The Athletic Hockey Show - Way-too-early NHL predictions for the 2025-26 season

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Is it too early to pick next season’s Stanley Cup winner? The surprise playoff team? The Calder winner? Maybe, but that’s exactly what The Athletic Hockey staff did and today, Sean, Scott, and Jesse break it all down. Plus, the guys discuss Scott’s just-released top 100 drafted NHL prospects ranking, sneak peak his top 20 goalie prospects, and wonder: did Gavin McKenna really get $700,000 to play at Penn State?Host: Sean GentilleWith: Jesse Granger and Scott WheelerExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Chris Flannery Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. What up, what up? It's the Athletic Hockey Show for July 14th. It's a Monday. We are full on in grab bag season. You guys, listeners, you will never know who is hosting this show until you see the show description. Because we are three people who, as far as I know, have never been on mic together by ourselves. I think we've had some version of the three of us, but not these three.

Jesse Greenger is here. Scott Wheeler is here. I, Sean Jintilly, am here. I'm sorry about that. We are here to discuss a few bits and pieces. We're in prime off-season mode right now, aren't we fellas? I think that's reflected in some of the stuff that's going up on the site. I wish I was in off-season mode.

That doesn't seem to exist. I'm always jealous when Pierre just disappears into the night on July 1st, and we don't hear from him for two months. Into the depths of cottage country, he goes, Never to be heard from, never to be contacted until sometime in late September. I need people to keep checking the athletic app every morning because I've got World Junior Summer Showcase and Hulinka Gretzky Cup. And then we'll be into rookie tournaments at the end of August and into early September. And yeah, it just never ends.

I'm off to Minnesota in a few days here for five days in St. Paul, Minneapolis to watch Gavin McKenna and company at the summer showcase. So it's, there's no, there's no three, four, five week vacation period for Scott Wheeler, unfortunately. At least you got stuff to do. Jess, me and you just got to like make chicken, make chicken salad out of chicken scratch for a little bit. We're not going anywhere. We don't get to go watch Gavin McKenna. We have to pretend that all this stuff's interesting. No.

Yeah. The team I cover out here, they make July 1st, very interesting. The prospect stuff, not so much. They don't really believe in players under the age of like 25. So yeah, it's a little slow for me. We're going to get into prospects. We'll get into the, we'll get into Vegas's prospects. We'll get into a whole lot of other prospects because his wheels your, your top 100

drafted list dropped this, this morning. That's always, that's always a good day. It's always a fun day for me specifically because I just, is your, your opinion, Corey's opinion. I just make those my own because I'm, I don't, I don't have, I don't have the brain power necessarily to pay attention to prospect. So it's fun to learn. That's what we're here for.

That's what we're here for. Just outsource it. That's going to be our second segment. But right now, we're going to talk about our way too early. That's right there in the headline, way too early staff predictions for the 25, 26 season. It was a vote. We took a poll, did all that kind of stuff. Well, let's start with who we have is like, is the, is the,

is the Stanley Cup favorites. I mean, the obvious ones are there. Florida and Vegas, I think, are tied at the top of it. I think they're, they're co-favorites.

I'm interested in the mix of, of teams behind them because you have, you know, the king's got a lot of votes, the wild got a lot of votes, the devil's got too many votes. I,

I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, always, I was, I was,

there's all, there's always the Canes camp. But I think that was what struck me about about filling out this poll at some point, is how many, is how many middle, is how outside of the obvious, there's a second tier of teams that all kind of seem like they're glom together. I was a little bit surprised by how little of the teams with the top, top dogs got. Like, it seems like we've all just collectively decided that until, Colorado or Edmonton can prove that they have legit goaltending that we are just not going to

wrap our heads around them doing it despite the fact that they have the true demons of the league. And Nathan McKinnon and Kail McCar and Leon Dreisle and Connor McDavid remain liable to drag a team. We're going to have in Colorado a full year of McKenzie Blackwood and Brock Nelson now and Gabriel Landisg will be back healthy. And it just seems like because they haven't done it since, obviously, since Colorado last did it, that we've kind of written off the aves and the Oilers relative to the shiny Vegas Golden Knights and the Dallas Stars being a perennial sort of favorite of our staff. Obviously, the Winnipeg Jets still lingering. But it feels to me like Edmonton and Colorado are still among the three or four favorites heading into next season.

