The 2012 NHL Draft gets underway on Friday, and over the past week the SB Nation hockey bloggers have been participating in a mock draft. The No. 18 selection for the Chicago Blackhawks was recently made as Second City Hockey selected defenseman Matt Finn from the Guelph Storm out of the Ontario Hockey League.
Finn has always had a great shot, but the one area he needed to improve upon was his conditioning if he wanted to be a first round selection, and that is what Finn concentrated on over this past season. Finn's coach Scott Walker talked about his improvement:
"His conditioning is 100 times better this season. If you can imagine a 16-year-old being out of shape, he was. I had my year-end meeting with him and I said, ‘you can be a top 10 player or in the top seven rounds, you got to decide.' That's really ultimately on the player and, man, he went home and came back in phenomenal shape. I give full credit to him."
For updates, stay tuned to SB Nation Chicago. For more in-depth coverage, head over to Blackhawks blog Second City Hockey. And for more news and notes from around hockey, visit SB Nation's NHL news hub.