LAS VEGAS – It seems like a pretty natural fit in Cole Eiserman’s eyes: joining the San Jose Sharks and reuniting with former Shattuck-St. Mary’s teammate Macklin Celebrini in the NHL one day.
“Yeah, I would,” Eiserman told this news organization Wednesday when asked if he’d like to be teammates with Celebrini again. “I definitely want to cross paths with him at some point in my career, and obviously we work pretty well together. It would be pretty fun.”
After Thursday’s trade with Buffalo, in which they sent the 14th and 42nd overall picks to the Sabres for the 11th overall selection, the Sharks have nine picks in the NHL Draft at Sphere in Las Vegas. Barring something completely unforeseen, they will take Celebrini with the No. 1 overall pick in Friday’s first round.
What they do, though, with the No. 11 pick in an utterly unpredictable draft is unknown. Will they pick up a top-end defenseman? Add a forward to their burgeoning pipeline of centers and wingers?
Sharks general manager Mike Grier said earlier this week that he was open to moving the No. 14 pick. Now at No. 11, they’ll likely continue their thought process of taking what they feel is the best player available.
Maybe that will be the 6-foot, 195-pound Eiserman, who, in his two years with the U.S. National Development Team, set the program record with 127 goals. The previous record was held by Montreal Canadiens forward Cole Caufield, who had 126 in his two-year span.
Eiserman has arguably the best shot of any player in the draft, one he used to score 58 goals in 57 games this past season for the U.S. National Under-18 team. Sportsnet’s Sam Cosentino has Eiserman going to the Sharks at No. 11 in his latest mock draft.
When he was teammates with Celebrini on Shattuck’s 14U AAA team, Eiserman had a staggering 97 goals and 57 assists in 50 games. One would imagine that Celebrini had a hand in several of Eiserman’s goals as he collected 90 assists that year.
There’s no doubt that Eiserman works on his craft as a shooter. He said he’s studied how the best players, such as Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs, can get their shots off in certain situations.
“He can be in the same position and go to four or five different spots,” Eiserman said of Matthews, “and I think that’s the biggest thing, is being able to kind of move your hands in different ways and use the flex of your stick is pretty important. You can roll over your wrists and do different stuff like that.”
The knock on Eiserman, who is still just 17 and will be a freshman at Boston University this fall, is his lack of a two-way game or defensive awareness, making him one of the more polarizing players in the draft.
In his annual pre-draft rankings, longtime insider and analyst Bob McKenzie of TSN noted how Eiserman’s stock has dropped precipitously in the last year. In a consensus ranking based on a survey of 10 NHL club team scouts, Eiserman fell from No. 2 behind Celebrini before the start of the season.
“He’s quite one-dimensional; he’s a one-way shooter,” one scout told McKenzie. “He has a great shot — no one has a better one-timer — but is it going to translate (to pro) because he either can’t or won’t do the other things necessary (to score in the NHL)?”
Eiserman knows he has work to do to round out his game once he begins playing at BU under coach Jay Pandolfo.
“Just being able to be a pro player,” Eiserman said. “Block shots, be physical, quick passes, kind of the cycle game that you’ll see more in the pro-style. Having to do it at the college level is going to make it easier to make that jump.”
Eiserman, a Newburyport, Massachusetts native, said he interviewed with the Sharks, who have several New Englanders in their front office, at the NHL scouting combine in Buffalo, New York recently.
“It was good,” Eiserman said. “I think they really understand me as a player, and so we’ll see what happens.”
THE REST OF THE DRAFT: With the second-round draft pick they acquired from the Detroit Red Wings earlier this week as part of the Jake Walman trade, the Sharks now have four selections in the top 53.
“It’s an important draft for sure,” Grier said earlier this week. “If you start off with having that number one pick, that kind of gives you a leg up. But it’s just a chance to keep filling out what we have.”
If the Sharks draft nine players, they’ll have picked a combined 45 players in the last five years. Of that total, 29 have been signed or are on the team’s reserve list.
The Sharks have already signed four players they drafted last year: forwards Will Smith, Quentin Musty, Kasper Halttunen, and defenseman Luca Cagnoni. They also acquired Collin Graf via free agency and defensemen Henry Thrun and Jack Thompson via trade.
“We’re really happy with the draft we had last year and some of the pieces we were able to add, and this is kind of just adding to that,” Grier said. “So I don’t know if there’s a level of importance to put on it (this year), but we’re excited.
“It’s definitely going to be a big part of us pushing this forward is getting these pieces right, hopefully, and adding them to what we already have. So it’s an exciting time.”