And certainly in the Western Conference should be among the three or three. four favorites. But maybe we all just collectively don't trust that they'll get a goalie or that Stuart Skinner can be that goalie. So that was the takeaway for me. I thought the abs were, despite the fact that they didn't go on a deep playoff run, I thought in the second half of last season, once they got Blackwood, Nelson, there were some guys who weren't fits there, who they've now moved out.

There have been a lot of changes to that team over the last couple of years. But I could absolutely see a scenario where the avalanche go nuclear and are one of the top teams in the league next year and McKinnon goes super sane in the playoffs and they're in the cup final. And I don't think, I think it was 4.3% of our voters had them as their cup pick. So that is that now. Yeah. I'm surprised you even like lumped. I guess I guess because of the star players. But to me, Colorado's goalie situation is nothing like Edmontons because Edmontons, I am deeply, deeply, deeply troubled. Like it's there. Then why don't we like Colorado? It is a massive I do like Colorado. I just picked Dallas. I only pick one. I can only pick one. So Dallas was my cup pick. I like their goalie a little better than I like Colorado's goalie, but only a little bit. I think McKenzie Blackwood at the end of this season, I was huge McKenzie Blackwood fan when he was in San Jose. I was screaming. You were driving the bus with him pretty early on there. I was saying a contender needs to trade for him. And then they did and he was awesome. I think by the end of this season, McKenzie Blackwood's name is going to be in the, is going to be. He's going to, he's going to, he's going to,

be in a different tier of goalie than we currently see him in right now. I think he's going to, I don't know if he's going to be up there with Halebuck and Shisterkin, but I think he is going to be one of the better goalies in the league this year. I think he's going to be in the Ves in a conversation because he's going to win a ton of games. And I think Colorado can absolutely go to. I just picked Dallas. Like I think Colorado and Dallas are probably the two best teams in the West, in my opinion. I think they're better than Edmonton.

I think they're better than Vegas. But it's close between those two. And I just decided to go with Dallas. I just think they're a little more well-rounded. I'm still a little iffy on Colorado's depth. It's better. And Nelson helps. But, I mean, they had Charlie Coil and it was even better in the playoffs.

And they lost to Dallas. That was a tough series, obviously, back and forth with a bunch of momentum swings in those games. But, yeah, I mean, I think that those are the two, to me, those are the two best teams in the West in my eyes. I think Colorado's bottom six is a bit of an issue. That would be my hiccup there. I still would have liked to have seen them. I mean, they move out Coil who wasn't. wasn't much of a fit.

In some regards, he's a decent player, but, you know, they needed to address the bottom six more than they have. You have Jack Jury is going to be their three-see at the start of the regular season. He's a nice player, but I don't know if I like him as the third center on a cup contender. That's all. That's really, truly, ultimately what would push me into the Dallas camp. I think, I think they just need, they just need another, another, you know, middle six. guy, let's say. Vegas is super interesting to me, and they were the number

two pick. Actually, they were tied with Florida. They both got 34.8% of the vote. And I understand. Their biggest need was scoring on the wing. They add Mitch Marner, the best scoring winger that they possibly could have added. I get the excitement about it, but I feel like the loss of Alex Petrangelo is

not, I feel like people around the country are not realizing how big that loss is. It is massive. He's not just the best defenseman on the team. He's the best defenseman on the team by miles. Like, Shea Theodore and Noah Hanifin are both good. To me, they're not even in the same universe as Alex Petrangelo in terms of neither of

them has ever been the number one defenseman and handled that workload in those minutes. They've always been offensive guys that play very advantageous minutes. They're good on the power play. They're good with the puck on their stick. They're not as good in their own end. And they're not used to having to play 25 minutes and shut down the opposing team's top defensemen. I think Vegas.

