The Athletic Hockey Show - NHL Draft Lottery recap, The Athletic NHL's 2021 Mock Draft 1.0 breakdown, listener questions, and more

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

First, on the debut episode of The Athletic Hockey Show Prospect Series, Max Bultman and Corey Pronman discuss the NHL Draft Lottery results, including the Buffalo Sabres getting the first overall pick, Owen Power emerging as the consensus number one prospect, how scouting has been impacted by COVID-19, and more.Then, the guys break down The Athletic NHL’s first mock draft of the year and talk about how a Jack Eichel trade could change the equation at the top of the board, who, if anyone, could challenge Owen Power as the first overall pick, options for the Seattle Kraken in the number two spot, Mason McTavish’s rise into a top-ten prospect, and more.To close things out, the guys answer a bunch of listener questions, including thoughts on Aatu Raty as a prospect, how the process of evaluating goalies differs from skater evals, if the Sabres would consider moving the number one pick, and more.And, don’t forget, you can sign up for an annual subscription to The Athletic for just $3.99 a month when you visit http://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Athletic Hockey Show, the first episode, in fact, of our new prospect series, which we're going to be rolling out every Friday over the next couple of months leading up to the NHL draft. I am Max Boltman, Red Wings Beat Writer for The Athletic. I am joined by one of the best prospect analysts in the business, our own Corey Pranman. Corey, how you doing? I'm doing well, Max. I'm happy to be doing this. I think this will be an exciting series. I think so, too. So Corey and I, for our listeners, we're going to be taken over the Friday block of this show from now until the draft, to tell you everything you want to know about the top prospects available,

and hopefully even some stuff you didn't think you needed to know. It should be a blast. We're going to do everything we can to not Sully the great show, Craig Custin, Sean Gentile, Ian Mendez, Haley Salvean, Scott Burnside, Pierre LeBron, Sean McIndoe, all the great work they've been doing. And so with my long-winded intro out of the way, which I promise will be the first of many on the show.

Let's get into the lottery, Corey. night, the NHL, drew its two lottery spots, and it was a long wait for the first time in what seems like a while, nobody really moved up a ton. Yeah, obviously, we had Seattle moved up one spot at Anaheim moved down one spot, but I mean, if you just, you know, or think about the probabilities, that probably should happen every now and then the teams with the highest probabilities should get the highest picks. and they've obviously moved the probabilities around a lot, changed the format a lot in recent years.

It's always kind of been a little bit of a moving target in how these lotteries go. But yes, you know, Buffalo was the worst team in the league, and they will have the first pick, which I don't know. Were they last when they picked Dahlene? Were they second or third last? I think they might have been the worst team that year. I don't actually even remember. I know Toronto was the worst team the year they picked Matthews.

Yep. So, you know, it should happen once every couple of years as the odds dictate. Yeah. And so the Sabres are going to get this pick. They did. You're right. They were the number one team going into that 2018 lottery as well. That year they took Rasmus Dahlene left shot defense.

And we'll get into more of the mock draft stuff in a minute. But I do want to ask you, the Sabres looking at a board where kind of own power and other left shot defenseman has kind of emerged as what seems to be the consensus top player in this class. Can I call them that yet? Yeah, I think it's fair to say. I think when I talk to a bunch of NHM. Scouts, most not everyone, but most say he is the top ranked prospect. I don't talk to many, I talk to some, but I don't talk to many NHL scouts who say he's the top prospect by a wide margin.

Like they wouldn't say it's the gap between Jack Hughes and Capocco. Yeah, Capo caco and the third overall pick that year, could be doc, or the gap between Rasmus Dahlene and Cockney-E. They don't see that kind of gap between power and the second or third best prospect. But most do seem as the best prospect. All right. So we will get to the mock draft stuff and we will get into kind of some of the intricacies of how this could all play out with the teams in order. But even though there was no big shakeup in the order, what I think is there's going to be a ton of unique elements to this year's draft either way, especially when it comes to the wide variance and how much or how little these players are able to play, where teams were able to get their live viewings of them, players leaving their own countries or their age groups.

So I guess to start all of this off, what do you see as the impact of that on scouting and on this year's draft? Yeah, this was obviously a very weird draft season, as it's been a very weird last 12, 15 months for everybody in every industry. The main variables that have been in play in this draft season are, what's first is that the NHL scouting industry, an industry where everybody really tends to prioritize the value of live scouting. views more than, you know, there's obviously live scouting of football, but football scouting has a really big emphasis on video. I think for the first time in the NHL's history, you saw, you know, decision makers having to predominantly or only scout top prospects by video. And that is a very interesting variable. And it'll be interested to see how that it plays into the decision making and how that impacts, you know, whether there's a drop off or any drop

off and the accuracy of how well they identify the best players in the draft. And the other variable is kind of what you said, which is the fact that some players didn't play at all this season, that they played, but they didn't play in the league that they were used to playing in. The Ontario players are kind of the main culprits in that. The QMJHL got a season in. WHL got a shortened season end. The European players got a season in.

Sweden players, their junior players, got a shortened season. That was cut off about midway through. But Russia played most of the season. Finland played most of the season. The USHL played most of the season. College hockey got a good chunk of a season. But the OHL got really screwed. Obviously, by the fact they didn't have a season.

And most of the top Ontario, not all of them, but most of the top Ontario draft eligible prospects found teams in Europe. These were not top teams. Like you weren't seeing guys appear with Scoss. Petersburg in the KHL or for London and the SHL. They were mostly going to lower division European leagues.

Slovakia. Yeah, Slovakia. I mean, I can say I've never watched the Alps Hockey League before, but I had to watch it this season because Francesco Pinali, who may or may not be a first round pick, was playing there. You had Mason McTavish and Brennan Offman, two very potential top 15 picks this year playing in the second division Switzerland

League. So that was definitely a unique element to both watch those leagues, learn about those leagues, learn about what you're comparing them against, because context is always really important when it comes to evaluating hockey players. And that is a unique element. You know, he had a guy like, say, Wyatt Johnson, who was Canada's third-line center at the U-18 World. That was the only games of the season. And based on those only games, Central Scouting, you know, elevated his grade from a B-to-N-A. And you can't really say, well, he overreacted. It was his only hockey. And he had a growth spurt, and he played well.

But that is definitely a unique element to this draft season. So what's the bigger fact? I mean, obviously the guys who barely played, that's the small sample size speaks for itself. But for a guy like Mason McTavish or Brennan Offman, who goes over and they play in the second division, Swiss League, is the bigger problem, hey, we couldn't get enough of our scouts or enough of our top decision makers to Switzerland. to see him live or is it, I don't know how to value the second division Swiss League for an 18-year-old draft eligible? It's probably a combination.

