HighOnHockey

Based on Bob McKenzie's top 12, I think the player I'd be most excited for the Canucks to pick, out of players who might realistically be available, would be Eduard Sale. High floor, high ceilling, probably not too far off from NHL-ready. 6'2 and uses his size and physicality as well as you could expect from a player this age who isn't specifically known as a "power forward". Of course if Michkov is still available you trample small children if need be as you run to the podium. Don't care who else is on the board. One other thing I'm gonna say now and will continue to say leading up to the draft, is I know we fans tend to get really locked in to certain public rankings, but NHL teams' rankings are all going to look very different outside of the top 3 or 4. Prepare yourselves for the possibility that the Canucks pick a prospect nobody expects them to pick even though there are "higher ranked" players still on the board. I'm not sure who that might be (my whole point is it will be unexpected), but my best guesses would be David Edstrom or Samuel Honzek.

Brayden Yager? Not much. Not my favorite player in the draft but wouldn't be a terrible pick at 11. Skinny kid at about 165 this year. Great shot, north-south player, gets open in scoring areas, but he'll need to add a lot of weight and strength to handle himself inside in the NHL. Fast, quick, but not the smoothest skater. Probably a few years out but should be a safe bet to be at least a 30-30 guy down the road. Plays center in junior but may end up a winger in the NHL.

It's not my lens. It's just the way it is. You can factor in differences in birth months after. Get the year right first.

I'll try explaining this another way. For younger kids certainly a few months difference in age can be very significant. By age 16, 17, 18, a few months doesn't mean that much anymore. If you take players of the same birth year in a given league (say CHL) and sort average production by birth month, the number of months age difference will be a relatively minor factor within 9 months difference. The difference between a player in their second CHL season to their third CHL season is vastly more significant. Look at Roope Hintz, Jesse Kiiskinen and Lenni Hameenaho as a good case study, as all are within a few months apart, and had somewhat similar 17 year old seasons, and then Hintz and Hameenaho had somewhat similar 18 year old seasons and it remains to be seen what Kiiskinen will do. I think for debate to even really be possible, everyone should at least be able to agree on the facts, and the fact of season-to-season prospect progression is about the most well-documented fact we have.

I just think accuracy is important.

I like Fisker-Molgaard but I'm not sure the ceilling is all that high. Two-way 15-17 minute center, but like you said he's one of the safer picks in the draft. I'm not sure I'd take him first round, but I wouldn't be surprised if he goes late first. Not that I watched any of the second division U18s but Molgaard dominated it with 6 goals and 6 assists in 5 games. And to have done what he did in SHL this year at 17 and under 170 lbs is pretty wild. I could see him being a 50 point middle six center in the NHL. On the Finnish players, I think there are a few quirks to the Finnish league/system. It is similar in quality to Swiss NL and the top Czech league. Their junior league is a bit of a step down from any CHL leagues, USHL, MHL or SuperElit, but probably a slight step up from the top Czech junior league or BCHL. It's a bit misleading because Finland is putting out more high end NHL players lately, but their league tends to lack top end quality because they have a smaller population and don't allow a lot of imports, meaning there's more opportunity for locally grown teens. So you'll see guys like Heponiemi or Raty light it up at 19 and you just can't put too much stock in it. I had my eye on Karki coing into this season, but the fact he's not playing pro yet his 18 year old season is cause for hesitation. Kiiskinen is much more interesting to me. He's got a little bit of Eduard Sale. Sturdy on his skates, decent frame, smart, skilled, but not one particular skill that really wows you (for Sale maybe his shot). But still, Hintz was 6'3 and produced at about the same rate in their U18 seasons (about 3 months apart). Hintz produced pretty solid numbers in Liiga in his U19 season. Esa Lindell put up better numbers in his U18 season than Karki did this year in his U19 season. So I'd say Kiiskinen is at least a slight step down from Hintz as a draft eligible prospect, but Karki is probably a significant step down from Lindell.

