Red Wings trade down, have three second round picks

The Red Wings made a trade on Friday night, but it didn’t involve any roster players. Instead, Ken Holland decided he’d take advantage of the deep draft class by swapping his 24th overall pick for a pair of second rounders. Detroit now owns the Senators 35th and 48th picks, in addition to their own 55th pick — giving them a total of three of the next 25 picks in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft.

Jim Nill let it be known that they were hoping to land a defenseman with their early picks, but likely saw that anyone they had an eye on was selected before their turn, and decided that they’d rather take two good players instead of one “very good” player.

The Red Wings did something similar in 2009 — trading their 29th overall pick to Tampa Bay for the 32nd and 75th overall picks. The Lightning took Carter Ashton, and the Red Wings took Landon Ferraro and Andrej Nestrasil (with Tomas Tatar picked in between with their own selection).

This was a successful Draft for TPL — as we correctly mocked 25 of the 30 players selected, though after the first five, the order was completely wrong. As we mentioned above, there are a lot of excellent players left on the board for tomorrow’s round two, and they’re listed below if you want to do a little bit of research.

Once again, we’ll have a live chat here at TPL — hosted this time by our good friend @JJfromKansas at Winging it in Motown. Stop by and say hello — we had some awesome prospect chatter on Friday night and I expect nothing less on Saturday.

POTENTIAL RED WINGS SELECTIONS AT 35, 48, and 55
Boone Jenner, C
Brandon Saad, W
Ty Rattie, W
Tomas Jurco, RW
Scott Mayfield, D

All of those players, I had mocked in the first round. At least one will still be available when the Wings walk up to the podium. Additionals:

Rocco Grimaldi, C
Victor Rask, C
David Musil, D
Dmitrij Jaskin, D
Alexander Khokhlachev, W
Nick Shore, C