It's a league. I wouldn't, you know, there are players that come out of that league every now and then. Like, there's a little bit of history, not a lot, but a little bit. So you can put it in context. These scouts are used to watching players in pro hockey, whether it's second division Sweden, Finland, Russia, et cetera. So it's not completely unheard of, but you don't usually see Canadians going over there. usually these are players that are brought out there

are part of a development system there. So that is a little different. And it's going to be a combination of, even the guys who went over to Europe, they didn't really have long seasons there. So you have these short seasons in, you know, kind of an odd European league for top prospects, combined with the U-18 world,

combined with what you saw as underage. And some guys got to go where some scouts did go over to Europe to see them live. but most didn't. And now you kind of have to put that puzzle together and do the best you can to weigh all the information you have from the various types of viewings you've had over the last couple of years and make a decision. And, you know, teams have been struggling with this issue for the entire year. But I would say as we get closer to the finish line here, you're starting to see a rough consensus tend to emerge. because everybody had the same information and had the same struggles. So the leagues that had, I guess what I would call the most normal seasons are probably something like NCAA hockey,

except for teams like Harvard that didn't play, the SHL, the Finnish League, the KHL, anyone else you would lump into that group? USHL. USHL, right. QMJHL did not have a typical season in that they only played within their divisions until the playoffs, but they had a semi-full season. They had a trade deadline. The Q finals are going on right now as we speak.

So I wouldn't say they were as normal as those other leagues, but they were relatively normalish, at least compared to their other two CHL leagues. So I guess where I'm getting with that is, you know, NHL teams like to know as much as possible about the guys they're drafting. And I imagine that gets... Absolutely.

It gets all the more so, the higher you go in the draft. So do you expect to see that those players inherently move up the board just by virtue of having played something that more resembles the normal data set, I guess, the teams get? I think for the top ones, you won't see as much of an effect because Brian Clark and Mason McTavish did play hockey this season. They played in Europe. They played at the U18 World. They may not have been a full season, but it was a full seat. It was somewhat of a season. and as underagers, they had big rules with their junior teams.

So I don't think the top guys are going to be affected as much. It's going to be after those top guys go, which will be by pick 30, 40, 50, whatever. Once all those top OHL kids are off the board, the top WHL kids are off the board, then you're going to get to like this block of guys, the kind of guys who are playing at the showcase going on in Erie right now, who as underagers did not really have significant roles.

They played seven, eight minutes a game. They didn't play special teams. And they also didn't have a season this year. And I think there is somewhat of a narrative out there that, you know, oh, well, there's value to be had there because, you know, one of these guys are going to pop. And that's probably true. There's going to be some of these C grades, OHL kids, one, two, three of them are become really good players.

But teams don't really know who those guys are. Yeah. How can you know? You can make guesses like you always do with prospects. Nobody really ever knows the future. but they don't know. And I find more, I don't find teams excited about the prospect of finding value in the OCHO kids. I find more hesitancy about using one of your seven draft picks on a guy you have no information on in terms of how they perform in high level hockey,

as opposed to these other guys in these other leagues you mentioned, where they have more of a normal set of information of how they perform in high level hockey. So in other words, it would be very hard, if even possible at all, to kind of work your way to success in this draft. Certainly at the top, obviously, the harder you work, the more information you have no matter what. But it's not the kind of thing you can overcome through sheer sweat equity is kind of what you're saying. Yeah, I mean, you know, after the OHL season wasn't going to start, that's when I kind of started going through a lot of the lesser OHL guys underage video. and there just wasn't really a lot to get from that. You could watch like all of the kids shifts from an entire season and the puck touches they have were really minimal.

About a scoring chances, zone entries they had are really minimal. And that's just due to the fact that some of these kids didn't play that much. Yeah, they're OCHO rookies. Yeah, OHL rookies. If you're on good teams, you know, they really just had, there's just no role for them. And that creates real challenge. challenges when it comes to player evaluation. Now, yes, your job is to project. Like, you can

watch a, I'll call it one kid, a guy like Ben Roger in London, who is this 6-4 defenseman who can skate. And you're like, yeah, that's a really attractive athletic profile. It was a top 100, and a North American guy by Central, I think, because of that athletic profile. But it's very possible. He could have played a full OCHL season and had 20 or 30 points, and people get really excited about him. And he goes in the top two rounds. it's also possible he could have had three points and showed no puck game and doesn't look like a prospect all these things are possible you don't really know the answer you're good to make a best guess but that lack of information is really striking with the guys who are not the clear top guys

who establish themselves as useful oh-h-l players in their 16-year-old season so one comment that steve eisenman made last night after the lottery red wings general manager he was talking about how he expects there to be vastly different lists. And I guess I'm curious, I kind of know what's out there in the public sphere, but how much variance are you expecting right now going into this draft, both in terms of the actual draft order from what the public thinks, but also from team to team compared to a normal year? How different is that going to look?

And what does that do to a draft? From my discussions with teams, I'm personally not seeing that. Now, I don't know every team's list. But I think there is variants every year from list to list and on different players. So I'm not seeing massive deviation. Like I'm not seeing people say this is my top 15 and there's like 10 different players on it than somebody else's top 15. Yeah. There will be, there are different players.

Like we did our staff mock draft last night and there were some guys that went in the top 15 that some teams liked and some teams thought was we should not have been in the discussion. But I think that sometimes is normal. Like that, that typically happens. I think for me, the issue with this draft is not that there's going to be too much variance from list to list. The issue for me is that I think we all have the same information. We all saw the same hockey this season, the limited hockey for some of these guys. And the issue for me is going to be how much confidence are you going to have in that limited information? Like you could have watched Mason McTavish's, whatever, 15 games in Switzerland and his 7 U18 World games.

But in a normal year, you would have gotten a Halinka, maybe 50, 60 games in the OHL. If he would have gotten to U18 World, you get that. If not, he maybe has a playoff run, gets more games there. So there will be a lot more of a sample size there to say this guy's the top 10 pickoff of. In this season, you're going to get like 20 to 30 games. and how valuable that's going to be, I think, is more the challenge as opposed to people, you know, having massive, differently different opinions based on the limited sample we got. Okay, from there, I want to take us into the staff mock draft that we did immediately in the post lottery glow last night. The first pick, John Vogel, goes with the consensus. He takes Owen Power.

Any thoughts on that pick? Do you expect that to be the pick? Any trepidation? Any trepidation? alternatives you'd have considered. Yeah, I think that is probably going to be the first day. I haven't done my own mock draft yet. You're going to start making some more phone calls in the coming weeks as that starts become a bigger priority for me in terms of trying to figure out how the first round is going to go. But if I just off the top of my head, I would probably put Slot Buffalo with power.

And it was interesting because I think a lot of our readers both, you know, my Twitter mentions and in our article comments that are Buffalo fans. A lot of them were pretty hesitant about that, which I understand. And we'll get into that. We'll get into why in that, you know, they obviously, you know, with all the Jack Eichel and the Sam Ryan Hart trade rumors, they're kind of worried that, you know, they're going to lose two of their best forwards. And then they're going to pick another defenseman.

