2020 NHL Entry Draft: Profiles. Lucas Raymond

Making a lot of noise in Ducks circles in the most recent months is the first Swede I have looked in this series of entry draft profiles. Lucas Raymond played almost this entire past season in the SHL against grown men as a 17-year-old, putting up an underwhelming ten points in 33 games. Why then is he getting so much hype you might ask? Mostly because he was utilized in a limited role with reduced ice-time, so those totals don’t exactly tell the whole story. But also because – it isn’t always about the stat-line.

Raymond is widely regarded as one of the better play-makers in this draft -which may not be exactly what the Ducks are after in terms of urgent need- but it should definitely not be counted against him. The rest of the tools at his disposal are only just slightly worse than his passing ability. He is pretty much great at everything, but his play-making is what he excels at.

Playmaking – Passing:

As stated. Raymond is a play-maker first and foremost. He will look to make the pass first. He can spot and feed through an almost impossible seam or perfectly time cross-ice passes either on the rush or with the man-advantage. As a caveat – if the Ducks want to vastly improve their Power Play – Raymond would do that. He loves to work from the half-wall and As stated previously, Raymond is a play-maker first and foremost. He will look to make the pass first. He can spot and feed through an almost impossible seam or perfectly time cross-ice passes either on the rush or with the man-advantage. As a caveat- if the Ducks want to vastly improve their Power Play- Raymond would do that. He loves to work from the half-wall and create confusion, drawing defenders to him before sliding a pass to the open man or create an overlap. His vision and poise is also above average; he has tremendous patience with the puck and can see plays develop on the fly.

Skating – Speed:

I like what I saw of him in transition. He has very good edge-work with powerful acceleration. He can beat defenders with change-ups or by just straight up stick-handling around them. He can uses his speed to force turnovers or make critical defensive plays as well as making a pest of himself on the Penalty Kill. With all of that said, there were some instances against men in the SHL where his speed failed to beat a defender one on one.

Shot:

His shot has been described as better than average. Not spectacular but still dangerous. He had four goals this past season, and from the highlights I saw the majority of them were from one timers in the slot. But his wrist-shot appears to be just as good and can be lethal if given enough time and space.

Size – Strength – Physicality:

Potentially the only knock against Raymond is his size and physical game. At 5’10” he is hardly tiny in the today’s new NHL, but at just 165lbs he most definitely will need to bulk up to be able to run with the pros. I saw clips of him losing board battles due to sheer lack of size or getting out-muscled on an attempted fore-check. If he can’t hit an attacking line with speed, he can generally be neutralized by taking the body.

Conclusion:

To repeat, the Ducks are in more need of a pure sniper, but Raymond does fit the “Right shooter” bio. As for comparable players – as I was watching clips and reading up on him he reminded me a lot of Tim Stutzle, and I found that I was not alone in thinking that, albeit a much more polished version. In terms of NHL potential: a slower version of Mitch Marner is the most common description I have seen, or a bit closer to home – Troy Terry. From what I saw of his highlights, some of the ways he pulled the puck in before taking the shot was very Troy Terry-esque which again makes me think the Ducks would probably rather a pure sniper like his fellow countryman Alexander Holtz if either of Raymond and Holtz were available when they selected. But we can only guess – whomever selects Raymond is getting a top six NHL player with great vision and creativity.