NHL Prospects Q&A With Drew Way

Happy holidays and a very happy new year everyone! With our initial 2019 NHL Draft Prospects Rankings piece officially published and the Rangers still mired in a stretch of very poor play, I figured what better time to do a quick little Q&A piece about NHL prospects to hopefully brighten everyone’s outlook a bit and bring on a little post-holiday cheer. First, I want to apply my usual disclaimer to this type of analysis by me; we are largely discussing teenagers, that are very much still in the development stage of their young careers. Between now and the draft, players will grow, develop, mature and their situations may even change, all of which can have drastic impacts on their career outlook.

I am vehemently against people who spout shit like, “well this is what I picked at the beginning of the year so I’m sticking to it!” Statements like that are just about the dumbest things people can possibly say related to sports analysis. No, you should not stick to your original point just for the sake of doing so, and that is straight up irrational. Any good blogger/writer/analyst will take new information as it becomes available, and adapt their opinions/analysis to account for this information we have now, that we did not have when we made our original statements. So, with that said, everything written in this article is my opinions/analysis as of the time of writing this (was slowly written between December 21 and January 3), and as I gain more information and conduct more research as the year goes on, much of this will evolve.

Our first set of questions comes to us from Kurt, and these are perfect to start this article with:

Before I actually answer this duo of questions from Kurt, I do want to remind everyone that the NHL draft lottery is a system that was designed to try to curb tanking. The team that finishes with the worst record (currently the LA Kings have the worst record) has only an 18.5% chance of winning the coveted top overall selection, and has only a 49.4% chance of earning a top-3 selection. For those of you who don’t like numbers: even if you are the very worst team in the NHL, it is slightly more likely that you will get the fourth pick (you can’t pick lower than 4^th in the NHL lottery system if you are the worst team) than it is that you will get a top-3 pick, let alone the top pick. Sure, you still have the best chance at the top pick, but it is still only 18.5%.

For your convenience, below is the 2019 NHL Draft Lottery Odds table, courtesy of Tankathon, that shows the odds each lottery team has at the various picks available to them (note, this screenshot was captured on January 3). For those unfamiliar, the way the lottery works is that they draw to decide who has each of the top-3 picks. If you don’t win one of the top-3 picks, you draft in the spot determined by your record, or you drop a spot (or two or three) if teams behind you won the lottery and jump into the top 3.

With that out of the way, time to get to Kurt’s actual questions. In this hypothetical scenario where the Blackhawks and Kings get the top-2 picks—and they currently are in the position to have the best odds at doing so—this would mean each would have the right to draft Jack Hughes and Kaapo Kakko, who in my opinion are clearly the two best players in the draft and both are the caliber of prospect that could become perennial all stars. The Rangers are currently in position to likely pick 11^th, but given their recent play, a potential sell-off at the deadline and the fact that a few of the teams currently above them in the tanking standings are clearly more talented on paper, I think it’s reasonable to assume the Rangers will move up these tankathon standings between now and the end of the season, and very well could end up in the 6-9 range.

To Kurt’s question; given the way things currently stand and what we know of the teams involved, it absolutely is a plausible scenario that the Kings and Blackhawks have the top-2 picks, and the Rangers are in the middle of the lottery. I wouldn’t go as far as to say this scenario is likely, given my preamble about the way the lottery works and the fact that neither the Kings or the Blackhawks are purposefully tanking—they just suck on accident, which is probably a lot worse—but it’s certainly a realistic possibility.

Now to the fun part of the question, “this will suck, no?” There are a few angles you can take here. The low-hanging fruit is to take the angle of, in this hypothetical scenario, two of the most successful franchises post-lockout will end up in a position to draft potentially franchise-changing talents. To be blunt, as a fan of the NHL who has no allegiances to the Kings or Blackhawks, yes, that would really fucking suck.

