NHL draft leaves Kings, Ducks, California players smiling

Everybody got a little bit of what they wanted Friday in the first round of the NHL entry draft, though the wait was unexpectedly short for some and agonizingly long for others.

The Edmonton Oilers, picking first before a crowd of 11,052 at Staples Center, got a potential franchise player in left wing Taylor Hall of Windsor of the Ontario Hockey League. That gift-wrapped prolific center Tyler Seguin for the scoring-challenged Boston Bruins, who grabbed the 18-year-old who had been ranked No. 1 by the NHL’s Central Scouting Bureau.

But after the Florida Panthers took brawny defenseman Erik Gudbranson with the third pick, form and haste flew out the window and a series of dominos began to tumble.

When they came to rest nearly four hours later, the first NHL draft staged in California became the first to feature two California-born-and-trained players. Right wing Beau Bennett of Gardena went 20th to Pittsburgh, the earliest a Californian has been chosen, and right wing Emerson Etem was picked 29th by the Ducks.

The Kings and the Ducks were able to say they uncovered gems they hadn’t expected would be available. That’s what teams always say, but in these instances it might be true.

While supposed experts shook their heads and a number of highly touted teenagers began to squirm, the first round began to go off the track. Defenseman Cam Fowler of Windsor, ranked fifth among North American skaters, was still on the board when the Ducks’ turn came at No. 12. Perilously thin on defense even before Scott Niedermayer retired, they took him and blessed their good fortune.

The Kings swapped the No. 19 pick and their 59th pick to Florida to move up to No. 15 and claim defenseman Derek Forbort of the U.S. National Team Development Program. Though Forbort plans to attend the University of North Dakota next season he immediately won over the many Kings fans in the crowd when his biography mentioned he’s 6 feet 5.

And it all happened because Columbus shredded every projection by selecting center Ryan Johansen at No. 4 instead of a defenseman. That started a trend that favored the Kings and the Ducks, who can almost consider Saturday’s final six rounds to be gravy.

“That changes everything. Then everyone’s going after forwards,” said Ducks General Manager Bob Murray, who hadn’t interviewed Fowler at the predraft combine because he thought Fowler would go early.

“A lot of teams wanted forwards. We’re not disappointed that they did.”

Fowler, who was born in Canada but moved to Michigan as a child and has represented the U.S. internationally, is known for his vision, skating, passing and skills as a power-play quarterback. Sort of like Niedermayer, who greeted him at the Ducks’ draft table. Murray begged reporters to spare Fowler the pressure of being labeled a replacement for the future Hall of Fame defenseman.

“Don’t do that to him,” Murray said.

But Murray joked that Niedermayer, who will take on still-undetermined duties as a consultant, now has an assignment. “I told him, ‘There’s your first project,’” Murray said.

The Ducks later used the 29th pick to claim Etem, who had been ranked eighth among North American skaters after a 37-goal season with Medicine Hat of the Western Hockey League but was repeatedly ignored.

“I waited for so long and I didn’t know what was going to happen next,” said Etem, whose selection set off a roar never before accorded a Duck in Kings territory as his family and friends celebrated the good news. He grew up a Kings fan and said he had never been to a Ducks game, but he can now quack with the best of them.

“I couldn’t fall to a better organization. It couldn’t be a better fit for me,” he said. “My emotions are just running out of control right now.”

The Kings, also seeing surprises sprout as the day dragged on, waited and worked the phones and pursued Forbort, a native of Duluth, Minn., who improved his stock in the second half of this season. The Kings, who have plenty of youth on defense at both the NHL and minor league levels, decided to invest in him as a long-term project.

“A 6-foot-5 defenseman who’s still maturing was still on the board,” Mark Yannetti, the Kings’ co-director of amateur scouting, said in a voice tinged with disbelief. “On our rating system he’s as good a skater as you can have.”

In the end, a record-tying 10 U.S.-born players were chosen in the first round. That doesn’t include Fowler, a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen.

Among the Americans was Gardena’s Bennett, who scored 120 points for Penticton of the British Columbia Hockey League en route to making history. The earliest a California-born-and-trained player had been chosen before him was in 2007, when Jonathon Blum of Rancho Santa Margarita was picked 23rd by Nashville.

“It’s an unreal experience,” Bennett said of his selection.

He could have been talking about the first round of an unpredictable draft.

helene.elliott@latimes.com