And it's like, well, how are you going to score? And I get that hesitation. But there's a couple of layers to that other than the, the cliche best player available like yada yada aspect in that you know i would wait one to see what you get in a potential jack ikel trade and i say potential because i'm i'm not a trade rumored guy i have no idea what's going to happen there but i presume if they did trade someone like a jack ickel they're probably going to get some significant futures back possibly know a really good young center uh and that could you know change the death chart a little bit and the other variable for buffalo is well i do think they

have some good young players there, especially if they trade Eichael and Ryanhart. It's, you know, it's more of the same of the last 10 years than that there's a significant rebuild ahead. There's a lot of holes to fill in this organization. And I don't know whether picking the defenseman versus the Ford is really going to change that picture all that much other than there's probably quite a few more years of pain ahead. And you're going to need to get as much talent as possible. And here's the other thing with kind of Owen Power to Buffalo is. I love Owen Power. I think he's an absolutely fantastic prospect. And I think he, I don't know if I projects him as an NHL star, like a headman caliber player. Maybe he's, you know, but I, but I think he predicts as a top pair of defensemen. I think

he's a guy who has the potential to be a star defenseman in the NHL. But I think realistically, not his best case, but just realistic outcome is on a contending team, he's probably not like a first power play type guy. He's probably. but not putting up massive offensive numbers, even though I'm not completely ruling that out. Right. But you have Rasmus Dahlene, who that, even though his development hasn't gone completely ideal,

like with his elite elite skill, you could see that happen. And I think you can completely build a contending team with Dalline anchoring one D pair in your first power play and Owen Power being on the other, you know, D pair and taking some really hard minutes, 22, 23, 25 a night. and doing so really effectively second power play pk versus best players and i think that can be a

really good foundation for for a rebuild and for a potential contender with the caveat that they obviously have a lot more holes to fill yeah and i mean to me though i look at it and i say okay yeah it's going to be you know they're going to have used two number one overall picks in in three years on left shot defensemen but i look at the teams that are still playing in the playoffs right now they have stud you know defense scores like tampa's got on the left side of the left side of the left side of their deal alone. It's headman, it's Sergachev, and it's McDonough. You can't have too many guys like that.

Yeah. And building a contender in the NHL is really hard. And I, you know, in hockey, you can't just have a couple of good players and be a contender. It's a really painful process where you need to find value over

and over again and get great players over and over again. And yeah, I mean, you know, And eventually I'll put out a final ranking in the coming weeks about where I kind of have these players slotted. But yeah, I mean, especially when you're that bad, you just got to take the best player you think is there. And I think there is a point where you have to debate value in terms of positions. And if you think like you have way too many of one and it's close enough, but you usually shouldn't be playing that game at one. I hope whoever you pick at one in any draft class, even if it's not.

like a guy like Connor McDavid or Austin Matthews at the top who you're really passionate about. I would hope the guy you pick out one you think is the best player of it. As a guy, you could at least be really, really excited about to slot into your lineup at any point. Is there a, you know, suitable rival at number one this year? Is there a Nolan to Powers Nico? Is there a Taylor to his Tyler to his Taylor? I don't know if there's one guy that stands out. I think you could talk to people around the league and they will give you different names.

Some scouts I talk to will say Matthew Baneers is that guy who is playing at the World Championships as well with Ovalholt, although he was just injured as we were recording. Some will suggest Dylan Genther or William Ecclund or Ken Johnson, the forwards from various different organizations, Edmontton, Michigan and Inger Garden. And some will suggest one of the other defensemen like Luke Hughes with a program or Simon Edwinson in Frulinda. So I don't think there is one guy. I don't think you can draw a contrast like that. I think there is a blob of guys that are, you know, some people have them indifferent. I have a couple of guys that are mildly separated. Some scouts will have three, five, seven.

It varies. But I think that's how this draft has played out. And it's kind of been that way. season. All right. Well, Ryan Clark, our Seattle beatwriter, the guy who's been covering a team with no players for the last year, he did go with Baneers at the number two spot. And Baneers, like he mentioned, did get hurt this morning. It looked like lower body, it looked like foot or ankle kind of thing. And he was playing in the world championships. But certainly a pretty good place to start a franchise is with a two-way center who competes as hard as Matthew Baneers does. Yeah. And I think, and I've thought about this a lot

with Seattle and I really love particularly Dylan Genther as a prospect. But I think when it comes to an expansion team and I think realistically you cannot expect Seattle to have the success Vegas head initially. Well, I'm sure that'd be great. I'm sure they're hoping they will. I think realistically you can't expect that. It's probably going to be a little bit more painful and I just, it's going to be hard, I think, for a franchise very first draft pick to not be a defenseman or a center. Yeah. And I'm not saying that's for sure going to happen.

I think they have to debate Eklin and Genther and Ken Johnson, whether you think he's a center or a wing in the NHL. Yeah, I think Benir's makes a lot of sense to get that really important centerment. And it's not for sure that he's going to be a first line center in the NHL, even a second overall. I talked to some NHL scouts who think he could be. I talked to some who think he's a second line center. and that's and obviously I think Seattle's opinion on that matter will determine whether he goes second overall or not.

But with most teams, not every team, but most teams that he is the consensus top center and those guys tend to go rather early. I love Baneers. I would have really strongly considered him at one or two had I been in the position to make that pick. But I will say, Ron Francis and Carolina took a ton of defensemen when he was building out that team. And I do wonder, you mentioned center of defensemen, I do wonder if defensemen, There's a ton of them this year expected to go on the top six or seven picks. I wonder if they don't look long and hard at that position and getting a blue line anchor at second overall. Yeah, I think all those guys are relatively in the mix, and I'm sure Seattle has been talking about all those guys pretty much all season because they haven't had a team to watch.

All they've had to do is prepare for the NHL entry draft and the expansion draft. So I'm sure they've talked about all five, six, seven, eight of those guys ad nauseum in terms of who they're. pick is going to be whether it's going to be one, two, or between three to five. All right. So those are the top two picks. Now I'm going to give you kind of groupings of picks just so that we don't bore our readers too much with the intricacies. But at three, Anaheim, Eric Stevens took Dylan Genther for the Ducks.

Corey Massassasak for the Devils took Luke Hughes, left shot defenseman, brother of Jack. That'd be a great story. Columbus took Simon Edvinson, left shot D out of Rolanda, in that next three to five range. Anything stands out, anything you quibble with, or anything you really like there? No, I think all those picks look rather reasonable. Like, when I was watching that play out, I thought like that was, it looked like a really solid mock draft in terms of projecting how it could possibly go. Columbus is the one that's going to be interesting to me. And I think Evanston is completely reasonable.