And then they also lose Nick Haig because he was an RFA. They couldn't pay. They had to trade him to Nashville. That was their top pair for the last few years. Hagan Petrangelo. Every once in a while, Hanofin would play up there with Petrangelo, but Hanofin would always be the sidekick. He would always be the second guy who can jump into the offensive zone

and not have to worry about things. Now all of a sudden either Hanifin's going to have to be the guy playing with Zach White Cloud, who's never played top per minutes, or it's going to have to be Shea Theodore with Braden McNabb, who's also never done it, and he's 35. I feel like Vegas could still be very good this year, but they're going to have to outscore teams. And this team for eight years has always leaned on defense,

always. They've always been a defense first team. Now all of a sudden, now they've got the firepower to do it with Mitch Marner and Jack Eichle and William Carlson and Tomash Hurtle and Mark Stone. They've got plenty of guys that can score, but they are going to have to play differently than they, they're going to have to win in a different way than they have in eight years.

And that unknown makes me very skeptical about this team as a true cup. contender. Because of how tight they still are, too. Now, they've pulled some rabbits out of their hat at the deadline as well, but I would guess that they're going to have a tougher time. Dallas is going to have a tough time adding at the deadline, too. But I would guess that Vegas is going to have a tougher time making something happen in terms of meaningful change at the deadline to upgrade into the playoffs relative to some of the other top teams in the league that have a little more wiggle room with the cap going up. Vegas is, they're in it tight. And having Petrangelo on LTIR only makes that worse because now you don't get all those other advantages of like being able to

use the pro rated cap hits and collecting cap spaces like when now that Petrangelo's on LTIR, all that goes away. So yeah, you're right. I think so much this too is just people didn't want to vote for the Panthers again. I'm one of them. I'm one of them. I was like I was like this is going to be boring as hell. Like I don't want to do it. So I've said I picked Dallas or whatever it was. Like I it is fully that's the that's the amount of that's the amount of that's the amount of thought that I'm putting into this stuff because it is like Florida is the 10,000 pound gorilla still after after all this right? Let's talk about the surprise playoff team, uh, vote. The, the rule, the regulations on this where we had to select a projected lower tier team,

plus 6,000 or worse odds at bet MGM that we saw making the playoffs. Bluejackets ran away with it. that's not entirely unexpected. I think they, you know, everybody, everybody likes the season that they had. I think everybody respected the run that they put together there. 26.1% of the vote, which surprised me. It didn't surprise me that they were the winner. It may be surprised me the margin that they held over everybody else.

We had Boston and Detroit, each at 17.4% behind Columbus. And then everybody else is kind of mixed in, mixing in single digits. I want to know if both you guys voted for Columbus, and if so, why? I voted for Boston. Love it. For the same reason, I felt the oilers and the avalanche didn't get enough love. Like, ultimately, if Charlie McAvoy gets back healthy,

and David Pashtonac is David Pashterac and Jeremy Swayman bounces back, I just think they have at the top end of their roster among the Sheper teams in the league, and I do believe they are one still. but among the weaker teams in this group, they've got the top dogs that the rest of them don't with all due respect to Adam Fantilli or Lucas Raymond or Moritz Sider or Rasmus Dahlene or Matt Barzell.