However, I want to take this question as an opportunity to discuss the talent dispersion of the upcoming NHL draft, and what it would mean for the Rangers to draft in the middle of the lottery. Fortunately for the flow of this article, Kurt’s question dovetails nicely to what John Hodgson below:

In my opinion, at this way too early to really adequately answer this question from John Hodgson time, the 2019 draft class is similar to the 2018 class in terms of talent dispersion. You have two potentially elite players at the top in Hughes and Kakko; last year you had Dahlin and Svechnikov, and yes Svechnikov was a potentially elite prospect and notably better than the rest of the field. After the clear top-2, you have a handful of prospects in Kirby Dach, Dylan Cozens and Bowen Byram (and you could definitely argue one or two others here) that are not of the caliber of the top-2, but are certainly extremely talented players that a few years down the road could be clear top line/pairing players that drive the play for their lines. In my initial draft ranks, I had Dach on a tier of his own at 3, and then I had Cozens and Byram on a tier at 4 and 5, and then I had my next tier include players ranked 6 all the way through 15.

By comparison, in our aggregate tiered rankings for the 2018 draft, we ended up grouping guys together at 4-6, 7-9, 10-11 and 12-15, but admittedly, we probably got too cute with it, and probably could’ve organized 4-15 into two tiers, which in terms of talent dispersion is similar to this year’s draft. For example, we ended up having Vitali Kravtsov at 15 in our ranks last year, whereas my current 15^th ranked player is Peyton Krebs, an extremely high IQ playmaking wing who certainly can enter the top-10 by draft day, similar to Kravtsov. Also similar to last year, the top-15 is riddled with guys that, if they develop properly, can definitely be looked at years down the road as potential steals for not going in the top-5. Guys like Trevor Zegras, Vasili Podkolzin, Arthur Kaliyev, Matthew Boldy, Ryan Suzuki and Pavel Dorofeyev (among others) all have certain abilities and talents that could translate to successful NHL careers that end up outperforming wherever they are drafted.

Beyond the lottery picks, also similar to last year, I think there are a number of high-upside guys that will go in the later portions of the first round and the second round that could also end up greatly outperforming their draft slot. I would say I think the 2018 draft definitely was deeper in terms of talent when looking at players 15-50 or so, but this year is no slouch in this area. While last year we had players like Ty Smith (sorry you guys will never get a prospect article out of me without me finding a way to work him into it), Dominik Bokk, Rasmus Kupari, Jonatan Berggren, K’Andre Miller, and a handful of others that were picked outside of the lottery that have all shown great signs of progress in their development this year, I think we can see a similar group this coming year. At this way too early point to really make this claim, I think there are a number of guys to keep an eye on that could prove to be fantastic picks outside of the lottery this year—and some might sneak into the lottery—such as Cole Caufield, Bobby Brink, Moritz Seider, Nils Höglander, Victor Söderström and Lassi Thomson, to name a few.

Now, tying this all back to Kurt’s question, about whether it would suck if the Rangers pick in the middle of the lottery. It certainly wouldn’t be ideal, as obviously it would be fantastic to land one of the top-2 picks in the lottery and have the rights to draft Jack Hughes or Kaapo Kakko. However, similar to last year, I think this draft is deep enough at the top where the Rangers will have the ability to select a very good player in the 6-12 range who could prove to drive play and be an impactful skater for years to come. Personally, I’d rather have our already drafted prospects that have graduated to the big club—Chytil, Andersson and Howden—develop nicely and cause us to win a few extra games and then take Trevor Zegras with the 8^th pick in the 2019 draft, than a scenario where we get a slightly higher pick but our young players don’t do as well. Obviously, the ideal scenario is the kids progress well and we win the lottery, but now we are just talking pipedreams.

This next question from Lee Borden is always an interesting, and difficult, question for me to answer, and much of this lies in how I choose to define overrated.

There are different groups of people that overrate different players. You get your fans that follow the TSN analysts closely, so they’ll tend to marry themselves to Craig Button’s or Bob McKenzie’s rankings, and overhype the players that those noteworthy analysts like more than the consensus. You get your folks such as myself who value analytics more than your traditional pundits, and we have a tendency to overrate guys that put up big numbers at a young age in the pro European leagues. Then you also get your group of fans that watch highlight videos and the major junior tournaments and overrate flashy players who put up big numbers in these big tournaments (hello Casey Mittelstadt). For the purposes of this question, I’m going to try to stick with the players that I see receiving the most hype across the board that I personally don’t deserve that level of hype.

