Hockey News OHL insider Jared Brown explains why highly anticipated prospect Beckett Sennecke should go inside the top-12 picks.
The NHL draft quickly approaches on June 28th and to make things interesting, sportsbooks have posted betting odds for certain prospects and where they will land.
We spoke with the Hockey News’s OHL insider Jared Brown on highly anticipated prospects like Oshawa’s Beckett Sennecke.
The power forward has interesting odds listed for where he will go in the draft. Brown offers his insights as he’s been in and around the game of hockey for most of his life and even attended the ISS Hockey Scouting Mentorship program. He has been covering the OHL since 2018 before joining the Hockey News, this past January.
All betting lines are from Bet365 and are subject to change. Hockey is a difficult sport to predict so please gamble responsibly.
Bet: Beckett Sennecke Under 11.5 Draft Position (-200)
The Generals top line winger impressed this season with 27 goals and dishing for 41 assists for a total of 68 points.
He finished third in points as the teams top draft eligible player and has had scouts interested since hitting a recent growth spurt according to Brown.
“His growth spurt has a lot of scouts licking their lips because he was seen as a highly-skilled, undersized winger who has the one-on-one skill to embarrass defenders,” he said “Now, he has that but in a much bigger body, which he's still growing into.”
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This checks out as Brown mentioned Sennecke entering the OHL standing at 5-foot-10 and now stands at 6-foot-2 which means the 18-year-old still has room to get even bigger.
“Many scouts look at him and say he's got a massive ceiling to become a skillful power forward in the NHL,” Brown said.
This years draft class is loaded with defensive talent as TSN’s Bob McKenzie has four defenseman in his top nine prospects. Brown heard that Montreal is high on Sennecke and would make sense as they finished with the seventh-worst goals per game at 2.83 and could use another forward to add to their young top six.
“There had been rumblings at the NHL Draft Combine in Buffalo that Montreal is high on Sennecke,” he said “Another factor is that the top-end of the draft is mostly made up of defensemen, meaning a team in the top ten, who are comfortable with their prospect pool on defense and may feel more inclined to go with a forward.”
Brown believes the under is the best play and is heavily favoured at the sportsbooks which means this could work better as a parlay add rather than a straight bet to take.
Check out more of Jared Brown’s work on Beckett Sennecke ahead of the upcoming NHL Draft.