We’re approaching the home stretch of the first round of our draft board, and joining the mix today is defenseman Sascha Boumedienne, who brings a player profile which is interesting in more ways than one.
Born in Finland but representing the Swedish national team on the international stages (made possible by his father, former NHLer Josef Boumedienne’s Swedish citizenship), Sascha Boumedienne came up playing his minor hockey in the Blue Jackets’ junior program, before moving for one year to Youngstown of the USHL, and then finally landing in Boston, playing his freshman season with BU as a 17-year old. He faced a sharp learning curve, but ultimately grew into his role well, and put together a successful season for himself, in a long season ending in the National Championship game (which his Terriers did lose, we recall). All the same, Boumedienne has put in a lot of work to mature his game this season, and while there’s yet a lot of work to be done still, he’s made himself an interesting option for team’s looking to add some defensive depth late in the first round.
Pre-draft rankings
No. 18 by NHL Central Scouting (NA Skaters)
No. 47 by Elite Prospects
No. 25 by TSN (Bob McKenzie)
No. 38 by The Athletic (Scott Wheeler)
Bio
DOB: January 17, 2007
Birthplace: Oulu, Finland
Position: Defense
Height: 6’2″
Weight: 183 lbs
Shoots: Left
Statistics
What’s there to like?
In the big picture, Boumedienne fits well the model of the mobile, strong puck moving modern defenseman. He didn’t play a hugely flashy game for the Terriers this season, but it was one which was on the whole quite solid, and only got better as the season went on. He’s quick on loose pucks and equally quick to turn play up-ice in transition, and confident enough in his play to, if he’s not putting a breakout pass on a teammate’s tape, is doing well to skate the puck through the neutral zone on his own. His game on the whole is quite possession-focused, and he doesn’t give the puck away for free often.
His defensive game isn’t completely locked down, but he brings a good, quick stick and has been solid on the whole at breaking up plays with a bit of deft positioning and ability to gap up on puck carriers quickly. It might not make for the flashiest of performances, but he’s getting better and better at the college level of making the quick, subtle moves to kill a play before the big defensive effort is needed to negate it, which speaks well to the level at which he’s processing the game.
Some of the mechanics of his skating are a little wonky (more on that later) but he’s able to get up to a good speed in a straight line, and overall brings a good motor with his game, plays with good pace. And even with some of the weaknesses in his skating game, he remains one of the more mobile defenders in this class. It’s not exactly a hallmark of his game — though there is some potential for him to get closer to that mark — there’s a somewhat underrated slipperiness that he’s able to bring to the table, which aids him particularly in transition situations when he’s moving with the puck.
Boumedienne hasn’t shown up as a huge goal scoring threat — there is some potential there though, with a quick shot with some power behind it, that he can generally get through traffic well — but he’s been much more reliable as a distributor. He’s quick enough at the blue line to make a good volume to keeps at the line, and is able to use his quick, accurate passing to thread pucks through traffic to set his teammates up for chances.
Also, while he didn’t positively rake in the points for the Terriers this season — though the figure he did put up is certainly respectable — we can reasonably expect that he’ll be able to take a significant step forward in his sophomore season, if his coaching staff gives him some power play time to work with this time around (a role he did thrive in at the junior level). He’ll have some stiff competition to go up against, but there’s certainly some interesting untapped potential here. We certainly saw it at work in a big way at this year’s U18s, as he scored 14 points over seven games and set a new single-tournament record for points by a defenseman, so it’s clear that there’s some more offense in his game than they were seeing at BU. It’ll be something interesting to watch going forward, no doubt.
That performance at the U18s puts him in something of an interesting position as well — though his projection is still somewhere in and around the end of the first round, beginning of the second round, we’ve seen teams fall victim to recency bias in drafts past, so might this give Boumedienne’s stock a boost in the eyes of some organizations? Time will tell.
What’s not to like?
Of course, it’s not as though there aren’t any weak points in Boumedienne’s game. We mentioned his good straight line speed, but his edge work is a little clunky and that can give him some trouble navigating tight coverage in the defensive zone. It’s not a massive red flag, and he still manages to generally work around that, but it’s not pretty, and if he’s not able to make some improvements, it likely will hold him back to a degree at the next level. There’s some promise there — as he’s certainly made improvements from the start of the season, getting more bend in his knees and a bit more explosiveness in his first couple of strides — but it remains a work in progress, and will remain something of a question mark until further progress is made.
