The Charlotte Hounds were a team that in just their second year as a franchise in 2013 went to the MLL championship game and were runners ups. In the summer of 2014 they didn’t make the playoffs after having high hopes at the start of the year. This has always been a team with young talent to build around and just traded away two veteran players to get more picks in 2015.
Matt Danowski was sent to the Chesapeake Bayhawks for the third overall pick in the 2015 MLL Collegiate Draft and also a second-round pick in the 2016 Major League Lacrosse Collegiate Draft. Charlotte also traded their second-round 2015 MLL Collegiate Draft pick to Chesapeake for the Bayhawks’ first-round pick in the 2016 Collegiate Draft.
The Hounds also got the Boston Cannons third round pick in 2015 for the Hounds starting goalie Adam Ghitelman. This leaves Charlotte with some questions going into the collegiate draft and who they’ll be eyeing to fill the needs left by these trades and getting some more young players to help this 2015 season.
In net the team will have back Pierce Bassett and also have Jack Runkel who the Hounds picked up in the supplemental draft. Former LeMoyne All-American and National Champion Jeff White is also on the roster as of now. I speculate that the Hounds will draft a goalie in one of the mid rounds of this draft though. The top goalie prospect would be Lehigh University’s Matt Poillon who is the leader of one of the best defenses in college lacrosse and he’s a big reason why. If Matt is not there some other options are Jake Gambitsky who was a blue chip recruit coming out of Long Island and plays under Ghitelman at Harvard. Two other top goalies the Hounds could take are Florida native and Hofstra starter Chris Selva or preseason All-American out of High Point University Austin Geisler.
In this draft I can see Charlotte taking a few North Carolina Tar Heels. With the third pick Charlotte could take midfielder Chad Tutton who will be the main midfielder for North Carolina this spring. Chad is out of Brampton, Ontario and excels at both field and box lacrosse. If Chad wants to move his talents from Chapel Hill down to Charlotte, he is capable of doing great things for the Hounds. In later rounds, preseason third team All-American midfielder Will Haus out of Duke should be joining his older brother John this summer in Charlotte.
The Hounds will also look to go after Attackman Joey Sankey, who is a smaller player but he also may be the quickest with a laser of a shot. His college teammate Jimmy Bitter had 38 points last spring and will also be looked at as a top prospect for Charlotte. The Hounds will also look to add depth at the defensive end. The top prospect would be Johns Hopkins LSM Michael Pellegrino who is tough as nails and a ground ball machine. Some other top defenders are Ivy leaguers Brian Fischer and Jordan Stevens. Canadian Sean Young out of Syracuse is also one of the top Division-I long poles Charlotte may go after.
The Hounds have some holes and can fill some depth with this draft to help them get back on track in 2015.