The first guy that comes to mind is a player that I’ve told all Ranger fans to become accustomed to, because I think he’s exactly the type of prospect the Rangers would love: Vasili Podkolzin. He’s actually becoming a bit of a polarizing player, where many traditional pundits have him comfortably in their top-5—and I’ve seen him ranked as high as 2—and the analytics crowd is pointing to his relatively poor performance in the MHL and (in my opinion at least) over-compensating the other direction against the hype and claiming he isn’t even a first rounder. Podkolzin in my opinion falls into that Mittelstadt category, where he has looked dominant in junior tournaments and he has a clearly tantalizing skillset that you’d hope would translate well to the NHL, but he’s also put up relatively poor numbers in league play, which should be seen as a significant red flag. To this point in the 2018-2019 season, Podkolzin has posted 15 points in just 8 games on Russia’s U18 national team, but has only posted 7 points in 10 games in the MHL, which is a far from impressive total.

In my initial rankings for this draft, I had Podkolzin ranked 8, but on my fifth tier which spans from pick 6-15; in other words, in my last ranks I felt it was reasonable to rank him as high as 6 and as low as 15. Obviously, this isn’t that far a cry from where he’s being ranked by many, and it’s actually higher than many have him, but I admittedly am banking on his talent and this rank is reflective on my belief that he will start producing more in league play; if he continues at his current pace, he will be dropping down my ranks as the year progresses. Also, as much as I admire the analysts that have him in their top-5, at this point I think it’s a pretty hot take to have him ranked about the likes of Dylan Cozens or Kirby Dach, and I think it’s a scorching take to have him above Kaapo Kakko. So, for that reason, I feel he is currently in the “overrated prospect” category, and admittedly I may be currently overrating him myself.

Matthew Boldy is the other prospect that I like a lot, and have ranked as a lottery pick, that I believe is being overrated. I currently have Boldy at 14, in the back-end of that same tier I have Podkolzin in; however, I’ve seen him ranked as high as 3^rd overall, which is way too high for me. In fact, I’d argue that Boldy isn’t even the 3^rd best player on the USNTDP U18 team, let alone the 3^rd overall player in the entire draft class. Don’t get me wrong, I think Boldy is a fantastically gifted forward, and that comment has more to do with how good the U18 U.S. team is than Boldy himself. However, everyone would universally agree that Jack Hughes is the better player, and I’m also extremely comfortable arguing that Trevor Zegras—who I have ranked 6^th—is a superior player at this moment in time. Further, I think you could reasonably argue that Alex Turcotte is a more well-rounded player—I have him ranked 9^th—and I could even entertain the argument for Cole Caufield being the better play; I have Cole ranked 20^th currently.

In fact, through the 28 games the U18 team has played this season, Boldy’s 29 points ranks 4^th on the team, behind Jack Hughes (48), Trevor Zegras (40) and Cole Caufield (30). Alex Turcotte has been injured for much of the year and has only played 6 games; if he had been healthy the whole time, he likely would be up there in production as well. Further, when you look at Evan Oppenheimer’s betweenness data, which measures a player’s impact on the scoring of his team, Boldy is 9^th on the team across all situations, behind Hughes, Zegras and Caufield. When you watch the team play—and I’ve watched this team more than any other relevant to this conversation to this point—it’s clear Boldy is a very talented player, but in my opinion at least, he doesn’t jump off the screen nearly to the same degree that Hughes or Zegras do, and he’s at best on the same tier as Turcotte and Caufield.

The last name I’d like to add to this mix is Philip Broberg. Broberg is another guy that is a bit polarizing, and it isn’t all hype on him, but holy shit do some pundits really love him. Craig Button for example had him 4^th in his rankings; to me this isn’t even a hot take, this is just completely unjustifiable. Button isn’t the only analyst very high on Broberg, as I’ve seen him in the top-10 of multiple reputable draft sources, and he’s fairly consistently ranked as a lottery pick. Conversely, similar to Podkolzin, some have taken his lack of production—just 7 points in 27 games in the Swedish Allsvenkan league—a bit too far, and I’ve seen multiple people claim Brober shouldn’t even be in consideration for a first round pick. Both sides of this argument are too hot for my blood, and I currently have Broberg at 19, on my 6^th tier, which spans from 16-24. The TL;DR version of my explanation: Broberg is a raw talent and an exceptionally powerful skater—although I do feel he could improve his lateral movement—and I feel he has a pretty well-rounded game despite his lack of offensive production. However, he still has a lot of room for improvement and is far from a finished product, and his lack of production in the Allsvenkan, which is not the SHL by any stretch of the imagination, lead me to believe he’d be far too big a gamble to take in the top-10.

