Poll: 2005 NHL Draft Take Two: Seventh Overall Pick

Hindsight is an amazing thing, and allows us to look back and wonder “what could have been.” Though perfection is attempted, scouting and draft selection is far from an exact science and sometimes, it doesn’t work out the way teams – or players – intended. For every Patrick Kane, there is a Patrik Stefan.

We’re looking back at the 2005 NHL Draft, which kicked off the salary cap era and ushered in many of the current NHL superstars. The question we’re looking to answer is knowing now what we didn’t know then, how different would this draft look now with the benefit of hindsight?

Here are the results of our redraft so far:

1st Overall: Sidney Crosby (Pittsburgh Penguins)
2nd Overall: Carey Price (Mighty Ducks of Anaheim)
3rd Overall: Anze Kopitar (Carolina Hurricanes)
4th Overall: Jonathan Quick (Minnesota Wild)
5th Overall: Kris Letang (Montreal Canadiens)
6th Overall: Tuukka Rask (Columbus Blue Jackets)

Now we move forward to the seventh pick, which was held by the Chicago Blackhawks.

To recap how this works:

• We will go through the 2005 NHL Draft and have our readers select, through a voting process, who they think should have been taken with the selection.
• The entire first round will be redrafted, spanning picks one through thirty. The new selection is chosen by the majority of votes.

Back in 2005, Chicago selected college-bound winger Jack Skille out of the US National Development Team Program.  However, he failed to live up to his draft billing with the Hawks, as he played in just 79 games with the team over four seasons before being dealt to Florida in a package that netted them Michael Frolik.  Over the past several years, he has spent time with the Panthers, Blue Jackets, and Avalanche and is currently on a tryout deal with Vancouver.  For his career, Skille has 75 points in 313 NHL games, which is far from good production from a top ten selection.

With the seventh pick of the 2005 NHL Draft, who should the Chicago Blackhawks select? Cast your vote below!