You go down the list. The teams that are in that long shot to make the playoff range, I think Boston has the most in terms of that true, true firepower. And they've now suddenly got a lot of cap space to work with. So if they are even close, close. If they're nibbling at the edges, if they're ninth or tenth into the all-star break,

I could see a scenario where they try to turn this thing around the corner quickly. And if they're not in that situation, then there's probably a scenario where they enter even further into a into a bit of a reset here. I totally agree with Scott that Boston is probably the best team on this list. I went, for me, it's like, okay, well, who are they going to knock out of the playoffs from last year? Yeah, I think it's tough for all those teams. Like, that division is just an absolute monster. And like, I ended up going with a team that I think is probably the fourth best team on this list, only because I just think the Pacific Division is ripe for somebody. Like, the Pacific Division to me is the weakest in, in the league. And I went with Calgary,

mostly because I was just trying to be fun. I was trying to find some team that I don't think a lot, like Columbus, I figured everyone would pick. I went with Calgary because I like what they're doing. I love Dustin Wolf. And I think that the Pacific Division is going to, there's going to be some room there for a team to jump in, along with Vegas, Edmonton, and LA. I just think it's really, really shallow after that, whereas a division like the Atlantic, I think it's a lot harder to force your way back in. I think the metro could be pretty mid again, too. So that was my logic in picking, I think I picked Columbus and that.

I don't even remember now, but I think that's something you got to consider. Like, Pittsburgh's going to be terrible. Philadelphia is, you know, a year, a year away on and on down the way. like the islanders, we're going to talk about them prominently in when we talk about the top 100 drafted prospects list. But that's still at the NHL level, what are you going to get? I just, I think there's an opportunity for Columbus to stack up some points against, against the other, the other mediocre teams in that, in that group. And so that to me is kind of prevailing logic. How about the fact that we're still not talking about the Anaheim ducks?

Isn't that funny? Any kind of a step here, really. That was why I was like, I was like, yeah, go sign McElcranlon. Fine. Like, like, just like do do something. Try. Like, like you're poking at him with a stick. I do, I appreciate the attempt, even though I'm not sure it's going to bring about the results that they're, that they're open.

Yeah, it is funny, man. There's stalled rebuilds. The Cracken just seemed completely irrelevant too. And, and I don't know what they're doing. Like, it doesn't seem, they don't seem to have a direction. Like, some of these teams that aren't any good, Anaheim, Like San Jose is a good example. But it feels like they know what they're doing.

Like it feels like they've got a plan. We see the path. Seattle, I don't. Like, they've got vet. They've got old guys. They've got some young guys, but no one on defense. It's very strange. I don't understand what they're doing.

So little high-end talent. And it seems like they're not in much of a hurry to change that either. It's wild to me. Dark Horse Cup contender. I think this is kind of a cheat because the team had to be plus two, It had to be between plus 2,000 plus 6,000 on the cup odds. Winnipeg snuck in there at plus 2200. So they were, of course, the overwhelming favorite there at over 30%.

Could you guys pick anybody else there? Or was that, or did you kind of default to Winnipeg like so many of us did? I like Minnesota a lot. I like Washington still, too. I think Washington has a chance to continue to build here, even as OV gets a little older. that team has some good young players. I think some underrated young players in protests and McMichael and you go down the list. I think that Washington's team is the fact that they were tied, for example, with the mammoth,

surprised me. It doesn't seem, it doesn't seem right. It's funny that the top two seeds, Washington and Winnipeg, we disrespected them all last year. Yeah. And nobody believed in them. And then as soon as the season ends, we just like went right back to, and not just us, it's Vegas odds. And like, there are a lot of comments on their.

There are a lot of comments where they're like, I can't believe you'd have these two teams in that category. It's like, well, you can go bad on it. I mean, Vegas is put in that category. And you can make money off if you believe in them. So it's not just the writers. It is the money talks and nobody's willing to put their money on Winnipeg or Washington to win the cup. That's why the odds are the way that they are. The casinos are trying to, like the only reason for the casino to make the odds higher like that is to try to encourage, entice people to put.

to put bets on them. And that's the number they've landed on. So we still don't respect either of those teams. And I think picking either of them is good. I went with Minnesota just because I think I was so impressed with what that team did when they were healthy early in the year before everybody got hurt, Eric Sneck and Caprisoff. And then I saw what they did to Vegas in the first round.

