Pre draft report.

[Noodle Enjoyer 173]

VHL and VHLE drafts fast approaching

 

With the drafts coming up soon we thought we'd take a look at a young forward we looked at a little at the onset of the VHLM season. Annie Oaks is a right winger from the United Kingdom who played her first year in the VHLM between the Saskatoon Wild and the Las Vegas Aces. She finished top 10 in scoring this season and appears to be a highly sought after player in the draft. When we looked at her near the beginning of the season we saw that she focused primarily on offense and little has changed in that regard. She has improved all of her offensive tools while starting to round out some of her weaknesses. Let's take a look at her tools once again ahead of the draft.

 

Offensive Vision - Her vision in the offensive zone is absolutely elite, it is among the top of the draft this year. Her vision looks almost VHL ready at this point now, and we expect it could get even better as she plays more games in the tougher VHLE. She can find open teammates with a pass or can get the puck to the net through traffic as well as the best of them.

 

Shot - Some scouts have said her shot is already at the VHL level, she has a cannon of a slapshot but could stand to work on improving her wrist shot release. Still we can expect to see Annie put up some decent goal totals in the VHLE with her elite clap bomb, however she is not known to be of much use in shootout situations because of her lacking wrist shot.

 

Passing - Annie uses her vision in a myriad of ways, whether that be threading a needle through a defenders skates or just making a simple bounce pass off the boards to help with the breakout. However the thing we noticed throughout the year in the VHLM was she likes to use the opponents goaltender to set up her teammates she is very good at shooting for rebounds that her teammates can then clean up. This was probably her most common way of producing assists this season.

 

Strength - Annie is a strong player she mostly makes use of her strength with her slapshot but has been known to play the body a little bit too. She has a low center of gravity and is hard to push off the puck. It remains to be seen if she will work to add a more physical element to her game.

 

Puck handling - We had this listed as a weakness for her at the start of the year, and although it's still not her best asset she has worked on improving this part of her game. In order to create more offense this is a part of the game Annie should definitely invest some time into.

 

Defense - This has grown very little over the year and may scare some teams out of drafting her. Teams expect their forwards to play defense in the VHL and although she has put some time into working on it, it still needs lots of work in order to be ready for the VHL.

 

Skating - This is her weakest attribute and only improved a little over the course of the VHLM season. She is slow and not going to create much offense with her skating, Annie is the type of player who likes to slow the game down and play with smarts and patience.

 

We asked Annie on what her thoughts going into the draft were and if there were any teams she was particularly interested in getting drafted by.

 

"I'm very excited for the upcoming drafts and have had some great talks with GMs so far, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a couple of teams that I feel are ahead of the rest. I'd love to play in my home country for the London United, however that's unlikely due to the success they had this year, so my next choice is my home away from home Vancouver. I played my junior hockey in Vancouver, so it feels a lot like home to me, and they have some great young offensive talent coming in this season, so to join them maybe next year would be exciting."

 

The Vancouver Wolves hold the 4th pick in this years draft and will have lots of great players to choose from so only time will tell where Annie will go. However it's common speculation that it will be around the top half of the first round.

This has been Jim Hotdog for VHL.com

[Banackock 7,742]

Going 2nd overall