I don't have much of an opinion on Hameenaho. Thought he was decent at U18s last year. Finished 9th on the team in scoring as the 4th youngest player on the team. But your comparisons are completely infelicitous. More appropriate comparables from the same year and league for his 17 year old season would be Topi Ronni (6'2, 2nd round to Calgary), Santeri Sulku (6'4, 7th round to Philly). https://www.eliteprospects.com/league/u20-sm-sarja/stats/2021-2022?age=u18&sort=ppg Slafkovsky actually almost doubled Hameenaho's offensive output last year when they were 17. Obviously Dvorsky, Kulich, Halttunen, Sale all had much better U18 seasons. As for his 18 year old (U19) season, yes he outproduced Kemell and Lekkerimaki's regular seasons (both of which were universally agreed to have been underwhelming), but by my conversion factors, Ohgren's season was about equal to Hameenaho's, while Ostlund's was clearly better. More direct recent comparables (just from Liiga to keep it simple) would be Roni Hirvonen, Roope Hintz, Juuso Pärssinen, Alex Texier, Jani Nyman. Still not a bad group. https://www.eliteprospects.com/league/liiga/stats/all-time-season?age=u19&sort=ppg. Second round seems most likely.

The only thing I would question is the claim that Stenberg is dominant in international play. 4 points in 4 games at the 5 Nations. 3 points in 3 games at the 4 Nations. Both tied him for the team lead with multiple teammates. Against a little bit older competition at the WJAC, his 3 points in 6 games put him 5th on the team. At Hlinkas, 7 of his 9 points came in 2 games against Slovakia and Switzerland. He was pointless in two losses against Canada (with a full roster in that one). So there does seem to be a pretty strong trend that he racks up points against weaker competition and not so much against good teams. Not exactly sure what to make of his 7 points in 2 games against Canada at U18s. Bedard, Benson, Barkey, Yager, Molendyk, Akey, Bonk. They were missing a lot of their good players. If he was just struggling against older competition but lighting it up against his age group, that would suggest he's just not physically ready. But he's 180+ so that's not the vibe I get so much. My feeling is he'll be pretty highly translatable, but I'd have concerns about the skill level and upside.

It is not based on the U18s at all. Bob McKenzie does not make these rankings himself. They're entirely based on a survey of NHL scouts. NHL scouts will have gained more insight on the NTDP players from the 4 and 5 Nations than they did from this tournament. None of them forgot who's playing against boys and who's playing against men, but they still need to be able to compare and rank pro players against junior/college players, and the pro players don't automatically get the edge (Sale and Reinbacher had pretty good years in top pro leagues). The ~20 games the NTDP played against young men at the NCAA DI level (sometimes up to 25 years old) will have also been an important measuring stick for the NTDPers (Smith and Perreault both put up a p/g against DI opponents).

It's a typo. He's Austrian.

Well there aren't too many players like Hughes or Makar in the NHL, but I believe both Minnetian and Gulyayev have higher upside than Sandin-Pellikka. Minnetian has some bugs to work out with his 360 degree skating, but the potential is there for a gamebreaker. Not saying I think he'll be picked as high as I have him ranked; I'm sure he'll go second round, maybe even third, but if a team is patient and brings him along the right way, he could end up being the best defenseman out of the draft. Same for Gulyayev. He likely goes quite a bit earlier than Minnetian but will be interesting to see what happens with all the Russians this year. Last year Miroshnichenko and Yurov both went at least 10-15 spots later than where they should have gone. I don't put too much focus now days on the defensive prowess of these small defense prospects. They're all going to struggle with the strength of NHL players just the same. Minnetian is in a bit of a different category than the other two in that he's been known to have a physical edge and to step up and throw some pretty big open-ice hits. But generally speaking for these smaller D, being able to retrieve pucks, be highly evasive and make zone exits with near-perfect success rates is much more important to me. Sandin-Pellikka is great at making exits as part of a team structure and he doesn't turn over the puck easily, but for a player to have that extra gear and the ability to take over and find a way to escape almost any kind of pressure is a rare skill that I don't quite see that from any other defensemen in this draft. Minnetian, ASP and some others are great at moving the puck through the neutral zone, but they just don't have that next level of escapability in their own zone that Gulyayev has.

Yeah I'm getting the same sense about Honzek. Was maybe the biggest reason I wanted to pose the question. I sometimes wonder if scouts on Bob's list are keeping certain cards closer to the chest with their rankings. But I was also curious what people thought about But after McCagg and co. ranked him #4. I remember watching that stacked 2021 Hlinkas team, I distinctly remember I was impressed enough by this big #25 centering the 4th line to look him up. Turns out he's under-aged. My first reaction was "what a dumb name, he'll never go anywhere" and then I forgot about him for a long time. But yeah Wood went up a couple spots with his U18s for me. I'm still not convinced I see a center though. Kinda feel like his decision making isn't always snappy. Wouldn't be disappointed with Wood at 11 though. Wouldn't be too disappointed with Honzek there either. Any Russians aside from Michkov would make me very nervous. Halttunen or Edstrom I'd be a little uneasy about at 11. One other thing though, I have a new hobbyhorse and it is Eduard Sale. Dude. He's a shit brick house in junior at 168. He gets his body between opposing players and pucks and people just bounce off him. 6'2 so the frame is there. He'll be a project and a waiting game but I'm starting to think could end up being one of the stars of the draft.