Like that series went six, but there was an offside goal that got called back in game five. That series absolutely could have gone the other way. I thought Minnesota looked really impressive in that series. So I think if they can stay healthy, they're just a really solid team. They kind of remind me of Dallas a little bit. They're solid. They have good forwards.

They have good young defensemen who could take another step, I think. And then they have good goaltending with Gustafin. So, yeah, I think Minnesota could surprise some people this year. Not to default as the prospects guy, but I do wonder about the potential impact of Zeev there. I thought he was very pedestrian when he took the jump directly out of Denver and into the NHL last year. He just didn't look himself. He didn't look like he wanted to make plays. He was too deferential.

Yeah, I just kept, like I kept messaging Rousseau after games and saying this kid doesn't look like himself. Like he's passing up every look. He's not trying to beat guys off the line. He's not trying to make plays. He looks like he's playing a little scared out there. And I thought, frankly, he looked a little bit that way at men's worlds for Team USA. say he made a big play in the gold medal, big play in the gold medal game, obviously, on the winner.

But I thought he looked that way as well. And if he looks that way, I think it really truly does hurt their prospects this season because I think the one thing that team desperately needs and no disrespect to Brock Faber, but nobody had Brock Faber pegged as a PP1 QB for his career, right? He's kind of played that role because he's their best defenseman

and he's their number one defenseman. But I think ideally you have someone else running PP1 and that frees up favor to just eat minutes at five on five like he did for Team USA at the four nations. So that's, I think, I think there's actually a little bit of an X factor there. If Zeev Boyam becomes the talent that I think he's capable of becoming, I think he completely changes the ceiling for that team. And if he struggles this season and there's some growing pains, which is a very real possibility even for a player who's accomplished what he has in college, I think that they'll still be sort of missing that natural offensive type at the top of the umbrella and the power play. Let's get him some October games against the Blackhawks and see how that does him. Like, seriously, let's, let's, let's, I, you guys, you guys mentioned a tough situation.

He gets thrown in, you know, into the playoffs, basically. He's, he's, he's, he's getting his first NHL minutes. Let's let's get him some, let's get him some, some softer landings here at the start of things. See, see how it doesn't work out. Let's move on to some to some of the individual award categories because there is some interesting stuff here.

Of course, everyone likes Kiel McCar. That's fairly boring, but it's a fairly even split between him and Quinn Hughes, which I thought was, which I thought was fun. Vezina, let's go there.

Jesse, your boy, your friend and mine, Jake Ottinger, leading the pack. There are 39% about 39% of the vote. vote ahead of Hallibuck, ahead of Shasturkin, who were both tied at 26.1. How much of that do you guys think is hellabuck fatigue? Because I think I think a lot of it. I think a lot of it is. I think we all feel it. And I think voters are going to feel it next year, regardless of how good he is or isn't.

I think it's going to be tough. For me, it was definitely Hellibuck fatigue. And I thought I was being creative. Honestly, when I made the vote, I was like, okay, everybody's going to vote for Hellebuck. He's one of two years in a row. He's the obvious pick. I'm going to go outside the box and box and pick Jake Ottinger. And then I like see the results and it's like everyone picked Ottinger. I'm like, damn it, everyone had the same exact idea as me. Nobody's, nobody's smart, nobody's creative. We're all, we're all a hive mind acting accordingly. I wonder whether part of it is an age thing and people just wondering eventually, like he's the oldest goalie on that list. He's going to be 33 for most of this season. He's 32 now, but he's going to be 33 for most of this season.

