seriously become NHL impact players soon. Now, without further ado, take this journey with us as we do our 7 round May Mock Draft: 1. Chicago Blackhawks - Connor Bedard (C) from Regina Pats (WHL) Yeah there's not much debate about this one. Connor Bedard is by far the best player in this draft, and that's with absolutely no disrespect to the rest of the class. It's just that Bedard is the best prospect since McDavid. Pretty hard to top that. He tallied 71 goals and 143 points in 57 WHL games, which is just absurd. I'm sure you guys reading this all ...

 It's a rematch of the 2020 West Finals! In that series, the Stars took it. Who takes it now... Once again, this playoff continues to surprise as each of these two teams were widely expected to be out in the 2nd round, but they prevailed. For Dallas, they had to fight a really tough to beat Kraken team that saw really good goaltending from Philip Grubauer. For the Knights, they had to face McDavid and Draisaitl, but they managed to absolutely break Stuart Skinner and outscore the Oilers, advancing here. As I said, this is a rematch of 2020's Bubble Conference Finals, and the Stars took it. The Golden Knights haven't been to the cup finals since their inaugural 2018 season, so these two teams are certainly used to the pressure. The two who aren't used to these big stages are the goalies. Adin Hill has had to take over the job after Brossoit went down in the middle of the Oilers series, and he has done fantastic. The timeline on Logan Thompson is still muddy, so it looks ...

 The East Finals Are HERE! And I got both of my predictions for the semi-finals wrong! Who predicted this? The Florida Panthers beat not only the best regular season team in NHL history, but then they dominate a Toronto Maple Leafs team that was expected to win the cup after Round One! They absolutely rolled over the Leafs, and they deserve their spot here in the east finals. For Carolina, many (including me) doubted their ability, but they have gotten over whatever scoring issues they had down the stretch, as they have absolutely killed it on offense in both Round One and Round Two. For these two teams, it's looking like they're going to be impossible to stop... but one of them will stop the other. Who? For Florida, everything has gone right for them since Game 5 vs Boston. Matthew Tkachuk has been great, and though he didn't score against Toronto, he put up a lot of assists and currently has the 2nd most points among playoff players still in the playoffs. He single-handed...

 It's the final preview of the 2nd round! With it, we look at the two best in the Metro, the Hurricanes in the Devils, who each handled their New York opponents in round one.  This series is going to be fun. The Canes played 6 extremely hard fought games where they came out on top versus an Islanders team that many (including me) expected to make an upset happen. They relatively outplayed the Isles at their game, and managed to get the amount of goals they needed on Sorokin to propel them through. Their PK was fantastic, but part of that had to also do with the terrible-ness that was the Islander Power Play. As for the Devils, they had a tough series as well. The Rangers put up a great fight, including winning the first two games and making the Devils look extremely inexperienced. But, they rebounded, starting rookie tendy Akira Schmid in game 3, and then went on to win the next 3 games, including 2 at MSG. They lost game 6 but came out strong and dominated play in game 7, pic...

 The Panthers completed one of the most shocking upsets in NHL History, not matched since 2019 when another record breaking team was eliminated. But, their story is not done. They have a chance to shock the world again with another upset victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs, who finally made it out of the first round for the first time since 2004.  After the Panthers defeated the Bruins, I, like many others, was at a loss for words. They were down 3-1, but they played with fire, with a desperation I haven't seen any other elimination facing team play with. They fought hard in each and every moment, buried their chances in game 5 and especially game 6, and then stunned the world in the OT of Game 7. But, with all of this, they weren't even being outplayed in this series. They were the better team on xG%, and the margin was even higher on G%. They deserved to move on, the Bruins did not. Matthew Tkachuk was the hero of the series, with 11 points in the 7 games, and being a force...

 The Kraken upset the defending cup champions... can they upset the Stars now? Dallas handled Minnesota in 6, while the Kraken surprised everyone by not only keeping up with the Avs, but taking several series lead and winning the winner-take-all game 7 by a score of 2-1. The Kraken put up an incredible team effort, while the Stars also had decent play from everyone but relied heavily on solid defense and goaltending.  Jake Oettinger carried the Stars into round 2. That much is obviously known, and he has been the best goalie of the first round. He put up a 4.3 GSAx with a .929, and he outmatched Filip Gustavsson, who tried his best to bolster the Wild into round 2. Oettinger's numbers are incredible also when you take into account that he had a rough game 2 that definitely made his numbers a lot worse. The Wild played better in most senses of the word, but I said before this series that Oettinger would be the difference, and he was. But, he was not the only one who stepped up....