It could definitely go Evanston at five. But they've been rather outspoken about the need for some center help in that organization. And I think there's people around the league that wonder if that could be a Mason-McTavish landing spot. not saying it will be. And especially if they trade Seth Jones, they go from needing centers to needing everything. And it's probably going to, like Buffalo, they're not exactly like Buffalo,

but if Seth Jones is indeed traded and not extended, it's probably going to be more of a painful rebuild process there too. But that was one that I thought, that's one I can see going a little differently there. Well, so you mentioned McTavich there. And we're going to, I'm sure, spend a fair amount of time on this show talking about him. Let's just get to it right now. What did he do for a guy who, I don't think he was kind of considered to be in that top 10 for a lot of the year, at least from what I was seeing out there.

And now to be, as you wrote in your assessment or the scouts assessment of our mock draft last night, there were scouts who do feel he's going to be considered in that five to seven range range. What did he do to put himself there? I would say from my discussion with NHL teams, even before the U18 world, he was an eight to 15 range guy, I would say. Okay. That was the general idea. I was a little bit lower on him before the tournament, but among teams he was kind of in the 8 to 15 range, and now I would say he's more in like the 3 to 10 range.

So that's kind of been the difference. And I think of the U18 world, I think he came in with the perception that he's just like the skill guy with a good shot and decent size, and that's an attractive player. He scored a lot as an underage. But I think at the U18s he showed that his compete level was really, really high.

I thought that turned both a lot of scouts, the heads of a lot of scouts I talked to. And just myself personally, I didn't really see that from him when I'd watched him previously. I think he impressed a lot of people with his playmaking ability. I think it's easy to kind of like scout the stat line. See he had 12 assists last year. Maybe he advises you or whatever.

But I think a lot of scouts I talked to were really, really impressed by the way he saw the ice and made plays. Now you have this center who was skilled and he's smart and he can score and he's competitive. competitive, and he put up huge numbers, a big reason why they won the gold medal, and frankly, looks like a center. Whether you think he's going to play center in the NHL or not, I get mixed opinions. I think most scouts I talk to think he's going to be a center.

Probably because they just watched him play center and do so effectively. Some worry about the below-average foot speed, and I think that center versus wing can be in the eye of the beholder sometimes, whether you want your centers to have speed or grit or hockey sense, different qualities. But in a draft that lacks clear, these guys are definitely going to be centers high in the draft types, that he looks like a guy who could fill that role, I think, has definitely helped him solidify himself as a top 10 candidate. Well, so that, we'll get to my pick in a second, but that was a key question for me as I was going to. If I was 100% sold that McTavish was going to be a center in the NHL, I think I probably would have taken

him at the next spot. Now, it's possible if Portsland was 100% sold, he had taken him at the five spot and he wouldn't even be there. But what's going to go into that decision for a team? Do you think with Mason McTavish? Is it the skating is kind of the big decider for him? Yeah, I think the skating for him is the one aspect where they're not 100% sure. I think that's actually a theme throughout this draft. I was having the discussion with an NHL executive a couple of weeks ago that kind of want to get past Benares. There's a bunch of these guys with the C listed in their name in the position slot that are not great skaters. It's amazing McTavish. It's Chen Lucius.

Atulati. You have Kent. White Johnston, Kent Johnson, Fjordschkhov. I'm probably missing one or two names even, but Penelie, I guess you could put them in there. A bunch of these guys who have the center in their name but aren't great skaters and teens

aren't thrilled about having centers who aren't great skaters. But it doesn't mean they can't play. I think with McTavish, the thing that helps put them over the top, is the fact that he's really competitive. It's why I think a lot of teams thinks Fetchkoff can play center because he has a high compete level. It's why people think Rattie can play center.

It's because he has a good compete level. So I think, and I pronounce his name wrong, it's like Ratt 2. I probably should get that clarified. But I think that's the one thing with Big Tavis, that say Lucius or Johnson don't have. I think makes teams more confident as opposed to those two

that he's going to be an NHL center. his world u18 is just really quick you know you talked about the playmaking that people saw did he elevate his stock the most among players in this kind of top half of the first round rate i know there's some guys especially like in belarus that had great tournaments and put themselves on the map but of this tier he had the best showing i would say yes i would say so i didn't think dylan getter had a i thought he had a good tournament he was one of the better forwards for the team that i won it played huge minutes all situations he was on mctavish's line right no he was playing with Shane Wright.

Maybe they're on the same power player or something. And so he didn't have a great, he thought he had a good tournament, an amazing tournament. Even though Brank Clark made the All-Star team, I didn't leave that tournament hearing from a bunch of teams, like, wow, look how good he was. There was very mixed opinions on his tournament.

Luke Hughes wasn't there. Chad Lucius wasn't there. So I would say he was definitely the one guy, at least among the consensus top prospects that helped himself the most from that tournament. All right. So at six for the Red Wings, I took William Eklund. I took him as a left wing out of Girgaarden. He's played some center in his younger days. I guess the impression I've gotten is that he's going to be a wing at the next level. But I took him because I thought he checked a lot of boxes that the Red Wings have, I think gravitated toward in their forwards in terms of compete, in terms of skating, in terms of sense. Here's your chance if you want to rip me for that pick. No, I wouldn't. I think most people I talk to in the NHL happened right around that spot. So I think the one thing I was curious about is, you know, Detroit like, say, Columbus, like probably a lot of other teams that aren't very good, have a lack of real high-end centered depth, at least young-centered depth.

So I guess the question on Ecclin is, can he play the middle or not? He's played at the middle of a much younger age. He hasn't really played much center the last two years. So that would kind of be the one thing for me. But that one is will they take another potential winger that high. But I think on talent, he's definitely in that discussion. That was my hesitation, too. I mean, you look at Detroit's last few drafts.

And in 2018, they take Phillips-Zadena. He's a winger. In 2019, they take Moritz-Sighter. He's the prototypical big right-shot defenseman. And then next year, or last year they go back to Lucas Raymond. This would be the third top-six winger, in terms of top-six draft it, like, not top-six line, but, like, picked in the top-six-s. sixth winger they've drafted in four years. I am skeptical that that's a, you know, sustainable way to go

about a rebuild. No, yeah, it is. And I, you know, everyone always likes to say picks best player available, but, but these conversations happen with teams. It's just, it's just a reality. And it's logical to have these conversations. And if you really believe in the player, like, you think he's, you know, if I had, I had one scout, they'd make the argument to me that, you know, if all things are equal, you can have these conversations, but a lot of the time, things aren't equal. And, If you think this guy is a lot better than the other options, then you probably take the better player. But, you know, it doesn't always play out that way, too. If you think there's a grouping, I think, especially when you're this deep into a rebuild,

you've got to have those discussions. Yeah. All right. Kevin Kerr, San Jose took Brand Clark at 7. Lisa Dilman for the Kings, took Kent Johnson. And at number 9, Thomas Drans, took Mason McTavish. What do you think of that 7-8-9 spot, San Jose, L.A., Vancouver? I think that those are all a reasonable picks.