I think there's more going on than meets the eye regarding Smith's defensive tendencies. Even before the interview you mentioned, I saw McCagg's scouting video on Smith and he really tore into him. But something seemed off to me, it was just too on the nose. Such a ridiculously smart player as Smith has just completely forgone any semblance of a center's defensive responsibilities? Really? And yet they win the gold medal and now Smith is ranked 3rd overall by Bob McKenzie's survey. Clearly someone is missing something. I think the answer comes when we consider the cutting edge, experimental tendency of USA Hockey. The one thing we know very well is that it's always a development program first. They do things that regular club/league teams wouldn't do. For instance as much as possible they roll 4 lines and 3 defense pairs. I remember the comparisons between Sanderson and Drysdale in the spring of 2020 when Sanderson started pushing Drysdale in the rankings. Drysdale fans were quick to point out the difference in offensive numbers, but then you consider Drysdale was playing 26 minutes a night and every powerplay ran through him, while Sanderson was playing 18-19 minutes a game, it puts things in a bit of a different light. They also do things like in the U17 year especially they really roll the lines and try to use players in ways they're not expected to - they let skilled players get PK opportunities, grinders get PP chances, etc. This both helps them really figure out what they've got going into the U18 year, and also gets everyone a chance to develop different aspects of their game. USA Hockey also indirectly created Antonio Stranges. He didn't go through the NTDP but he was involved in USA Hockey / Bauer skill camps from very early on - one of the most unique and intriguing prospects I've ever seen. They put Seamus Casey through the entire NTDP playing primarily his off side. So this season they have four elite natural centers. Meaning either they have to spread them out across 3 or 4 lines, or more likely some of them are going to have to play the wing, right? Well, sort of. Essentially, that whole top line shares center duties. Smith takes most of the faceoffs, but they all carry the puck through the neutral zone, they're all so smart and have such tremendous chemistry that in the offensive zone that they can rotate around pretty fluidly. And then in the defensive zone the one who is technically the center is always the high forward while the two "wingers" share the center's defensive duties low in the zone.

The problem is he just doesn't look like anything that special. Such a smart, safe, responsible puck-mover, but he's nowhere near the dynamic offensive skill of a guy like Gulyayev. To draft a defenseman under 6'0 in the top ten, - especially in a draft this loaded with talented forwards - they better have offensive upside in the range of guys like Hughes and Makar... Sandin-Pellikka is not that guy.

Yeah I saw the interview you're talking about. McCagg runs the show at Recrutes and the final decisions are his, but he does have a staff that has some input on the rankings, I believe the MHL still post every game on their youtube channel, so shouldn't be too much issue with availability of footage. I for one just need to get around to making the time to watch a coupe games of But with Loko. I asked the question because I just feel like one or two of those names I mentioned will end up going earlier than expected. It's the worst kept secret around that NHL teams love players with size. Death, taxes, and every year at the NHL draft some smaller kids will fall and bigger kids will jump over them.

Haven't they always?

Aside from Wood and Danielson, who've been talked about here plenty, are there any big bodies ranked within range of the first half of the first round anyone would take a swing on at 11? Honzek? Halttunen? But? Edstrom? Stramel? Maybe Simashev?

Yeah that sounds like a pretty solid comparison to me. I would be inclined to give Sale the edge in terms of skill and upside, but he's got a long way to go to get to Boldy's 200+ lbs. Another player I see some of in Sale is David Pastrnak.