This next question is a fantastic question from Sam Davis.

For those of you that are new to my writing or Twitter persona, Ty Smith was THE GUY I was championing the hardest for out of the 2018 NHL draft eligible prospects. This wasn’t because I thought he was the best prospect by any means—I had him 8^th in my final rankings—but it was because I felt he was the prospect that I was convinced was significantly better than what he was getting credit for. Last year’s lottery was loaded with potential impact defenseman, headlined by Rasmus Dahlin but also consisting of great prospect like Quinn Hughes, Evan Bouchard, Noah Dobson, Adam Boqvist and yes, Ty Smith. However, most fans and pundits not only were not considering Ty Smith as part of this group, but they thought it was “crazy” to even consider him at the Rangers pick at 9. I however, was adamant that what in fact was crazy, was thinking that Ty Smith did not belong in this group. Obviously it’s super early, but based on how he looked for the Devils in the pre-season and the season he’s putting up for Spokane in the WHL, I’m very happy with how hard I stanned for Smith last year.

So, with the understanding that this question is in essence asking me which player am I most adamant is better than he is getting credit for, my answer is… I don’t know yet. I know this is a cop out, but it’s too early for me to have a player that I “unconditionally support,” as there is still A TON of time between now and the draft, a lot of hockey yet to be played, and therefor ample opportunity for players to change my mind. I liked Smith for most of last year, but I didn’t truly start screaming from the mountaintops about him until March, once the WHL season was just about concluded. I’m adamant that league play is vitally important in prospect analysis, and that the biggest mistake many make is relying too heavily on major tournament play when forming their opinions on players. Because of this, I try to keep an open mind throughout the entire season of league play, and wait until about March until I really start forming extremely strong opinions. I personally don’t care about being the first to campaign for a prospect, but I do care about being accurate in my analysis and being a reliable source for fans to read, and because of this I like to consider as large as a sample as possible before really coming down heavy on a player one way or another.

However, while I’m not willing to proclaim anyone my “Ty Smith” of the 2019 draft yet, there are a few guys I like considerably more than most draft analysts that have already published their ranks do. First on this list is USNTDP center Trevor Zegras, whom I currently have at 6 and am strongly, strongly considering raising even more. It certainly is not a hot take to think Zegras is a lottery pick, in fact I’m not even the highest on Zegras among the ranks I’ve read to this point. However, the majority of ranks I’ve seen to this point have Zegras in the 9-20 range. To summarize why I like him more than the consensus, he is an elite production-driver—as evidenced by being tops on the team in Evan Oppenheimer’s betweenness data—with dynamic talent, excellent hockey IQ and is good in all zones. He’s a player with no clear holes in his game, and has multiple plus skills, including excellent passing and ice vision, great skating and stick handling—especially in tight spaces—and a hard, quick and accurate shot.

Russian winger Pavel Dorofeyev is another guy that I’m higher than the consensus on: I currently have him ranked 12^th while most analysts I’ve seen have him in the back-half of the first round or early portion of the second. I wrote a lot about him in our initial draft ranks, and I encourage you to check that out, but for those who don’t feel like it, here is the TL;DR version. He’s a good skater, has great instincts in all zones, has soft hands, good puck skills and a real accurate shot. While he certainly needs to get stronger, he’s not afraid to mix it up along the boards and play physical, and also is fearless in front of the net. Since my last ranks, he has been promoted to the KHL again and has yet to register his first point, so his adjusted numbers have dipped recently. However, he has the skill set and hockey IQ that lead me to believe he will start producing at the KHL level soon, which could lead to him rising up the ranks of others.

The last player I want to quickly highlight here is Connor McMichael, a talented center playing for the London Knights in the OHL. At the time of writing this, McMichael has 22 goals and 16 assists in 31 games, which is good for 5^th in the draft class in Corsica’s adjusted points per-game, which adjusts player production by age and league. Despite this production, the majority of the ranks I’ve seen have him outside of their first round. In my initial ranks, I had him at 25, and if I were to re-do my ranks at this very moment, I’d probably have him at about 20, and possibly slightly higher. McMichael is a high-IQ center with a well-rounded skill set and speed to burn. He makes quick decisions with the puck, has a quick release, accurate shot, is an adept passer and responsible in the defensive zone. He still has room to improve as well, and adding some size and strength would go a long way in helping him improve his board play and presence in front of the net.

