The reason for Shane Wright slipping to #4 is finally revealed

We're now almost 2 weeks past the 2022 NHL Entry Draft, and still now, people are talking about Juraj Slafkovsky going at #1 and the long-time consensus #1 Shane Wright dropping to #4.

Per Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman, who did some digging into why the slide for Wright had occurred, he discovered that multiple teams had viewed Wright as a poor interview due to his "bad attitude", which certainly explains the rapid decline in his stock value.



Not having sat in those rooms and not having been a fly on the wall during the interviews, I can only speculate how those talks went. With that said, there can often be a fine line between cockiness and confidence and one can easily be mistaken for the other.


With a young kid like Wright, having all of the momentum behind him and being touted as a #1, of course he was going to get a bit of a big head about it. Going 4th overall was probably more beneficial for the player than going 1st overall because it may have taught him a lesson in humility, but also lit a fire under him to work harder to prove everyone wrong.

I'm still of the steadfast belief that 3 teams made a huge mistake on draft night and that Wright is going to be the best of the draft class, but at least now it makes more sense as to why other teams did not view it the same way.