The Vegas Golden Knights are going to have to take a goaltender in the second or third round of the entry draft.
Lets face it. The Vegas Golden Knights aren’t going to be a Stanley Cup contender right out of the gate. The fans have to be patient for a while and let General Manager George McPhee do his thing. Building through the draft is a long process but it’s definitely not impossible.
The first round does contain good to great talent but one player doesn’t really stand out from the other which makes this draft interesting. However after the first eight picks or so, the talent level drops significantly. The expansion franchise has important picks to make in the second and third round regardless of the level of talent in this years entry draft.
Since the team is obviously going to be lacking young prospect goaltenders, the Golden Knights could take Keith Petruzzelli. Petruzzelli plays for the Muskegon Lumberjacks of the USHL and he’s putting up some pretty solid numbers. The Wilbraham Massachusetts native is 21-10-1 with a GAA of 2.41 and a .917 save percentage.
Petruzzelli will commit to Quinnipiac in the 2017-2018 campaign as he looks to takeover the starting job right out of the shoot. The young 18-year-old netminder will be under more of a microscope playing at the NCAA level.
Whats impressive to me is his rather large size for a goaltender. Petruzzelli is 6’6 and 190 lbs and he may even grow more. This tells me he can cover a ton of net and has the ability to recover if he’s out of position. This sort of reminds me of a young Pekka Rinne in some ways.
Rinne is 6’5 and he scrambles out of position at times but recovers quick enough to make the big saves. Rinne was also much more of a longshot as he was picked in the eighth round in the 2004 NHL entry draft by the Nashville Predators. Petruzzelli loves to come out and challenge the shooter as his size could intimidate some players and give them the slightest hesitation.
Petruzzelli is also does really well at handling the puck in corners and gives his team a window of opportunity for an outlet pass. In a way he’s also being compared to Mike Smith of the Arizona Coyotes. Not to mention the dude even scored a Goal on a pretty sweet shot.
You don’t see that very often. He’s clearly got the skill to make plays and make the defense’s lives a lot easier. But back to the actual goaltending aspect of the game.
Petruzzelli battles through and see’s traffic well which is huge especially when he’s big as he is. He may need to clean up rebounds more often but a lot of that comes with time and patience.
All goaltenders are pretty raw at this age and he may not even be the best goalie in this draft. But he brings the ability to compete every night and that’s all you can really ask for. McPhee has to be wondering when he should pull the trigger on a Goalie. Petruzzelli is expected to be taken at some point in the second or third round which is exactly when the Vegas Golden Knights should take a goaltender.