NHL mock draft 2017: Top two still remains toss-up between Nico Hischier, Nolan Patrick

With the Flyers winning the NHL Draft Lottery this year and jumping all the way up from No. 13 to No. 2 — man, typing that truly does not get old — we’re going to be paying quite a bit more attention this spring to the cottage industry that are NHL mock drafts.

We’ll start doing that today, 39 days before this year’s NHL Draft in Chicago. How are the mock drafts shaping up with the top two picks?

We’ve found nine recent mocks, and nobody has gone off the board just yet. All nine have either Nico Hischier or Nolan Patrick going one-two, with four picking Hischier first and five picking Patrick.

Things change drastically after the top two. Miro Heiskanen, Gabriel Vilardi and Casey Mittelstadt are all mocked to the Dallas Stars at No. 3, while Michael Rasmussen, Owen Tippett and Cody Glass all find their way into the top five in these mocks.

We’ll keep updating you on NHL mock drafts each week until the 2017 NHL Draft in Chicago, and of course we at SB Nation will be doing our annual network-wide mock draft in the coming month as well.

Here at BSH, we have a decent history of things in that mock. Maybe we’ll get it right again.