I know, I love doing rankings but am currently abstaining for fantasy purposes. Not that I'm worried people will copy my rankings or some shit; but if trying to trade up or down being too transparent could be problematic. On Strbak, you know how I am - same with having Minnetian top ten earlier in the season and still having him top 20 - to hell with the consensus, everyone is wrong all the time; I like the players I like. I've gone back and re-watched a bunch of Strbak clips after the U18s and I'm sold. Don't know how I never saw it from him before, but all of my viewings on him came from international tournaments where my focus would be more on Dvorsky, Slafkovsky, Nemec, etc. plus opposing players from top teams. The one nice thing about the U18s this year having so many second and third rate teams was that you could just focus attention on a few players from one team when a good team played one of them. Anyways, still not huge samples on either big RHD for me, but I just can't put my finger on what Reinbacher has that Strbak doesn't. Gulyayev I think could be somewhere in Makar/Hughes territory. Daniil But is also soaring up a lot of lists apparently. Recrutes shockingly has him 4th, ahead of Dvorsky and Carlsson. I get what you're saying about maybe splitting that 5th tier in two, but again, I'm trying not to go off the consensus too much; too many players I'm not quite familiar enough with yet to split hairs between those guys.

Not really. Just means you need to be careful in evaluating because they can't be directly compared either to players in their same draft class on one hand, or players in their same birth year on the other. You have to kind of look at them as half way in between, but it's important to remember that the more relevant factor here is not how many months older or younger than other players they are, but the fact that by their draft year they have one more season of organized hockey under their belts - e.g. for CHL players, late birthdays will be in their 3rd season in their draft years, while other players will be in their 2nd season.

Well, the fact that I forgot about him should tell you something about how cold I am on him right now, but yeah he should probably be there in the 5th tier.

I wanted to have a try at tiers. Players are not necessarily in order of ranking within each tier. Tier I Connor Bedard Matvei Michkov Tier II Leo Carlsson Adam Fantilli Tier III Dalibor Dvorsky Eduard Sale Will Smith Tier IV Colby Barlow Zach Benson Mikhail Gulyayev Ryan Leonard David Reinbacher Maxim Strbak Tier V Daniil But Nate Danielson David Edstrom Kasper Halttunen Samuel Honzek Aram Minnetian Quentin Musty Gabe Perreault Calum Ritchie Axel Sandin-Pellikka Otto Stenberg Matthew Wood Brayden Yager

Lol I feel the same about Strbak. Particularly with the race for top defenseman in the draft still so wide open, I was watching him at that tournament and just kept thinking "why not Strbak?"

I'd be pretty disappointed with Sandin-Pellikka at 11, personally. I might prefer Maxim Strbak to ASP after the U18s, but not sure I'd take him at 11 either. The rest I'd be ok with, and I'm sure at least one of them will be there. Maybe Wood over Danielson? They seem to be pretty closely ranked but I think the main difference is Danielson would be more the safer, lower upside pick while Wood is more of a home run swing.

Another solid list. Interesting comparisons even if I don't agree with all of them. I like the Bedard comparison. I've actually compared him to a Sakic/Selanne hybrid - he just always appears at the puck in scoring positions, whether explosively (Selanne/Bure) or sneakily (Sakic). Michkov to Kucherov is solid, but I like to use use comparisons that highlight the skating agility and edges, as I believe it's his greatest strength - Skinner, Kariya, Crosby. I always try to use a few different comparisons as one direct comparison can never capture a prospect's individuality. Fantilli is a really tough player to compare because he's just such a unique, multi-faceted player. Toews captures the defensive specialist side of him, but it misses the Mike Peca/Ryan Kesler side. Some might argue that none of them fully capture his offensive upside. Leo Carlsson to Filip Forsberg is decent if you think he's a winger - definitely open to debate - but I see more evasiveness and smoother stick skills on Carlsson than Forsberg. @Kuzy compared him to Anze Kopitar which has some merit but he has a long way to go on the defensive side of things. I've also seen Mats Sundin comparisons and that one makes a lot of sense to me, except he's not quite gonna be 6'5 and probably never 230. Personally I see a lot of Jack Eichel to Leo Carlsson, the way they so seamlessly blend finesse and power. On your question/comment about the quality of the draft, I think it's overall an above average draft class, but probably not warranting of the level of hype it's getting. That top 4 has a trickle-down effect where now you have a crop like Dvorsky, Smith, Benson, Leonard who would make up a fine top five in a lesser draft, and guys like Wood, Barlow, Yager, Perreault who should go top ten a lot of years. Aside from that it's a strong and deep forward crop, but that is balanced out a bit by the lack of defensemen toward the top end. So overall pretty similar to the 2020 draft, except that this big four is even better than that big four (Lafreniere, Byfield, Stutzle, Raymond), perhaps by a wide margin, and I don't think there are any defensemen as highly regarded as Sanderson or Drysdale in this draft.