Lukas Dragicevic is a high-risk, high-reward prospect for the 2023 NHL Draft

Steven Ellis
Steven Ellis
Lukas Dragicevic is a high-risk, high-reward prospect for the 2023 NHL Draft
Credit: JOHN KELLER

BASEL, Switzerland – You definitely can’t call Lukas Dragicevic boring.

Just check out his numbers. For a defenseman, 15 goals and 75 points is quite something – he had a 25-point gap over Vancouver’s Mazden Leslie for the U-18 WHL defenseman scoring lead. Tri-City wasn’t a great team by any means, but Dragicevic was absolutely dominant with the puck.

The best term to describe Dragecevic is “dynamic.” The way he drives offense is something very few defenders have managed to do in recent years. Dragicevic was Tri-City’s main play driver, kind of like Erik Karlsson in San Jose or Lane Hutson at Boston University. He’s flashy, skilled and is always moving and looking to send the puck down the ice.

Dragicevic is a fourth forward out there. He plays an exciting game. And he’s going to have no problem generating 50 points a year in the NHL.

“He’s shown a bit of everything this year,” a scout said. “Watching him with Canada, he’s one of the team’s most important play drivers. You don’t see defensemen come around like that every year.”

But that’s the thing: he’s a defenseman. You know, the position where you’re trying to help keep the puck out of your own net. Sometimes, that feels like a lost art with the influx of quality two-way talent. And with Dragicevic, that’s where things get wonky. I don’t want to say he’s “bad” defensively, but there’s a reason why we’re not talking about him being a top 10 pick in a down year for defensemen. We have him ranked 27th at Daily Faceoff, good for sixth among blueliners. A lot of outlets even have him outside the first round.

Dragicevic is a bit flat-footed, allowing decently quick players to blow past him and take advantage. His positioning can be disastrous too, especially if he rushed the puck up the ice earlier in the shift. You have to hand it to him: you have to be quite good to have the confidence to jump in on the play, knowing one mistake will put your team in a bad spot. Given his success frequency, he can get away with it often. But as a translatable skill, his skating will knock him down a few pegs at the NHL level.

Dragicevic is a good skater, but it seems like he never uses it to his advantage in the own zone like he does on the attack. He’ll often be too passive coming back, or just stride in too slowly. He’s very mobile, but it’s like he doesn’t see everything going on around his own net half the time.

But it’s his flaws that could make him one of the steals of the draft, if that makes any sense. If the team that drafts him can utilize him effectively – as a power-play quarterback or paired with a smart, stay-at-home defender – Dragicevic can be extremely useful.

And we’re also talking about an 18-year-old here – there’s so much time to go in his development. He’ll play another two years in the WHL and then we’ll see where he goes from there. We see a ton of prospects play a more relaxed game a year after getting drafted because the pressure of always having to be the best is lost. Truly, it’s early days.

“He’s like a wild roller coaster,” a scout said. “The highs with him can be thrilling. But then other times, it’s like his game drops off a cliff and it’s terrifying. It’s all about maximizing the highs with him.”

The U-18 World Championship in Switzerland has been a microcosm of everything we’ve seen from Dragicevic this year. He had a rough first game against Sweden, going minus-5 in an ugly 8-0 loss. There’s only so much blame you can attribute to a player with that low of a minus rating, which is why it’s mostly overlooked in the NHL. But we don’t have much other data to go off of in junior or international hockey. It feels notable given the context here.

But then in the two wins for Canada ever since, he’s been fantastic. The 6-foot-2 defender is averaging around 21 minutes a night and has a pair of points to show for it. Canada can’t win Group A after the crushing loss to Sweden, but they’ll have a good route to the medal round as the projected second seed. At this point, it looks like they’ll play a Swiss team that’s quick, aggressive and giving headaches to teams over in Group B.

For Dragicevic, who was on the 2022 U-18 team but was a late cut from the Hlinka Gretzky Cup squad a few months later – to the shock of many – this is crunch time. Canada has relied on him heavily early on. They’ve looked far from a well-oiled machine, but Dragicevic has been one of the team’s better players.

With the puck on his stick, Dragicevic is so dangerous, thanks to his great hands and offensive instincts. Without it, there are question marks. It’s up to the NHL team that drafts him to figure out how to get the most out of him, because he truly is a fantastic prospect. But like everyone, he has his flaws. It’s about managing them. And the right team with the right system could make him into a valuable piece of their core before too long.

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