Alex Urquhart
The Minnesota Swarm are coming off another year in which they made it to the Divisional Finals. The Swarm had a rough regular season only going 7-9. With the NLL 2013 Draft coming up the Swarm will need to look at their deficiencies and try to resolve them before the regular season starts on 28 December against the reigning NLL Champion Knighthawks.
The Swarm are going into the draft with four first round picks including the number one and number two picks. After the first round the Swarm will not pick until the twenty- first pick of the third round and then they will finish the draft off with four more picks in the third, fourth, and fifth rounds.
Earlier in the summer the Swarm traded both Ryan Benesch and Andrew Watt to the Buffalo Bandits for a couple of future picks. This trade has given the Swarm a little room to play around with on the roster. The trade will also give the Swarm the ability to draft some very offensive young players, but will also allow the organization to build the young group of players that were a big part of the Swarm’s playoff run last season.
The Minnesota Swarm will need to improve on their goaltending, which was hit or miss last season. They will also need to bolster their offensive power which struggled at times.
The Swarm have both the first and second picks along with the fourth and seventh picks in the draft. According to the InLax prospects Top 50 prospects the number one and two picks are Logan Schuss and Jason Noble, both have switched between the one and two spots a number of times. Most likely the Swarm will take Schuss who had a tremendous MLL season with the Ohio Machine, He also played with current Swarm player Kiel Matisz. With the second pick the Swarm could go one of two ways, either take another forward like Noble or take the MLL Rookie of the Year Rob Pannell or they could take the number one rated goalie Dillon Ward. The Swarm will most likely take Ward in the first round it would be more a matter of when.
The Minnesota Swarm will are THE team this year. With the best young group of players in the NLL. They will be the team to beat this season, and Minneapolis/ St. Paul will need to start planning a championship parade.
The NLL draft will take place Monday September 16, at 7 pm at the Toronto Rock Athletic Centre in Oakville, Ontario.
