–Corey Pronman of Hockey Prospectus provides his organisational rankings for NHL prospects. You’ll recall his unorthodox theories regarding the lesser value of defensemen and goaltenders (here; his methodology was not reflected in this year’s draft). He also tells us about his cut-off point for a prospect, “The Calder Trophy uses a 25-games-played cutoff to determine eligibility and that’s partly what I’ve chosen to use. However, to make sure prospects who played a good number of NHL games in previous seasons and were sent down in the next season were not disqualified, I am using 25 GP in the 2011-12 season. I also think the Calder Trophy’s cutoff of six games in any two seasons was too strict, so I’ve decided to use 50 games. Also for dealing with Russian transfers, I’ve decided if a player is signed in the KHL past their age-22 season they become ineligible for the purpose of these rankings as a prospect until they sign in North America. I use 22 as it’s the age most prospects drafted out of the CHL have their entry level contracts end. Also per the Calder requirements, an age cutoff of 26 or younger as of September 15th is used so a player like Roman Cervenka is eligible. The second change has been to my ranking philosophy. Last year, I predominantly favored whichever team had the most “top prospects”. While am I still valuing that very heavily, I put more emphasis than last year on teams who have systems that have significant talent throughout. That doesn’t mean the teams that have a lot of bottom-six type prospects, but just talented players who may not be top-tier prospects.” The list:
1. Florida
2. New York Islanders
3. Detroit
4. Minnesota
5. Ottawa
6. Chicago
7. Tampa Bay
8. Anaheim
9. Edmonton
10. Montreal
11. New York Rangers
12. Pittsburgh
13. Dallas
14. Washington
15. Toronto
16. Boston
17. Columbus
18. Buffalo
19. St. Louis
20. Calgary
21. Los Angeles
22. Nashville
23. Winnipeg
24. Vancouver
25. Carolina
26. Colorado
27. New Jersey
28. Phoenix
29. San Jose
30. Philadelphia
His specific comments about the Sens: “Ottawa has a ton of good players throughout its ranks and its depth can rival the Panthers and Islanders. They lack the top-end prospects outside of Mika Zibanejad to get into that same tier with the four systems I have ranked in front of them, but they have quite a few very good ones.”
-A good illustration of why size in the NHL is not indicative of anything is made by Jonathan Willis who lists team’s by size and where they finished (for example, Edmonton had the league’s biggest blueline; the Cup winners were middle of the path at 13th, while Ottawa was 16th).
–Brad Kurtzberg posted his list of the 25-worst free agent signings. Alexei Kovalev is the only Sen to make the list (#16). Glen Sather is the GM with the most members on this list with five (including three in the top-ten).
-I’ve always been fascinated by European leagues and how they compare to the NHL, so I took a look at the success of post-lockout players signed out of Europe (either as free agents or older prospects), with a particular emphasis on their production.
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