The last question for this article comes courtesy of your host of the Blueshirts Breakaway podcast Ryan Mead and my one of my two partners in crime in terms of prospects analysis, George Obremski.

To answer this, I’m not going to bother trying to figure out what the NHL GMs would actually do. Every time I think I’ve got the GMs figured out, they up and do something like trade Adam Larsson for Taylor Hall. So instead, how I’m going to answer this is by revisiting my lottery ranks for the 2018 NHL draft, and re-drafting using all the knowledge we have today on all of the players. For reference, my top-10 (in order) in my final draft ranks last year was: Rasmus Dahlin, Andrei Svechnikov, Filip Zadina, Oliver Wahlstrom, Quinn Hughes, Adam Boqvist, Evan Bouchard, Ty Smith, Brady Tkachuk, Noah Dobson, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Joel Farabee, Joe Veleno, Vitali Kravtsov and Barrett Hayton.

While only six months have passed since the draft, enough has happened between the draft and now to allow us to make tweaks to the ranks. I want to be very, very clear about something before providing my lottery re-draft—I did not put a ton of research into this. Sure, I put more work into this than most people probably would for a simple mailbag piece—and that is said with all due respect to everyone that does these sorts of blog posts—but fact of the matter is, my primary focus on prospect analysis the past few months has been the 2019 NHL draft, not the already drafted 2018 class.

Of course I still follow the 2018 guys, I see them often in the games I’m watching for my 2019 draft analysis, and I did a good amount of research for this question. But to really accurately do a re-draft like this, I ideally would’ve liked to put in about double the amount of work I did. So please, take this with a grain of salt, and I am very, very open to debate regarding who belongs where, especially once I get past spot 12. You’d have a very, very hard time convincing my that my top-12 guys don’t all belong in the top-15 given the way they have performed prior to and since the 2018 draft—although you could debate the order in which I’ve place them—but to me all 12 undoubtedly belong in the top-15. The guys I placed 13-15 I admittedly struggled with a lot, and there was about 10 other guys I strongly considered being placed in there.

If I were controlling each NHL team in the draft, and making my picks from the 2018 draft class today, it would go in the following manner (note – I’m simply going BPA, and not worrying about positional need):

1. Buffalo – Rasmus Dahlin
2. Carolina – Andrei Svechnikov
3. Montreal – Quinn Hughes
4. Ottawa – Brady Tkachuk
5. Arizona – Jesperi Kotkaniemi
6. Detroit – Filip Zadina
7. Vancouver – Vitali Kravtsov
8. Chicago – Ty Smith
9. New York Rangers – Rasmus Kupari
10. Edmonton – Evan Bouchard
11. New York Islanders – Adam Boqvist
12. New York Islanders – Joe Veleno
13. Dallas – Dominik Bokk
14. Philadelphia – K’Andre Miller
15. Florida – Oliver Wahlstrom

Honorable mention: Barrett Hayton. There were a number of guys I had in my top-15 here in various iterations of this, including Noah Dobson, Martin Kaut, Ryan Merkley, Filip Hållander, Akil Thomas, Serron Noel, Rasmus Sandin and Jesse Ylönen. Last year was a deep draft, and a number of the players that went in the later 1^st and 2^nd round have had great seasons and deserve mention here. But Barrett Hayton is the guy I struggled the most with leaving him off of my ranks, and if I’m being completely candid, he has been much better that Oliver Wahlstrom since being drafted, but me placing Wahlstrom in here over Hayton is more me betting that Wahlstrom’s excellent shot and overall talent level will allow him to turn things around at Boston College, where he is having an underwhelming year to say the least.

