Season 13 of the EURO League will be in the history book by the first week of May. Coincidentally, the real NHL season will have just ended, meaning Websim’s new set of attributes for current NHL rookies will be out just when we need them. The NHL draft will be conducted two months after that.

That gives us three scenarios to decide upon as a league for our 3-round draft. A poll of league GMs will be held once we advance to Season 14.

Scenario #1: Draft right away with the new NHL rookies and the leftover prospects. The rookies will be led by Nashville defenseman Alexandre Carrier and Boston goalie Jeremy Swayman, who should have high PO ratings. Forwards Tanner Jeannot, Michael Bunting, Rem Pitlick; defensemen Dysin Mayo, Sean Durzi and Jacob Middleton; and goalies Stuart Skinner and Dan Vladar will be the next best players to draft. As for the prospects, a few of them played in the Olympics – like Brock Faber and Sean Farrell – but there aren’t many obvious first-rounders in that group. A problem with this scenario is that it would likely be a really poor draft class.

Scenario #2: Wait two months until the NHL draft is completed and you have a chance to add players like Shane Wright, Simon Nemec, Juraj Slavkovsky and Logan Cooley to the Scenario #1 group. The problem with this scenario would be the wait. Two months for all teams, and more than 4 for the non-playoff teams. One of the benefits of a virtual evo league is the fact you don’t have to wait if you don’t want to.

Scenario #3: Draft right away. This is Scenario #1 plus 30 or so fictional players who would be real people. Some were drafted in the lower rounds of recent NHL drafts, and others are top players in European leagues and lower North American leagues, but who were not drafted into the NHL. PO rating would range between 87 and 76, or somewhere in that range. If you remember the Season 5 and 9 drafts that brought us players like Sergei Mozyakin, Viktor Antipin, Dominik Lakatos and Miro Aaltonen … this group would be like them, with the odd player from Denmark, China, England and other places that don’t usually get much representation. That would leave the 2022 NHL draft class to be added to our Season 15 draft.