[I’m re-posting my old Hockey Herald article here as I believe the site is defunct–it hasn’t produced new content since November of 2011].

As the NHL draft approaches it’s time to take a look at where players are ranked.  All the major scouting publications and websites (except TSN) have produced their rankings, and by using that as a data set I think we can determine the best talent in the draft and a sense of when they will be selected.

I’ve used the following sources: the International Scouting Service (ISS), Red Line Reports (RLR), The Hockey News (THN), ESPN, Future Considerations (FC), McKeens, The Hockey Writers (THW), and for reference Central Scouting (CS).

Most of these reports create their lists via the best talent rather than when they will be drafted.  They also vary in how deep they go into the draft.  ESPN and THW have only posted a top-30 list, while FC is a top-60.  McKeens and THN cover the top-100 picks, while ISS hits 200 and RLR goes all the way to 300 (90 players beyond the 210 to be picked this year).

Round One

There is unanimity about the first two picks—I think CS embarrassed themselves suggesting Seguin was the best possible first round selection.  That’s not to say I definitively know Hall is the better player, but there’s no question what the sentiment is around the league and the rest of the scouting community.  I get the feeling CS just wanted to make a splash by pulling a different way.

That being said, things get messier the further you move away from the top picks.  There are only 14 players who made every other list in the first round, so nearly half the players chosen are up for debate.  Of the remaining 14 spots, 7 players appear on 6 of those lists (a total of 46 different players appear in the top-30).

In creating my rankings I’ve taken the predictions and produced their aggregate numbers (these are indicated in brackets next to the player’s name).  This is a broad look at overall standings.  I then looked at where each player was slotted—if, for instance, a player was in one range for most of the predictions I ignored the free radical and selected accordingly.  These rankings are not based on team needs or expectations, just the talent level of the players as seen in the hockey community as represented by my sources.

1. Taylor Hall (1.0) – the consensus #1
2. Tyler Seguin (2.0) – the consensus #2
3. Cam Fowler (4.29) – and the only player picked multiple times (3) for this position
4. Erik Gudbranson (6.14) – although he’s not fourth on aggregate, his number is thrown off by RLR (who have him at #14), and he’s picked more often at the lower position than Gormley
5. Brandon Gormley (5.57) – given the tightness of predictions surrounding him he’s clearly seen as a safe choice
6. Nino Niederreiter (7.86) – narrowly beats out Connolly because he has more top-ten selections (6)
7. Brett Connolly (7.57) – a better aggregate score than Niederreiter, but Connolly is seen as a riskier pick, appearing in the top-ten slightly less (5 times)
8. Ryan Johansen (9.43) – a consistently narrow range (8-12), Johansen represents another safe pick
9. Vladimir Tarasenko (9.71) – suffers a bit from the Russian flu, as he has just as many top-ten selections as Johansen (5), but the other predictions are well below that and push him down
10. Mikael Granlund (10.71) – the comparison with Skinner below is quite close, but he just edges him out
11. Jeffrey Skinner (12.29) – suffers in part from a dreadful rating from THN (#25), but even with that thrown out he’s slightly lower than Granlund
12. Jack Campbell (9.17) – with goalies not included in ISS rankings it’s hard to decide on Campbell, but he’s the only goalie to appear in all other sources so this seems like the logical position for him (his score is high because McKeens has him at #3)
13. Derek Forbort (13.00) – another safe pick given the uniformity of his placement
14. Alexander Burmistrov (13.57) – as expected the Russian’s range is broad (6-21), but he’s clearly considered high end talent
15. Emerson Etem (15.00) – taking THW out of the equation (at #10) his range is as narrow as Johansen’s (14-18); so he represents another safe pick
16. Austin Watson (16.14) – consistent range (12-19) makes him a safe pick
17. Nick Bjugstad (19.14) – extremes on either end, with THN seeing him as a top pick (#9) and McKeens out of the first round (#33); with those cut out he nestles in at 14-21
18. Mark Pysyk (20.71) – little liked by RLR (#41), but his range is narrow otherwise (16-22) and puts him ahead of McIlrath even though he’s behind him on aggregate
19. Dylan McIlrath (20.43) – his stock has been rising for awhile, but he isn’t picked as consistently high as Pysyk
20. Jonathan Merrill (21.71) – a very similar range to McIlrath, but just a touch behind
21. Evgeny Kuznetsov (22.14) – there seems to be a divide between the professional scouts and the journalists on him, likely a product of the Russian factor
22. Riley Sheahan (22.83) – the first player not to be listed by all my sources (ESPN did not rank him in their top-30), he’s well liked otherwise (15-28)
23. Jaden Schwartz (24.00) – consistently a mid to late first rounder (18-30)
24. Quinton Howden (24.14) – listed out of the first round by two sources (RLR and McKeens), he still handily beats Tinordi on aggregate based on his upside
25. Jarred Tinordi (25.67) – considered yet another safe pick for the blueline
26. John McFarland (28.29) – low-balled by ISS and RLR, he’s well regarded otherwise (20-29)
27. Brock Nelson (33.17) – a high aggregate number born of McKeens (#62), which when taken out leaves him with four first round rankings; THW did not list him in their top-30
28. Tyler Pitlick (28.83) – not listed by THW, he settles in as a borderline first rounder
29. Alexander Petrovic (31.50) – not listed by THW, he earns three top-30 rankings
30. Calvin Pickard (25.50) – winds up at the end of the round largely because of a shortage of comparative analysis (not incorporated into ISS rankings nor listed by THW or ESPN)