And not a lot of goalies who win back to back to back Vezna's in their 30s. And we've seen a goalie like Bobroski recently, just the highs and lows, the one great year, the one poor year, the one poor year, the one poor year. And then obviously a heater the last couple of years behind the best team we've seen in the better part of a decade. But I think there's a natural wonder of how long can a goalie who plays 60 games a night hold up, Basically, age regression, all of that. Like, can he continue to be, even if he's been that the prior year, can he continue to be a 920 to 930 goal tender? Like, it's just, and will Winnipeg in front of him continue to be one of the top

defensive teams in the league? I think that's realistic given their blue line in the way they play, but that team's getting older. Mark Sheifley's not getting any younger. All those guys in Winnipeg are getting older. Scoring goals is going to be tough for them. I was given credit last year for for for managing their way through the through the regular season and getting it done. But I, you know, this might be old habits dying hard for for my perception of them.

But I just don't I don't I don't see where the where the offense is going to consistently come from still, especially with Ealer's gone. God bless. God bless Jonathan Tave. I'm glad he's glad he's back. I'm interested. I'm interested to see to see you know to to to ride the wave there. but I don't know if you won him as your two C in 2026. Jess, do you have a dark horse candidate from the Vesnalist? Someone who's not on there.

I mean, McKenzie Blackwood is, and I mentioned him earlier, like, I think the a a V's going to be, they're going to win a lot of games. I think he's going to be their workhorse. Like, I expect him to play close to 60 games this year. He's built for it. There are some, like, goalies who take that step into becoming, like, the top guy, like, kind of the way we've seen him do it. He's been a starter for bad teams, but never in this situation. And they're not, like, built for being, like, the 60 game guy. I think McKenzie Blackwood absolutely

is. Like, he is physically capable of handling that kind of workload. I expect the abs to ride him, and I expect him to win a bunch of games. So I think he's going to be in it. A guy that I, I don't know if he's going to be able to do it again because what he did last year was an absolute miracle. I had him as my third goalie on my All-Star ballot because we obviously don't get to vote on the Vezina. That's my, that's my, like, pretend. I'm voting on the Vesna. I thought he should have been a Vesna finalist this year. Lucas Dostall in Anaheim is an absolute stud.

He is square to the puck. If we could have like a little like a pie chart of like what percentage of the game is the only square to the puck in perfect position? I think Lucas Dostall leads the league in that stat if we somehow could come up with it. The dude is his skating is unreal. His instincts are so good. He reads the play better than most. I think the world of him and what he did behind that Anaheim team last year,

we've seen John Gibson, who's a good goalie, put up horrific stats behind that team. They weren't that much better last year. They were a little bit better, but not much better. And I don't think we've ever seen since they started keeping goals saved above expected like 18 years ago, we have never seen a goalie put up that good of stats behind that bad of a team. So I don't know if he can do it two years in a row. That's asking a lot. But I was very impressed with Lucas Dostall.

And if the ducks do take even a little bit of a step, I think he'll be in the conversation of best goal in the league. Anaheim was better last year in the sense that they weren't one of the worst offensive teams than anybody's ever seen. Like, yeah, they got better, but, you know, if they would have gotten worse, it would have been subterranean, right? So, so yeah, Dostal almost, almost 23 goals saved above expected, which I think is that, yeah, that's a necessary bit of context. when you look at the save percentage and it's, you know, right around league average. I mean, that dude, he's, he's good. Played a ton of games last year, too. I think that was, that was an important stuff for him, too.

It's really phase into being a true, a true number one. Played, played 54, 54 appearances last year. I wonder about Philip Gustafson for the same reason. He was always a very, very, very good goalie playing 40 games a year. Last year played 58 and was still a very good goalie in Minnesota. And if we, and by we, I mean the collective at the ethics. athletic. If we like the Minnesota wild, I think there's reason to like Philip Gustafson. Maybe not to win the Vesna, but I could see a scenario where he's on on some ballots at

three, four, five kind of thing if Minnesota has a good year and he plays 58 games again. Yeah. I could have used some of that stronger performance at the beginning of the season for my fantasy team. I'll say that much. Gossuson rounded into shape eventually by that point, the ship had sailed on Team Gentilly. Are there any other bits from our, but before we move move on to the top 100. Are there any other bits from our way too early staff predictions that you guys, do you guys want to touch on here? I'd like to get Scott's thoughts on the Calder real quick.

