from Ryan Lambert of Yahoo,

Tomorrow is the day.

It’s another Aug. 15, and a former high-end NCAA player will have his draft rights lapse, making him an unrestricted free agent. In the past, guys like Jimmy Vesey and Kevin Hayes were the guys who got a lot of attention.

This time around, it’s former Denver defenseman and most recent Hobey Baker winner Will Butcher.

The talk about Butcher has been more muted than Vesey or Hayes, for reasons that aren’t totally clear to me. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s a defenseman and not a high-scoring forward. Maybe it’s because the team he’s leaving is the Colorado Avalanche, and there’s no clear big-market destination either (Hayes was leaving Chicago and went to New York; Vesey left Nashville in a more high-profile spat, and also ended up in New York). Maybe it’s because Butcher is undersized for an NHL defender, at just 5-foot-10.

But let’s be clear here: Regardless of these mitigating factors, Butcher is a damn good hockey player who put up a lot of points, has represented the United States internationally and, if he were a prospect for most any team, would have been hyped to the moon.

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