He’s also not exactly perfect in the decision making department, and can be somewhat prone to mistakes with the puck, or on reads in the defensive zone. He’s making some strides here too, but it’s another work in progress, and teams looking to potentially draft him are going to have to reckon with the fact that he’s going to be a bit more of a project as a prospect. If they have the resources to dedicate to developing his game in the right way, it’s not a problem, but for a team that might be looking for a more complete prospect, this might steer them away.
How would he fit into the Flyers’ system?
The question of fit here is an interesting one. On the one hand, Boumedienne doesn’t address any direct or specific needs within the Flyers’ prospect pipeline. That is, they’re not exactly starving for left shooting defense prospects, particularly those who aren’t exactly lockdown stalwarts in the defensive zone. That said, this doesn’t mean that the game he brings to the mix is completely redundant. Having a surplus of defenders in the pipeline who can skate and move the puck well is valuable, and while Boumedienne doesn’t address the desire to stock up on more physical defensive presences, they’ve equally been working to bolster that area through last year’s draft, and it’s not as though they don’t have a surplus of picks to continue to chip away at that this year, if they feel strongly that they need to continue to pursue that balance. That said, the size that Boumedienne brings does offer a bit of balance to a defense group that’s been trending a little smaller on them, even if he doesn’t tick the box as the booming physical presence.
Additionally, they’re still looking for that right fit to run their top power play unit at the NHL level, and while they’re certainly a ways away from Boumedienne being ready to make the jump to that level, it definitely doesn’t feel like a bad idea to stock up on players who look like they could factor in as options for this role.
Could the Flyers actually get him?
While it’s a wider range as far as where Boumedienne is projected to go in this draft, it feels like a pretty safe bet that he’ll at least be an option for the Flyers, be it at the end of the first round, or even early in the second when those picks begin roll around. Even with a potential eleventh hour boost that we mentioned as a possibility earlier, Boumedienne should remain in play for the Flyers to pick at some point, making his all but surely a name to watch.
What scouts are saying
“This is another player who I’ve gone back and forth on every single time I’ve seen him. I was a little bit down on where others had Boumedienne to start the year, but in this class, he quickly becomes an intriguing project to build on that could be a good development case that matures into a solid possession-focused defenseman with great skating ability who really thrives in the offensive zone. His range allows him to gather pucks quickly and effectively, he’s got some interesting tricks to pull off in order to push into the neutral zone, and the skill level is pretty good for a defender in this class. That said, his defensive results and video evidence are a mixed bag. While on paper he isn’t getting filled in in the defensive zone, he struggles on the rush with his backwards skating and mobility, and there just isn’t much of a physical edge to his defending as of right now. Like Hensler, it is very difficult for me to project exactly what Boumedienne could be, but if I had to put money on it, I could see a mobile bottom four defender that I might experiment with on the power play who carries some issues tracking defensive rushes, but uses his footwork and speed to win races and defend through his positioning. Time will tell, and I’ll see him at least a couple more times before the end of the season, but he’s moved up quite a bit here and has become an interesting curiosity in this class.”
–Will Scouch, scouching.ca
“Boumedienne has good size and uses it to his advantage, with a long reach that helps him maintain solid gaps and take away passing lanes. Despite his size, however, he is not physical at all, making him easy to push off the puck and prone to shying away from contact. He also relies a bit too much on his reach, often lunging at loose pucks instead of beating the opposing player to them. Building strength will help boost his defensive game. Most of his offensive opportunities came in transition, as he didn’t really look to establish himself as a threat when his team had sustained zone time. With his vision, it would be beneficial to see Boumedienne put himself in better positions to produce and create chances.”
–Jacob Roth, FC Hockey
You know the drill: one player comes off the poll, another steps in to replace him. Today we’re welcoming into the mix Jack Murtagh, a speedy forward with the NTDP, committed to join Boumedienne at Boston University in the fall (how’s that for continuity?).
“Murtagh is a rollercoaster ride. On one hand, he had two amazing runs for shots in the offensive zone that were highlight reel level good. He has a great shot and is able to get it off against very good competition, and he was a productive transition player with the puck on his stick.
On the other hand, Murtagh doesn’t engage very much defensively and had the worst Corsi by far on the NTDP through the tracking data, and his passing decisions were very rushed and off target with him completing less than 50% of his total passes.
I like the skill and the offensive zone game, but there are a lot of details that need to be cleaned up between his defensive game and engagement, and his inability to process passing plays quick enough to maintain possession through his playmaking. “
-Austin Garrett, Smaht Scouting