Honourable mention (other players (16) to get first round selections):

Tyler Toffoli (4, THW, McKeens, FC, and ESPN, aggr 35.00)
Stanislav Galiev (3, ISS, FC, and THW, aggr 34.67)
Beau Bennett (2, RLR and McKeens, aggr 28.60)
Charlie Coyle (2, ISS and McKeens, aggr 33.60)
Teemu Pulkkinen (2, McKeens and THW, aggr 40.33)
Ludvig Rensfeldt (2, ESPN and ISS, aggr 41.67)
Kirill Kabanov (1, THW, aggr 37.33)
Brad Ross (1, RLR, aggr 38.20)
Calle Jarnkrok (1, THN, aggr 40.80)
Johan Larsson (1, ISS, aggr 41.67)
Ryan Spooner (1, RLR, aggr 41.80)
Justin Faulk (1, RLR, aggr 44.20)
Jason Zucker (1, ISS, aggr 49.60)
Maxim Kitsyn (1, THW, aggr 52.83)
Greg McKegg (1, RLR, aggr 57.60)
Troy Rutkowski (1, FC, aggr 62.60)

This article completes my update of draft rankings incorporating TSN and SI’s lists.

My sources: the International Scouting Service (ISS), Red Line Reports (RLR), TSN, The Hockey News (THN), ESPN, Future Considerations (FC), McKeens, The Hockey Writers (THW), Sports Illustrated (SI), and for reference Central Scouting (CS).

In creating my rankings I’ve taken the predictions and produced their aggregate numbers (these are indicated in brackets next to the player’s name when there are at least three sources).  This is a broad look at overall standings.  These rankings are not based on team needs or expectations, just the talent level of the players as seen in the hockey community as represented by my sources.

Round Two

31. Tyler Toffoli (34.00) – loses to Petrovic and Coyle on aggregate, but has the most first round selections (5) of the players remaining
32. Alexander Petrovic (32.14)
33. Charlie Coyle (33.33)
34. Stanislav Galiev(35.42)
35. Brad Ross (37.66) – rising
36. Calle Jarnkrok (39.5) – rising
37. Kirill Kabanov (38.14) – sinking
38. Ludvig Rensfeldt (41.00)
39. Joey Hishon (41.00) – sinking
40. Ryan Spooner (41.33) – slightly behind Pulkkinen on aggregate, but beats him head-to-head
41. Teemu Pulkkinen (41.14)
42. Justin Faulk (41.83) – slightly behind Straka on aggregate, but beats him head-to-head
43. Petr Straka (41.80)
44. Johan Larsson (42.50) – could slide into the first round
45. Jordan Weal (42.50) – not as much room to slide up as Larsson
46. Kevin Hayes (47.50)
47. Jason Zucker (48.66)
48. Stephen Johns (50.00)
49. Matt MacKenzie (50.60)
50. Ivan Telegin (51.17)
51. Martni Marincin (51.60) – sinking
52. Patrik Nemeth (52.80)
53. Maxim Kitsyn (53.71) – sinking
54. Tom Kuhnhackl (57.00)
55. Gregg McKegg (58.66)
56. Devante Smith-Pelley (60.00)
57. Ryan Martindale (61.60) – strong feelings about him either way
58. Jakub Culek (62.17) – although not next on aggregate, he has the better overall selections
59. Brock Beukeboom (62.17) – rising
60. Jared Knight (61.40)

