Bradley Nadeau
Position: Centre
Shoots: Right
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 161lbs
NHL Comparable: Another tough assignment to find a good NHL comparable. Maybe I’m taking it too seriously? Lets say Andreas Athanasiou.
The raw tools and offensive mind are there to project Nadeau to be a future top 6 scoring forward. More than anything else his wrist shot and one timer are far above average, which has been enough for some players to enjoy a long NHL career (Michael Ryder played over 800 games in the NHL, scoring 237 goals and his skating was far below NHL quality). The good thing about Nadeau is that he brings speed to the table as well. This is where the Athanasiou comparison comes from, because if you remember, he entered the NHL as a scoring threat with speed to burn. I’d say that Nadeau has a higher ceiling than Athanasiou, but the latter scored 30 goals in the NHL once upon a time, as well as 20 goals this past season in Chicago and a 30 goal scorer is probably Nadeau’s ceiling…… Athanasiou just hasn’t been able to produce those totals consistently, whereas Nadeau still could. Lastly, Nadeau’s defensive game is improving all the time and it never lacks effort.
This pick would be an obvious one for Kyle Dubas, as the biggest knock on Nadeau is his size. If not for this year being such a deep draft, he would likely be much higher on the board than normal. At first glance you would consider him a true boom or bust prospect, but his defensive game could grow to a point where he could fit into the right bottom 6 forward group, where he would chip in a little offense on top of being defensively responsible.
Nadeau obviously needs to bulk up in order to be an effecitve NHL player. The New Brunswick native is already committed to the University of Maine for next season, my expectation is that he’ll play 2-3 years there before being a true consideration for a roster spot, so he has time to do just that.
As much as I’d like to turn the page on the Kyle Dubas draft era, this would be a smart pick by the Leafs.