Even though there were some scouts who were skeptical that McTavish gets to nine, I don't think it's impossible to be quite honest. I think I'm not sure if I did a mock draft right now. He gets to nine, but I'm not rolling it out either. I think there are definitely some people out there who really, really love the kid in the NHL, and there are some who are still skeptical, versus some of those other top names that we've talked about all the season and worried about maybe we're overreacting to one tournament.

But I think that first nine, I thought, was all, relatively realistic in terms of how it can go. Then after we got past nine, I'm not going to say it kind of got wide open because the names were, I think, ultimately reasonable and obviously full transparency. I might have helped a couple of the writers of those picks, but I thought the options definitely grow

and it can go in a variety of ways after that. Okay, we're going to get to those ones in a minute, but I do want to talk about Clark and Johnson because I look at them and I see two of the players who, at least from my perspective, these are two of the upside plays in this range in the draft. These are two of the guys who have really high-level skill and sense. Kent Johnson and Brandt Clark, can you tell me a little bit more about why they're going

in these seven and eight spots in our mock and not in the one, two, three, four. It's actually kind of similar between both of them in that I think, kind of like you said, I would say Clark is the most purely skilled guy among all the top defensemen. And I think you can argue Kent Johnson has the most skill of anybody in the draft. but they're both below-average skaters for the NHL. Clark's skating gets talked about more just because it's kind of funky looking to watch. I don't think in terms of his effectiveness, it's that bad. He's not kind of like where we talk about it with Bobby Brinker, Tyson-Forster in past years,

but it's definitely below average for the NHL. And Kent Johnson also has not really a ton of physicality in his game. And so those factors combine, I think, give some NHL teams some hesitancy. about how high you just want to take the bed on pure skill, and pure skill can work out. You know, there's really, there's decent chances. Both of those guys could be great, great players, high offensive players in the National Hockey League. But both of them may also have some risk factors that they might go to higher levels and they might struggle. They might struggle with the pace. They might struggle to generate and work in transition at the NHL level. And there are teams out there

with real hesitancies on both players. So the response I always hear to, this kind of conversation is, we'll always bet on upside because that's where the money is made. Why would an HLGM not simply just bet on the highest possible upside they can find? Because they also need to get a good player out of those high picks. I definitely talk to scouts, you know, whether it's this year or in previous years who are like, you know, Corey, like when we get a top five, top seven pick, you're not picking a guy who's a bad skater. you get to choose everybody from the crop almost everybody when you get that high a pick you need to get guys who have a lot of layers to their game it can't just be great hockey sense

or just great skill they they need to have you know this is where you get the complete athlete is in these picks and you you will have options to get those kind of guys at those high slots so I think Brian Clark is more skilled than Simon Evanson, but Simon Evanston is definitely the better athlete. And I don't think the skill gap is that big. So I understand why teams would gravitate towards Evanston. I think Clark has a little bit more skill than Luke Hughes. I think Luke Hughes is a way, way, way better skater.

So it's a little bit of a gap in one sense versus a major gap in another sense. And I think teams just gravitate, especially really high in the draft, towards those guys who have multiple layers to them because at the end of the day, you don't want to have top five picks that often. And when you get those top five picks,

you need to get a really good player. And yes, I would say, best-best-case scenario, Clark could have the best offensive production of all these players. Doesn't mean he's going to be the best player, though. He might not be able to be a great, great defender, two-way guy, just because of the skating.

Maybe he could, maybe he won't. But you know when you pick a guy with size and skating that they probably are going to be able to defend relatively well in the NHL to go with the skill they have. We should also clarify. So, Corey, when you say skill, that's not a synonym for talent. That's specific to puck skills, hands, basically, stick handling. Yeah, I think, I typically I mean that sometimes when you're talking about. about skill, but when you're talking with NHL Scouts, it's usually a combination of puck skills,

hockey sense, playmaking, creativity, general, just the kind of things they do with the puck, that's not their skating, it's not their physicality. And in that sense, I meant that, you know, with the puck on his stick, Clark does some of the most creative, imaginative playmaking among the defensemen, and Johnson is the best with a puck on a stick among the forwards. Okay, for sure. All right, let's get into the back half of this lottery round, and we'll cover these guys. Ottawa takes Chas Lucius, that was Ian Mendes making that pick. Scott Powers took Matthew Coronado for the Blackhawks out of Chicago, the USHL. HAL, Haley Salving took Cole Cill, who he's a Canadian, but he's playing in the USHL this year. Does he play in the OHL normally

or the, no, WHL, right? WHL, MSNHMPT. Yep. Charlie O'Connor for the Flyers, took Fabian Lucel, really interesting player. I'm sure we'll talk about him. Sad Yusuf took Corson Coolman's out of the AJHL for Dallas. He's a defenseman and Rick Carpinello, Brennan Offman for the Rangers. He plays for Flint in the OHL. From these 10 to 15 range,

I know this is kind of beyond what is the more consensus range of players. What did you think of this range of players? I thought it was interesting. I thought, you know, like I said, thought they were all rather reasonable picks for that slot. I thought the only one that was kind of interesting to me was Coronado going at 11, but Scott Powers, the Chicago writer, felt real strongly about that one. I know a lot of teams that really like Coronado.

I think he could be a top 15 candidate. I was surprised to even see him go at 11 a little bit, but wasn't overly shocked. The big thing from the mock draft, as I alluded to, when I wrote about the mock draft and when we talked to NHL Scouts, further commentary on our mock draft, was that none of the top goalie prospects went in the mock draft. top goalie prospects being Yesper Walsett who plays with Lulea in Sweden

and Sebastian Kosa, who plays with Edmonton and the Western Hockey League. And, you know, that was, when I sent it to all the teams, that was kind of the main pushback was, well, where's the goalies?

Like, Walsett's definitely going to go. Kosa, even some guys said, is definitely going to go in this range. And I'm not saying they're wrong based on the talent, but as I started looking at it, I said, yeah, I can see it happening, but it's not completely easy to find where they slot. Vancouver has a young goalie and Thatcher Dempco they assigned to a long-term extension. Philadelphia, I think, still really believes in Carter Hart.

Yeah. The Rangers really love Igor Shisterkin. It's not going to be completely easy to find where these guys slot in. Jake Audenger with Dallas, has looked promising so far. Calgary signed Jacob Markstrom. Yeah, and different age for that one, obviously. But it's not going to be, I think, simple to find that fit for where these goals are going to slot in. Even though teams I talked to around the league think it's definitely going to happen,

even if it requires maybe a trade or two to make it work, because there are teams who are really passionate about one and or both. I think most teams I talk to think Walsest that's the best, But as the season went on, I started hearing a little bit more that there are some teams that prefer COSA over Walshded even. So I think that's going to be, I think, the toughest part of putting together mock drafts over the next month and a month and a half. And I think it's going to be the more and the most interesting aspects of the actual draft is where do these two goalie prospects fall. Yeah. All right.