Round Three

61. Troy Rutkowski (62.60)
62. Brandon Archibald(63.75)
63. Justin Shugg (63.80)
64. Michael Bournival (65.83)
65. Oscar Lindberg (81.75) – suffers from a horrible RLR ranking (#169)
66. Phillipe Grubauer (66.75) – slightly behind Visentin on aggregate, he appears in far more sources so gets the nod
67. Mark Visentin (66.67) – rising
68. Ryan Gardiner (67.20)
69. Julian Melchiori (68.00) – loses to Bulmer on aggregate, but is ranked more frequently
70. Dalton Smith (68.40) – loses to Bulmer on aggregate, but is ranked more frequently
71. Brett Bulmer (67.25)
72. Mark Alt (68.60)
73. Justin Holl (68.60) – rising
74. Kevin Sundher (69.00) – falling
75. Danny Biega (69.00) – falling
76. Kent Simpson (71.25)
77. Pat McNally (73.25)
78. Jerome Leduc (76.00) – rising
79. Curtis Hamilton (77.40) – rising
80. Connor Brickley (78.40)
81. Stephen Silas (79.20)
82. Andrew Yogan (79.75)
83. Steven Shipley (80.17)
84. Joe Basaraba (80.60)
85. Bill Arnold (85.50)
86. Morgan Ellis (87.67)
87. Joonas Donskoi (89.60)
88. Christian Thomas (89.69)
89. Mathieu Corbeil (57.00) – only ranked in two sources
90. Maxime Clermont (75.00) – only ranked in two sources

Round Four

91. Johan Gustafsson (90.30) – beats B-D head-to-head
92. Louis Boileau-Dominque (90.33)
93. Kevin Gravel (94.00) – hurt by his ISS (#116) rating
94. Marek Hrivik (95.67) – beats Aronson head-to-head
95. Taylor Aronson (94.00)
96. Bohumil Jank (94.33) – wild card (#56-#132)
97. Michael Chaput (94.67) – hurt by RLR (#122)
98. Alex Marchenko (94.67) – wild card (#51-#138)
99. Alex Theriau (99.00)
100. Adam Pettersson (125.25) – hurt by RLR (#243)
101. Austin Madaisky (101.75) – beats Stone head-to-head
102. Mark Stone (101.00)
103. Brendan Ranford (105.67)
104. John Ramage (106.00)
105. Antonin Honejsek (109.33)
106. Max Reinhart (111.67)
107. Louis-Marc Aubry (116.50)
108. Nick Mattson (118.33) – hurt by RLR (#173)
109. Tyler Bunz (128.00)
110. Geoffrey Schemitsch (128.67)
111. Bryan Rust (128.67)
112. Johan Alm (129.67)
113. Sami Aittokalio (162.00)
114. Pathrik Vesterholm (166.33) – the last player to appear in 3 sources
115. Vladislav Kartaev (242.00) – makes McKeen’s list (#94)
116. Sam Brittain – highly regarded by RLR (#52)
117. Jonathan Johansson – hurt by ISS (#145)
118. Martin Ouellette
119. Sondre Olden – rising
120. Fredrik Wentzel

Rounds five through seven are unchanged (other than the few players who have entered the top four; Bryce O’Hagan and Adam Polasek fall off the charts); listing them:

