Poll: 2005 NHL Draft Take Two: Fifteenth 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)
7th Overall: Bobby Ryan (Chicago Blackhawks)
8th Overall: Marc-Edouard Vlasic (San Jose Sharks)
9th Overall: Ben Bishop (Ottawa Senators)
10th Overall: James Neal (Vancouver Canucks)
11th Overall: T.J. Oshie (Los Angeles Kings)
12th Overall: Keith Yandle (New York Rangers)
13th Overall: Paul Stastny (Buffalo Sabres)
14th Overall: Marc Staal (Washington Capitals)

Now we move forward to the 15th pick, which was held by the New York Islanders.

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, the Islanders selected center Ryan O’Marra out of Erie of the Ontario Hockey League.  However, he wasn’t in the organization for long as he was dealt two years later to Edmonton as part of the Ryan Smyth deal.  Neither one of them worked too well for the Isles as O’Marra played in just 33 career NHL games scoring only a single goal while Smyth didn’t help the team reach new heights in the postseason back in 2007 as the team was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs that year.

With the 15th pick of the 2005 NHL Redraft, who should the New York Islanders select?  Cast your vote below!

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