So these are the players that are writers selected. I think we've talked about the caliber being the right fit. but are there any team fits that you especially liked player to team or that you thought maybe we missed an opportunity on to match a prospect and a team who just seemed to go together perfectly? There was nothing that really, I think, just stood out to me in terms of, at least among those later guys. I do wonder about Lucius to Ottawa, I think would be really interesting in that it just seems like they have, they obviously have a lot of young talent. in that organization, they don't have everything. And I think you can argue they could need that premier goal score. So that would be interesting.

But it's hard for me to see him being at center in that organization. He looks like probably he would be a winger. He's probably not going to knock Josh Norrisoff Center, for example. You know, if it comes between him and Tim Stutzler, you've got to imagine Stutzlow would be the center for him. So I don't, I like that pick. I really like Chad Lucius. I think that one would be really interesting to see where he would fall

and whether they would prefer maybe to take the goalie there instead of a guy like Lucia said at that 10 spot. All right. Now let's get into the mailbag. We solicited some questions from our readers and listeners this morning, and we've got a bunch of really good ones to get to. The first one is from Eric Jeske. And he wants to know how standardized are the structure of professional scouting departments, of which I assume it means NHL scouting departments, because obviously these are the amateur scouting departments. What does a common organizational chart look like?

how does a decision to draft the specific player actually happen on draft day? What do you got for Eric? Well, again, I presume he is getting about the amateur scanning department because he's used the word pro, and pro versus amateurs are very important distinction when it comes to how a scatmy department works for an NHL team. But working off the premise that he meant amateur since he was alluding to the draft, usually there are layers.

It's kind of like a pyramid almost. You have that lowest layer, which are usually the area scouts. guys who are responsible for really knowing a specific region of the world, whether it's Ontario, whether it's a particular country in Europe or multiple countries in Europe, whether it's the United States, the Eastern United States, Western United States. That's usually the first layer. And then you have a second layer, which are guys who are responsible for all the regions, the crossover scouts. And how many of those guys there are in an organization can vary.

Some have a lot, some have very few. But those guys, our job are to be able to see kind of the whole forest and work with the various areas scouts to identify the guys that they're going to be really interested in to potentially draft that summer. And then usually it's the third layer, which is the decision maker. It's your director of amateur scouting. It's a director of player personnel. It's your assistant general manager who potentially has a heavy hand in the draft.

And it usually works that way. Now, in terms of how decisions are made, that definitely varies from team to team. I mean, that's really, for some teams, that's their secret sauce in terms of, in terms of how they try to draft is their process in terms of how they put a list together. And some teams, you kind of figure a little bit out about them just talking over the years. And the processes are all kind of different in terms of how they vote and how they put their information together and how they put their list together. I kind of joke with some of my scout friends that at the end of the day, they're professional list makers because that's really the work product. They draft off the list. But then that's probably a little bit more proprietary than we'll ever really know everything about how certain lists get put together.

But it's usually a combination of reports and discussions and voting and the work you've done throughout the year to rate players according to their tools and their overall projection throughout the course of a season. And there shouldn't usually be decisions being made on draft day. Most teams I talk to typically go into a draft with a, they have a list, but they usually have a good idea of the players they're probably going to walk out of there with if things go somewhat rational. And draft pick trades can be kind of the main variable there. But usually, and there are decisions that happen on the draft floor. There's many stories of guys moving up or down lists at the last second over the decades

of there being a draft. But usually there aren't any real decisions being made because the list should be kind of solid going into the draft. All right. Next one is from Cider Salad. He says, if your team desperately needs a center and you're staring at Mason McTavish and Kent Johnson, because Matthew Baneers is gone,

who is your pick between those two and why? Or is it somebody else? Yeah, and I'm still kind of putting that puzzle together in terms of my ranking in terms of which one I have versus the other one. but there are there I guess the issue with Kent Johnson is going to be whether he's actually an NHL center or not because I think you can definitely argue the talent

between the two of them and it's very reasonable to pick one or the other but you know there are teams I talk to that are very skeptical that Kent Johnson's going to be an NHL center just because they see a 6061 guy so so skater not really that great off the puck defensively and they say you know that's probably a winger in the NHL

Now there are some people who do think he's the center He played center in junior I thought was really good You know he was obviously he was the BC TL MVP You watch him with the BC games He was just unbelievable Like one of the most dominant junior A players I've ever seen But that is the kind of the question there

And if you don't believe he's a center Well that kind of answers that question for you But if you do think he's a center It's really it would be really close And I would probably lean towards Johnson in that case All right Next one is from I Stand with Ethan bear, he says, why did Atu Ratu drop so far off this year? He was the presumptive number one pick

I think two years ago he was. Yeah, it was less presumptive coming into the season, but it was definitely a guy who I personally, and talking to NHL teams, some NHL teams, thought he would be in that discussion. Not everybody did in their, and those opinions, not every NHL team I talked to thought he was in that discussion, and their opinions ended up being correct as the draft process has played out in that he's kind of dropped off. The answer, why he is in the discussion. It's pretty simple. He didn't have a good season.

He didn't have a good season. I mean, you watched him both in Liga and in the Finnish junior games. And he didn't play well. Just simply, like, he is a skill player and he didn't look skilled. He didn't make plays. He didn't make, you know,

whether to his teammates or through checks, he didn't create scoring chances. He didn't look really dangerous. Even he looked good at the junior level, but he wasn't, like, dominant at the junior level. And just generally, he had a bad year. And that's why he's a really difficult player to assess, because if you were the,

thought process coming into the season, watching him over the last two years, and I've seen a lot of Rattu over the last two years, both live and on video, where you're like, wow, this guy's really good, like just great skill, hockey sense, you know, center with size, who seems to compete well and tends to do rather well at various levels. You're like, oh, yeah, this guy's, this guy's a real top prospect, and he just completely just bombs his draft season. It's really hard to put that together. The question that NHL teams are trying

to decipher is, is this Brandon Saud? Or is this John McFarland? You know, there's both examples of guys who are really

top prospects coming into their draft seasons who didn't have good draft seasons and both of their careers took varying courses afterwards. And I think, you know, there hasn't been a week or two that's gone by the season

where I haven't had a discussion with a scout about Ratu. He's just a really tough player to figure out both where he's actually going to go in the draft because it's not impossibly getting to the second round. I still think he'll go in the first round. I've talked with enough teams. I think he's a first rounder still.

