Wednesday, January 15, 2014

SuperDraft tomorrow (and two more re-signings)

First the roster news.  In a follow-up from yesterday I found out from the Rapids that Mullan is signed as a player, not a player/coach, so his whole salary will count against the cap.  Also both Brenton Griffiths and Kory Kindle were re-signed today, giving our defense some depth, even if its a bit untested.

Defensive depth will likely be a focus of tomorrow' Superdraft.  Starting at 10am MST with the first round on ESPNews the teams will go through the first two rounds, with the 3rd and 4th round held on Tuesday.  The Rapids hold 3 picks tomorrow. In the first rounf they have their natural pick at 11 for their 2013 finish.  In the second round they traded their natural pick at 11 (30th overall) to Vancouver for allocation money and an international spot two years ago but acquired LA's natural pick (14, 33rd overall) in the Pablo trade and Houston's natural pick 1(16, 35th overall) int he Mac Kandji trade.

This draft is considered to be weak on attacking power but strong on defense.  Don't be shocked if the Rapids look to add a center back at pick 11 (the same pick that got them Dillon Powers last year).  A couple of names you may hear are Denver-native defender Kyle Venter out of New Mexico, defender A.J. Cochran out of Wisconsin, Colorado Springs-native defender Patrick Slogic out of Cornell (though if the Rapids were really interested in him they could have signed him to a homegrown player contract as he was part of the Academy) , Brazilian midfielder Pedro Riberio out of Costal Carolina, and forward Denver-native Tesho Akindele out of Colorado School of Mines (who might have had the most beneficial combine out of anyone there).

If possible I'll update during the draft with our picks, otherwise I'll have a full recap tomorrow night.

2 comments:

Schmicker said...

So it's gonna be Pablo huh?

Jason Maxwell said...

Starting to look that way. The Rapids seem to be putting on a PR push for him that would only make sense if they were trying to sell the idea of him as coach. I don't have high hopes for it going well in 2014, which is unfortunate as we have a team with talent that was poised to take the next step before the blundering of Hinchey and Bravo has apparently screwed it up.