In terms of my methodology behind the picks I made, I think Dahlin and Svechnikov are still clearly the top-2 players in this draft. I had them clearly ahead of the rest at the draft, and both have performed to a level in the NHL that leads me to believe that you quite frankly are crazy if you don’t believe they are still the top-2 players in this draft. Next I have Quinn Hughes at three, who is putting up absurd production in his Sophomore season at Michigan, with 20 points in only 17 games (which, doesn’t sound like a ton, but trust me that is incredible production for a teenage defenseman in college). He’s also looked dominant in the WJC for team USA, and while I’m a big advocate of you are a fool if you put too much stock into WJC performance, his level of play coupled with how great he’s been for Michigan combines to make him the clear, easy choice for 3^rd in this draft for me.

Next I have Brady Tkachuk and Jesperi Kotkaniemi at 4 and 5. This is probably a bit of a hot take for the fans of prospect analysis reading this who tend to rate upside or ceiling above all, but as I’ve said before, I’m not a fan of that type of analysis. Sure, upside matters, and there certainly are some guys I put after Tkachuk and Kotkaniemi that have more pure talent and upside. But fact of the matter is, Tkachuk and Kotkaniemi have played nearly the entire season in the NHL, and both have proven to already not only belong, but drive play for their teams at such a young age. Proving this ability as a teenager means more to me than some hypothetical upside that a player may eventually reach if everything goes right, so give me the safety knowing that I have two guys that, barring injury, should have long, successful careers as top-6 NHL forwards.

Speaking of upside, my 6-9 group—Filip Zadina, Vitali Kravtsov, Ty Smith and Rasmus Kupari—all have a mix of high upside and have performed at a high level since being drafted. Zadina has actually fallen a bit since my pre-draft ranks, where I had him 3^rd, but after a slow start he’s been much better of late, and his fall has more to do with the performance of the risers than his performance. Kravtsov and Kupari and two of my biggest risers, and both are performing very well in professional leagues in Europe, and are among the leaders in the draft class in Corsica’s adjusted points per-game model, ranking 6^th and 5^th among the draft class, respectively. We all know Kravtsov can shoot and handle, but he has really impressed me of late with his defensive play, board play and vision, which you can see in the gif from our good friend Fitz below. Ty Smith ranks 18^th in this adjusted points model, third among defenseman, he looked fantastic for the Devils in the pre-season—and made a very strong case to make the team as a teenager in my opinion—and has been dominant as the captain of Spokane in the WHL, amassing 39 points in just 28 games.

From 10-12 I have Evan Bouchard, Adam Boqvist and Joe Veleno, all who have had very strong seasons and each have talents that warrant them being in the top-10 here. Bouchard really impressed me in his time with Edmonton, and if you ignore contract implications (which admittedly is very hard to ignore) I think there is a clear and obvious case for him to still be with the Oilers given their turmoil on the blueline. Adam Boqvist and Joe Veleno are 13^th and 15^th in Corsica’s prospect “value” metric, respective, which takes into account probability of making the NHL and projected WAR. Both players have looked great for their respective teams in the CHL, and Veleno has posted an absurd 54 points in just 28 games for Drummondville of the QMJHL. Veleno was a guy projected to be a top-15 pick by most draft analysts, and it’s still completely absurd to me that he fell all the way to 30^th in the draft.

The last group I have two risers—Dominik Bokk and K’Andre Miller—and perhaps my biggest faller in the draft, Oliver Wahlstrom. As I stated earlier, based on how he’s performed since being drafted, you can make an easy argument that Wahlstrom doesn’t belong in the top-15. However, his skill set is still there, he still possesses one of the best shots in this draft class, and it would be a huge mistake to just ignore all his pre-draft production when making these rankings. Bokk and Miller have both impressed me immensely since being drafted. Bokk has posted an impressive 13 points in 26 games in the SHL, which is good for 8^th in the entire draft class in terms of adjusted points per-game. K’Andre Miller has come along much quicker than I ever anticipated considering he’s literally still learning his position, and he’s been dominant for the Wisconsin Badgers across all three zones, and most impressively posting 17 points in 18 games as a Freshman defenseman. Finally, he ranks 9^th in the entire draft class in terms of Corsica’s “value” metric, one spot behind Quinn Hughes and one spot ahead of Ty Smith.

Well there you have it folks, my first dedicated prospects Q&A is complete. Please always feel free to reach out to me on Twitter if you have any questions or just want to chat, and if there is enough interest I’ll do a few more of these as the year progresses. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, and I look forward to interacting with you all more in the future.

*Note – Featured image courtesy of Charles Wenzelberg*