Something he would even be excited to get him in, like, you know, mid-late in the first round. But it's definitely a major question mark out there about where he's ultimately going to end up. Where would you have him right now? I still think he's a first rounder just, because, like, I've just seen too much from over the last couple of years. I was actually watching some video of him from his underage season with a scout call like a mine the other day just to kind of see, like, making sure we weren't crazy

that we actually saw somebody who was really good this season before. And we kind of came away saying, yeah, it was really good. Like, what happened? And it's, I still think there's a really good player in there. Not a great player, but I still think there's just too many assets in there. I do think there's skill and hockey sense in there. there, even though not everybody agrees with that that I talk to. I still think, like, I wouldn't surprise me if he just shows up next season and is, like, a good pro.

And he's been the first time center for that age group for so long for Finland. Wouldn't surprise me to go to the world junior. This is a great world junior. No guarantees, mind you, on any of that because he was just so unimpressive this season. But I still think he's a first rounder. I still think he's a guy. I'm going to have a relatively healthy spot on my list. No guarantees on any of these guys.

That's 17 and 18-year-olds. you. Yeah, no, he's, uh, one of the, a lot of scouts love to use the term time we'll tell because that's, that's usually how these evaluations go. We all can sound like we're experts and we know what we're doing and we sound so confident. But the truth is, most of us are going to be a wrong about almost a lot of our opinions on most of these guys when it ultimately plays out. Yeah. All right. Uh, next one is from Brad Criscoe. He says, who's the guy not ranked in just about anyone's top 10 that could actually jump into the top 10? We kind of touched on this in the mock draft segment,

but I would probably signal out one, if not both of the top goalie prospects, and yes for Walson and Sebastian Kosa. I think most people have talked about Wollstead all season, but I think Kosa has definitely elevated himself throughout the course of the season. His short season, mind you, and building off his great underage season, too.

I mean, you have like a 6-6 goalie who has tremendous quickness, a pretty good hockey sense, incredible numbers thinking like a 940 say percent of the season or something like that. I think you talk to some teams out there who think this guy is in the kind of sane stratosphere with Walsden and Ascarov and Knight

as prospects and that's probably the one guy I would say is probably not being discussed enough in terms of like this guy is a pretty high end prospect. Okay, I had this later in the question bank, but I'm just going to skip ahead to it now while we're on the subject. And this is from Jean-Claude Tran-Zam. He says, does your method or approach change it all when evaluating goalies versus skaters?

I'm going to tweak his question to what is your method for evaluating goalies? What are you looking for when you're watching a 17-18-year-old goalie? That's a great question. And it's a good question because, frankly, the game is different for a goalie than it is for a skater. You know, what skater you're evaluating, you know, what the kind of plays they make, how hard they compete off the puck, how is their skating look,

their transition game, all these kind of things that don't really apply as much to goaltenders. And it's almost like you're at an completely different sport, not completely different because it's still hockey,

but one of the things that I've kind of learned from not just talking to a bunch of NHL scouts, but meeting scouts and other sports and learning how they go through their process

is there's really a lot of rhymes in scouting and player evaluation across the sports. When you kind of really drill down to it. NHL teams and all kind of sports teams are looking for, you know, great athlete in terms of, you know, quickness, size, strength, looking for guys with great intelligence, guys who work really hard, guys with very good technical skill in the specific position and things they need to

accomplish in their respective sports. So, like, you kind of just can just do that for, for goalies is, you know, you're looking for those kind of qualities. You're looking for goalies with size, with great athleticism and quickness and hockey sense who are competitive. You're looking for guys who perform on a consistent basis. I mean, these are not, I think, controversial things to say, but I think sometimes people think that goalies are voodoo, which is something I've said before. So I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to think. But I think at the end of the day, I don't think evaluating athletes is rocket science.

It's hard to project what a 17-year-old is going to be at 23. Just like for anything, projecting one of a 17-year-old is going to be a 23 is not easy. But I think at the end of the day, the process is not that complicated. The issue of goalies is not how do you evaluate a goalie. It's that goalies come with more inherent risk in terms of the fact that there's fewer jobs available. And the fact that a lot of the goalies in NHL, they tend to be rather clumped up in talent. So there's really important discussions about whether this is the correct investment to make with a premium draft. but I think you're not, you know, I could sit down with an NHL scouting cold through some tape of Sebastian

Kosher or Walsstead and they'll say right away, oh yeah, like he's a stud for X, Y, and Z reasons. So after watching them for 30 minutes, because it doesn't take a genius to identify certain traits. But at the end of the day, you need to know how to value that correctly relative to skaters, which is something that I'm not sure I know how to do correctly, but I try my best regardless. This was a constant debate on the last podcast I did the Red Wings-based podcast, partly because the Red Wings do not have a top goalie prospect. And I think either Walsett or Kosa are going to be names that a lot of people are bringing up around the Red Wings.

But the name that I will use as a counter to say why I don't think the Red Wings should make that pick and why I generally don't think teams should pick golies in the top 10 just personally is Jonathan Bernier. He was the 11th pick, but this is a guy who has a 9-13 career safe percentage. He's by any definition of good goalie. He's a starting goalie for the Red Wings. I don't think you can ask for a ton more than a 913 save percentage goalie without, you know, really asking for a star.

And they got him in free agency for $3 million. Right. I think that's a good point. And it's one that I tend to agree with. I think what the NHL teams would make account argument to is like, well, didn't they take Michael Rasmussen in the top 10 too? Is he that much more valuable a player than Jonathan Bernier? No, but you, you know, I guess you could probably go get a Rasmussen in free agency for maybe

even cheaper than 3 million is probably the point. But you didn't have to spend the pick on Bernier at all. You could just sign them in free agency. Right. I think, you know, kind of like everything, you know, the drafts about acquiring talent, about acquiring rare attribute. And if you're using a tie pick on a goalie, there's, you hope that there's something about them that you think you just can't find in free agency.

And you can debate whether Walstead or Kosa have those qualities. But, you know, with Ascarov and Knight, there were definitely teams that felt like there's something rare about these two that is worth us using a significant asset for and there's going to be teams to think of that about those two goalie prospects as well absolutely all right this one's from enoch and this one's interesting he says there are vague are there are the vague rumors of attitude issues with luke hugh's legitimate or worrisome do you know what he's referencing here i do and i want to be careful with this one because I generally, how do I say this nicely,

this came out because there was a couple of comments about it from elite prospects about this. And I generally would not comment on something like this because I respect the work they do and there are a bunch of good writers there. I think they do a good job. But I've had enough of our writers asking me about it, both being our colleagues and I've had our many,

numerous readers asked me about this. I've had scouts ask me about this. So I feel like I should just kind of like address it succinctly in that I have not heard of any character issues with Luke that I think are of any major alarm and character is a really vague thing sometimes because what does, you know, what does character mean?

