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Top stats to know: NHL draft begins Friday night

A couple of days after the NHL honored its best players, the attention turns to the future and the NHL draft, which begins Friday night in Chicago.

Here are some of the top things to know.

• The New Jersey Devils own the first overall pick. The Devils franchise hasn't picked first since its days as the Colorado Rockies, when the team selected Rob Ramage first overall in 1979.

The last two times that the Devils picked a player in the top three, they selected a future Hall of Famer -- Brendan Shanahan in 1987 and Scott Niedermayer in 1991.