from Ansar Khan of Mlive,

"I don't think I was the 30th pick," Veleno said. "I could have gone a lot earlier in my opinion, but I was lucky enough to fall to a historic, great organization in Detroit. For sure it motivates me even more to be better than all those players that went ahead of me and be the best player in that draft."

Many analysts were surprised Veleno (6-1, 191) fell as far as he did. Some projected him to be selected just outside of the top 10.

Detroit's first pick, Filip Zadina, also felt slighted to drop to No. 6 and said at the draft that he wants to "fill the net with pucks" when facing teams that passed on him.

"I think I'm going to help him do that," Veleno said. "Our types of games are different, he's more of a scorer, I'm more of passer, so hopefully I can help him with that.

"For any player who slides in the draft, obviously, it kind of gets to you a little bit and you want to kind of shove it to the other teams that passed on you. I want to do the same thing. I want to prove to all those teams that they shouldn't have passed on me."

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