121. Konrad Abeltshauser
122. Jason Clark
123. Ryan Harrison
124. Brian Billett
125. Joey Leach
126. Freddie Hamilton
127. Marcel Noebels
128. Victor Ohman
129. Mike Perriera
130. Kevin Clare
131. Adam  Janosik
132. Radko Gudas
133. Sergei Barbashev
134. Mikael Salmivirta
135. Nate Schmidt
136. Petr Mrazak
137. Matthew Bissonnette
138. Brendan Woods
139. Nikita Zaytsev
140. Brandon Davidson
141. Josh Shalla
142. Kenneth Agostino
143. Petter Granberg
144. Sam Carrick
145. Lukas Cingel
146. Casey Thrush
147. Brooks Macek
148. Luke Moffatt
149. Phillip Lane
150. Alex Emond
151. Jonathan Ilahti
152. Patrick Cehlin
153. Michael Parks
154. Jesper Fasth
155. Mirko Hoflin
156. Jonathan Brunelle
157. Benjamin Conz
158. Samuel Carrier
159. Lars Volden
160. Eamonn McDermott
161. Michael Sgarbossa
162. Alex Guptill
163. Kevin Lind
164. Austin Levi
165. Aaron Harstad
166. Raman Hrabarenka
167. Caleb Herbert
168. Stephen MacAuley
169. Daniel Gunnarsson
170. T. J. Tynan
171. Adam Krause
172. Zach Hyman
173. Ben Marshall
174. Nikita Gusev
175. Jacob Fallon
176. Craig Cunningham
177. Kendall McFaull
178. Tyler Stahl
179. Josh Nicholls
180. Joel Vermin
181. Yasin Cisse
182. Gregg Sutch
183. Garnet Hathaway
184. Alain Berger
185. Michael Reardon
186. Brandon. McNally
187. Jeremie Blain
188. Mathieu Brisson
189. Charles Inglis
190. Tomas Filippi
191. Colin Campbell
192. Etienne Boutet
193. Adam Sedlak
194. Brian Ward
195. Vitaly Zotov
196. Brody Sutter
197. Christian Isackson
198. Sawyer Hannay
199. Daniel Brodin
200. Ondrej Havlicek
201. Joe Faust
202. Craig Bokenfohr
203. Petteri Halinen
204. Jacob Berglund
205. Blake Gal
206. Sebastian Wannstrom
207. James Mullin
208. Joakim Nordstrom
209. Patrik Naslund
210. Brandon Hynes

The 2010 NHL Entry Draft has come and gone so that we can now take a look and see how successful scouts and reporters were in predicting its outcome.  In fairness to the scouts, the lists I used to compile rankings were based on their assessments of the best players, not where they would go in the draft.  Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile to take a look at how publications placed prospects and where they wound up in the actual draft.

The first round is the both the most predictable and the most predicted.  Here’s how each source I used did at the end of the day:

Round One
Aggregate Scores posted here – 26/30 (5 exact placements)
TSN – 25/30 (6 exact placements) – Bob Mckenzie once again has impressive accuracy (83%)
SI – 25/30 (4) – an excellent job by SI
ISS – 22/30 (3) – given how often their rankings are dismissed elsewhere, this is an excellent job by ISS
The Hockey News – 22/30 (3)
McKeens – 22/30 (3)
ESPN – 21/30 (4)
Red Line Report – 20/30 (4) – a lot of strong opinions pushed down their accuracy
Future Considerations – 20/30 (4)
The Hockey Writers – 19/30 (3) – an interesting result given how much THW talks about their accuracy

Rather than break the rest of the draft down as above, I’ve compared the aggregate rankings (posted in earlier articles) to the results.  I choose to follow this path because fewer and fewer of the above sources go deep into the draft.

Round Two

In total the sum of the predictions yielded a 20/30 result.  The following players were listed later in the draft: Dalton Smith, Christian Thomas, Sebastien Wannstrom, Connor Brickley, Philip Lane, Mark Alt, Justin Holl, Oscar Lindberg, and Kent Simpson.

