Jaxon Cover heard his name at No. 32, and Travis Green now has one of the draft's most unusual projects in Ottawa.
The Senators closed the first round on Friday night by taking Cover with the final pick, a move that caught plenty of people off guard.
That surprise starts with the player's path. Cover only began playing ice hockey a few years ago, which makes this a swing on raw upside more than a safe first-round profile.
He was born in Miami and raised in the Cayman Islands, and the article notes that he first fell in love with the sport on roller skates. That backstory makes the pick stand out even more.
Ottawa clearly saw something worth betting on after his season with the London Knights. In 67 games, Cover put up 20 goals and 32 assists for 52 points.
That production matters because it shows how fast he has adapted to the ice game. For a player still new to the sport, that kind of jump is what gets teams thinking bigger than the public rankings do.
Ottawa bets on upside over consensus
The biggest reason this pick turned heads is simple: most draft watchers did not have Cover going this high. Ottawa passed on the safer board play and chased a different ceiling.
As the original report put it, the Senators “went way off the board” with the selection. That's the kind of phrase that sticks when a team makes a first-round move this aggressive.
Patrick Bacon of Top Down Hockey had Cover ranked 59th overall, which was described as one of the highest projections seen for him before the draft. That gap tells you exactly why this became a talking point right away.
There's also an Ottawa angle here. A player based in the Senators' home province is easier to track closely, and the organization may have trusted its own read over the outside noise.
That doesn't make it a safe pick. It makes it a bet that development, skating base, and late growth can beat the consensus over time.
Now the pressure shifts from draft night reaction to what comes next. If Cover keeps climbing, Ottawa will look smart for trusting its own board when the room got tense.
Did the Senators reach too high for Jaxon Cover?
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