from Ryan Kennedy of The Hockey News,

Scouting the 2021 NHL draft has already proven to be an incredibly hard job due to the pandemic and teams are doing their best under the circumstances. But what if - as a thought exercise - NHL franchises were only allowed to pick players in their own backyards? Now, I don't mean players who grew up in the area (that's an entirely different blog), but players on teams within a reasonable driving distance? Let's say about three hours, one way - give or take a few minutes. And teams would have territories - the closer city wins. How would your team fare?

That's the question I asked myself and the results were very interesting. To begin with, only 17 NHL franchises qualified, so the others were out of luck....

1. Detroit Red Wings

Owen Power, D, Michigan (NCAA)

Kent Johnson, C, Michigan (NCAA)

Matty Beniers, C, Michigan (NCAA)

Luke Hughes, D, U.S. NTDP

Dylan Duke, C, U.S. NTDP

Roman Schmidt, D, U.S. NTDP

Sasha Pastujov, LW, U.S. NTDP

more teams...