Round Three

The results decline the deeper we go, but it’s still 50-50 (15/30).  Only two players (Scott Wedgewood and Max Gaede) did not make the aggregate list (both were listed by Central Scouting, while Wedgewood appeared in RLR at #217 and Gaede in ISS at #166).

Round Four

The precentages were a little better in this round (19/30).  Two overage players were selected (Tye McGinn and Rob Flick), one who didn’t make the top-210 list (Ben Gallacher, #197 for ISS), and two Europeans who were not ranked at all (Marcus Sorensen, who I hadn’t seen anything written about, and Jani Hakanpaa, who RLR had put on a “watch” list but not ranked).

Round Five

The list became largely irrelevant this round (9/30), with a number of overage players selected (Tony DeHart, Jason Wilson, Justin Florek, and Luke Walker), players who didn’t make the top-210 (Christopher Wagner (#177 RLR), Cody Ferriero (#186 ISS), Tim Heed (#288 RLR), Mike Ferland (#187 ISS), Cody Beach (#181 CSNA), Isaac Macleod (#133 CSNA), Petr Mrazek (#82 RLR), Adam Polasek (#161 RLR/#193 ISS), and Brendan Gallagher (#160 ISS)), and one unranked European (John Klingberg, who I believe was on the RLR “watch” list).

Round Six

Things improve a bit here (16/30).  A few overage players were taken (Dalton Prout, Anthony Bitetto, and Alex Friesen), along with some who didn’t make the list (Joe Rogalski (#200 RLR), Corey Durocher (#199 RLR), Brendan O’Donnell (#195 CSNA), Andreas Dahlstrom (#24 CSE), Zane Gothberg (#154 RLR), Sebastien Owuya (#189 ISS), Reid McNeill (#183 RLR), Cedrick Henley (#279 RLR), Nicholas Luukko (#150 CSNA)) and two unranked players  (Tanner  Lane and Drew Czerwonka).

Round Seven

The final round was, as expected, the least reliable (7/30).  A large number of overage players were selected (Cody Rosen, Teigan Zahn, Randy McNaught, Brett Perlini, Maksim Chudinov, Bryce Aneloski, Joonas Rask, and Kellen Jones), along with those who didn’t make the list (Kristians Pelss (#218 RLR), Ronald Boyd (#230 RLR), Frederik Andersen (#165 RLR), Lee Moffie (de-listed #255 RLR), Dylen McKinlay (#156 CSNA), Macmillan Carruth (NR), Patrick Holland (#162 ISS), David Elsner (#56 CSE),  Peter Stoykewych (#88 CSNA), Chris Crane (#203 RLR), Mauro Jorg (#63 CSE), Ricard Blidstrand (#58 CSE), Riley Boychuk (#296 RLR), and Zach Trotman (#191 ISS)), with only one unranked European (John Westin).

So through 210 selections in the draft only six players who were selected were not ranked, making it clear just how thorough scouting services are (especially in North America).  A total of 17 overage players were taken (beginning in the fourth round).  The tiny amount of truly “off the board” picks is interesting, as it illustrates that no matter how much scouts may disagree on which player is better than another, their opinions on who warrants selection are very close.

To fully illustrate the point, let’s review the numbers (NL=Not Listed, Ov=Overage, NR=Not Ranked):

Round One: 26/30 (86%)
Round Two: 20/30 (66%)
Round Three: 15/30 (50%) (2 NL)
Round Four: 19/30 (63%) (1 NL, 2 Ov, 2 NR)
Round Five: 9/30 (30%) (9 NL, 4 Ov, 1 NR)
Round Six: 16/30 (53%) (9 NL, 3 Ov, 2 NR)
Round Seven: 7/30 (23%) (14 NL, 8 Ov, 1 NR)
Top-210 List: 152/210 (72% accuracy)
Listed Players: 187/210  (87%)

Kuddos to the scouting services and the rankings they provide.  Clearly, whatever various NHL teams do in their own scouting, ultimately their opinions on what makes a player an NHL prospect are the same.

May 10, 2014
Categories: NHL Draft, Ottawa Draft . . Author: Eye on the Sens

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