William H\u00e5kansson<\/p>\n
Round 2, #51 Overall |\u00a0Defenseman | 6’5″, 217 lbs. | Lule\u00e5\u00a0(Sweden)<\/p>\n
Following the same playbook as last year, the Canes traded back twice before eventually making their first pick. The third time was the charm, though, and the group started their day by adding a big defenseman to their pool.<\/p>\n
“There’s a defensive acumen to his game, there’s no question about it,” NHL Network analyst Jason Bukala said in the moments after the pick. “He has skating ability.”<\/p>\n
Playing 22 games in Sweden’s highest league last year, the 18-year-old is under contract with Lule\u00e5 again through the 2027-28 season, but is tabbed as someone who is a perfect fit for this organization.<\/p>\n
“He’s a leader. He plays exactly the way the Carolina Hurricanes value their players to play. I really, really like the character of this kid. Honestly, in one of my mock (drafts), I had him inside the top 25. He’s a Mattias \u00d6hlund type of player.”<\/p>\n
A few fun facts? The big\u00a0blueliner learned how to skate in his backyard in Sweden as a kid, on a rink that his father had made out of frozen towels, and when asked for a player comparison, he mentioned\u00a0Jaccob Slavin.<\/p>\n
Yorke: “William H\u00e5kansson is a player that we’ve known very well, playing in the international events and in Sweden… Big, rangy defenseman that skates well and has nastiness. (We want our defensemen)\u00a0to be able to hold tight gaps and play fast defensively, and he fits that style of play perfectly.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William H\u00e5kansson Round 2, #51 Overall |\u00a0Defenseman | 6’5″, 217 lbs. | Lule\u00e5\u00a0(Sweden) Following the same playbook as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-730092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}