With the NHL Draft taking place in Ottawa this weekend, every hockey fan is wondering who is their team going to pick, what trade day deals are going to happen and how is their teams chances at the Cup going to look after the weekends completes.

Being the good person that I am I thought I would shine some light on a few things.

Steven Stamkos will be the first overall pick, no questions asked.  I think that Tampa Bay's problems are not concerned with offence and they should be focusing on defense, but a prospect like Stamkos only comes along every so often.

Watching Stamkos at the World Junior Championships this past Christmas was a treat because I finally got to see what eveyone was talking about how good this kid is.  He will be an instant impact player in the NHL and will slide right into the Lightning line-up replacing the departed Brad Richards.  Their powerplay will be incredibly good with Lecavalier, St. Louis and Stamkos.

Teams are going to shy away from taking European players who are signed with club teams and playing professionally in Europe because of the disintegration of the IIHF Transfer agreement between the NHL and all other professionaly leagues around the world.

Players like Nikita Filatov who is projected to be the Number 5 overall pick according to TSN, will get passed over simply for the degree of difficulty of getting players away from their European team without being caught in a legal battle like Evgeni Malkin was when he left Russia for the Penguins.

In the NHL, especially with the Draft, you can't expect to be good overnight unless you get a prospect that is a 100% can't miss like Stamkos.  Most of the time when you get a player who is 18 years old, he takes time to develop physically, when the player is a lot smaller than his future NHL colleagues.

The mental aspect is not that big a deal because the players in the CHL are used to playing a ton of games, including three games in as many nights.  Also, in the CHL they play with the rules they are going to play with in the NHL which is another reason that the turnover is going to be a lot faster than a sport like baseball and or to a lesser extent football.

A draft in any sport-except baseball-is always exciting and the upcoming NHL one will be no exception.