Winner: Spencer Knight
Regarded as a generational talent and the most exciting goalie prospect since Carey Price, Spencer Knight came into this draft with a lot of hype and rightly so.
However, he maybe didn’t get the credit he deserved in regards to where he was projected to be picked due to history.
See, it is very rare that goaltenders are taken in the first round with Tampa Bay Lightning star Andrei Vasilevskiy the last goalie to be taken inside the top 20 back in 2020.
However, the Florida Panthers were in desperate need of a franchise netminder and they decided to take the gamble and select Knight with the No.13 pick, making the American-born prospect the highest goalie drafted since Jack Campbell was taken 11th overall in 2010.
Should the Panthers now go out and splurge on Sergei Bobrovsky in free agency, then they will have elite goaltending in place both for the present and for their long-term future.
Loser: NHL Fans
We have gone for this one mainly because there was so much hype over potential trades heading into the first round.
Tyson Barrie, P.K. Subban, Kris Letang and a plethora of other names were all being floated about in trade talks and fans were licking their lips at the tantalising prospect of witnessing a boatload of stars switch teams.
However, it turned out to be the biggest anticlimax of all time because, for the first time since the Sidney Crosby draft in 2005, there were no player trades at all.
And, to add insult to injury, there are no guarantees that there will be much movement today with the salary cap for 2019-20 still not decided upon.
Let’s hope if one player gets traded today that will spark a domino-like effect and we can be treated to a mouthwatering feast of big moves.