You know, what are the qualities you look for in in a player in terms of an intangible level. But in terms of like anything like major red flag, like any kind of incident or something like that, I haven't heard anything like that. The best way I kind of describe it is, I haven't heard anything from teams about Luke as a person that I didn't hear from his brothers,

about his brothers as well. There were teams that didn't like Quinn or Jack's character too. But I also have talked to many NHL scouts who have either interviewed Luke Hughes or know him really well, who are huge fans of the kid, who think he's a great kid, who go to Batford guy,

you know, without a shadow of a doubt. So I don't think there is some underlying major issue here other than, you know, just kind of like how Jack could be, could push people back a little bit

based on how his approach would be with people at times. And Jack was one of my favorite interviews. I love Jack Hughes. I don't think there's anything really that worrisome here. Moving on to the next one, this one is from Steve A, and we touched on this a little bit earlier. He says, considering Buffalo has Deline and some other, he calls them okay-ish D, is there any chance that they trade the pick or trade down or a selective forward? He feels like they're scoring, goes into a black hole after Eichl and Reinhardt, and there is

the chance that neither of those is back next year. Yeah, I kind of addressed this earlier in the podcast. I'll just be quick on this one. I think you're really going to have to hope that you get a better idea of what this looks like before the draft in terms of what an Iql or a Reinhardt return looks like. Yep. You know, if they get some, you know, some premium young forwards back, whether prospects are currently in the NHL, I think the conversation changes a little bit.

Right now it's purely hypothetical, and until those hypotheticals are settled, I still think you've got to take the best player. And if the best player you think is Owen, you take them, if it's Benirs or Genther or Ecclind or whoever you take them to, but I feel like this will probably settle itself out. And I can't see them doing a Eichel or a Ryanhardt deal without getting a really good young forward coming back. All right, two more that we're going to get to. This one I know is something that I think you have a pretty interesting opinion on.

Marcel D. says, in your opinion, at what point is it safe or reasonable to take a, quote, unquote, safe pick? Yeah. I just don't really approach the draft with the idea that there is. such thing as a safe pick. I don't know what a safe pick is. I think most people use it to mean like a player that you are more confident that they're going to play in the NHL than you are, that they have really high upside. That's, I think, how most people use it. Yeah, I get, I get what you're coming out with that. And I just, I never feel, I never really feel

confident someone's going to play in the NHL. It's, it's hard to feel confident about that sometimes. And I think there are, and I get kind of where you're going with that and that. there are players that have certain qualities. Usually it's the big mobile player that you kind of feel there's a spot from them in the NHL. Don't know where, but they can probably play in the NHL.

But I usually, like, in my evaluation process, I never really get to the point where I think, like, well, this guy's got like a nine, you know, just putting out a numbers because this is not how I do it. This guy's like a nine out of ten on upside, but he's like a two out of ten,

in probability or vice versa. I never really come to that part, to that kind of equation. I usually just end up saying, is this guy a good player or not? Is he a really good player? Is he a really good player? Is he kind of a good player?

I mean, that's usually how I end up making my list. It's just saying who I think is the best player for a variety of reasons based on their tools and their production and so on and so forth. I never really get into that calculus. And I know some teams who do do that, but me personally, I just never really think like that. I just think like, well, who's the top of the line-up guys?

Who's the middle of the line-up guys? Who's the end of the lineup guys? And that's my projections. I'm probably going to be wrong in a lot of those projections, but that's usually how I go through my process. And as you're going through that, you're already weighing kind of the likelihood that they bust along the way, right? As you're going through that process. It is kind of just baked in. Yeah, I mean, if you have fewer attributes, you're more likely to bust.

And if you have more attribute, you're more likely to succeed. I know that sounds like simplistic or maybe patronizing a little bit, but I just, I just, that's just how I tend to approach it. I don't think it's a, it's a feel with a really high error rate, but I also don't think it's that complicated that you want players who do a lot of good things and those tend to be the guys who have better chances of succeeding. Yeah. Yeah, all right. Moving on to the last one, this is from Ulysses. He wants to know, what's your view on the biggest factors that cause uncertainty in project. prospects. This is a really good question because it's something that I've actually been thinking about a lot,

not a lot, but somewhat recently, in that I think there are certain attributes that are harder to project into the National Hockey League than others. What does that mean? Here's an example. You know, you can go to an US NTP game this season. And you can imagine, you know, Luke Hughes being six foot two and an elite skater in the NHL. What's harder for me, I think, and for other scouts is to project some other attributes. And I think that's why you tend to find the big guys who are great skaters tend to go higher in the draft just because there's more confidence that those attributes are going to translate.

Translatable skills is something I hear often from NHL scouts. You know, we can always watch guys who are whose attributes, main attributes are skill and hockey sense and competitiveness. And someone like me can sound like they know more than they actually do and say, yeah, well, like Chas Lucius is an ex-exam. out of why in terms of skill or you know or Dylan Genther has an X out of why in his hockey sense and his shot ability but like we don't really know you know it's hard to say whether you know get there is a first line or a second line skill guy or so on and so forth you know you you try to do

your best to see how they look at various levels to give you indicators of how that projects to the NHL based on what you've seen before but you know guys make skilled plays in junior hockey all the time and don't end up being skill guys in the AHL, they remind the NHL. So that's kind of where it gets a little trickier and could lead to, I think, more errors when you see guys who look like skill players

or goal scores or high compete guys, but it doesn't translate to better levels. That can be tricky. Like, for example, you can go watch like a high school game, mass prep Minnesota high school and I'll be watching those games with some scouts and I'll be like oh that guy looks pretty skilled that was a nice play he made. It's like yeah he's not going to be a

skilled guy in the USHL never mind the American League or the NHL. I'm like I don't know he just made a skill of play right now he doesn't have enough it's not going to translate and most of the time they're right and that's where experience kind of gets you in that front of learning how much skill you need to have or how much skill at a certain level you need to have to or to work at the next level to go with your other attributes. And I think that makes projection really hard of knowing, okay, you're known for this in the Out Ontario League. Is it going to work in the AHL? You're known for this in the USAHL. Is it going to work in college and then eventually in the National Hockey League? Whereas some of those things can be really hard to do where something like

skating is if you're fast, you're fast. If you're fast here, you're going to be fast there. and to go with other aspects like injuries and how player development goes and the stuff I think you hear more about. But those other variables are the stuff that makes it really hard. I really struggle with trying to grade out skill and hockey sense and shot. And I think people probably see it in my writing that I tend to end up being more conservative than I think some would like. I tend to give really, really, really high skill grades that often or really, really high hockey sense grades that often. for the sole reason that I think I need

like overwhelming evidence to say that a guy has this truly elite hockey sense for example. I think we will get into a lot of that as this series continues. That is going to do it for us today for this first episode of the Prospect Series. Thank you for listening

to the athletic hockey show prospect series. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Leave a rating in a review if you're enjoying the show and that really helps us out. And remember, annual subscription to The Athletic are just $3.99 a month when you visit Theathletic.com slash hockey show. So if you like what you heard,

you want to read all of Corey's prospect content, or if you want to read my Red Wings content, I don't want to rule that out. That's where you can go, theathletic.com slash hockey show. Thank you, and we'll talk to you next week.