The Isles drop down a little in the first two rounds so that they can have one more roll of the dice.
In a move that is odd for its timing if not for its details, the Islanders swapped late-first-round picks with the Chicago Blackhawks in next months draft in order to add a second-round pick in the same 2024 draft.
Officially:
- The Isles get the 20th, 54th and 61st overall picks
- The Blackhawks get the 18th and 50th overall picks
The NHL.com headline tells one bemusing version of the story: “Islanders, Blackhawks swap first-round picks” — which would be a huge deal if Chicago’s tank-reward, true first-round pick (2nd overall) were involved. But of course it’s not. (Chicago had the 20th overall pick from Tampa Bay in the Brandon Hagel trade.)
The Islanders’ official site headline tells a different, equally bemusing tale: “Islanders Acquire Three Picks.”
The long and the short of it is the Isles dropped down two spots in the first round and four spots in the second round in order to add on extra late-second-round pick.
This is the kind of trade teams sometimes do at the draft table when it’s clear which names have disappeared from the board — say, if Chicago wanted the guy available at 18 while the Isles didn’t care if they got any of the next three guys.
But happening weeks before the draft, it seems more like the Islanders just want one more ticket and view the dropoff in the first round as sharp and early enough that they’re not concerned with 18th vs. 20th overall.
All this means is somewhere, sometime in 2030, someone’s gonna look back at the 2024 draft and mourn that the Isles or the Hawks took Guy A when they could have had Guy B but not for this silly May trade.