Like Demidov ran away with it. It's the easy pick. And like Sean was saying, we're not all prospect experts. Like I don't pretend to know all these guys. So that was the easy pick. But I'm just curious, like when you know a lot of these guys, you've watched a lot of them. Is there someone that stands out other than Demidov that you think should be getting some hype? The Calder is truly a points-driven award, I find.

I don't think the award voters spend as much time paying attention to the rookies in the league, unless there's a Bedard or Elaine Hudson who's doing nuclear things. I don't think they're watching Zach Bullduke or last year, that kind of a thing for their down-ballot consideration. So the one player... He was really good last year, by the way. He was really good. And Cudor Gote had a sneaky good year in Anaheim as well. So the one player I wonder about just in terms of who can...

put up numbers is Zane Porek with Calgary. He's going to be given every opportunity to stick there. He's in a sticky situation because the HL rule hasn't kicked in, and he has no business going back and putting up his third consecutive 100-point season in the OHL as a defenseman. Nothing to gain there. So he's going to start there. Sam Dickinson in San Jose as well, same situation.

Sam Dickinson and Zane Porek are playing the first nine games of the regular season. Like, there's no question about that. But Zane is a freak offensively, and we saw the impact he made on that power play, albeit in a very, very brief stint at the end of the year, at the end of the year, immediately made an impact on that power play. He's going to be running their first power play at the start of the year. I'll do respect to Rasmus Anderson, who may not even be there at that, at that point. But Zane's, like, I think Zane's going to be a 60, 70 point defenseman in the NHL at some point. That's not to say that that's going to happen immediately in the way that it happened for Lane Hudson. but I think he's a high, high, high, high, high end talent. And you need to be on PP1 to win the Calder these days, unless you're a goalie. You just have to be on PPP one. And Zane is one of the only player.

Ryan Leonard, who's on this list, not going to be running P.P.1. Jimmy Snuggarood, who's on this list, not going to be on PPP one. Alexander Nikishin, not going to be on P.P.1 is another one who we talked about. Could be on PPP one. But that's kind of my default for the Calder entering the season is you have to look at the power. play units of these teams because that's going to drive the conversation. Demadov, will Demadov be on PP1 with the crowd that they have, I think probably, I think it's probably Demadoff, Coffield, Slavkovsky, and Suzuki.

Those are probably your four forwards. But I think there's a scenario where Demadov ends up playing 30 or 40 games on the second power play kind of thing. Snogarrood's an interesting one because he was really good right away in St. Louis, but I don't know whether he's going to have the offense to get the counting totals. So Porek is of the top young guys who are entering the league next year, Perak's the one that I kept coming back to just because of the skill level. Now, he may end up going to the world juniors.

They've got different options for him this year. But if he goes back to the world juniors and then back to the OHL for the second half, he's going to be doing silly things at the OHL level at that point. So they'll have a tricky decision to make. And obviously he was a part of it with Canada's men's world's team as well. So he got a little bit of experience with Canada's men's world's team. So he'd probably be the guy, I'd keep an eye on.

And then ask, you never know about goalies. Ask Robb's going to be in a tough spot in San Jose, if only because that team is still going to be tough in front of him. It's amazing with San Jose. Like there's so much to like about what they've done. I think Mike grew is good at his job, like on and on and on.

But at the NHL level, man, that defensive group, It's hard. It's like what there's there's there's nothing, nothing good to say about that. Nazarly, it's to ask her off. Yeah, man, that's a tough. That's a tough sell. Let's just continue with the prospect talk.

We're going to roll that over in a segment two. We're talking Wheeler's top 100 drafted prospects. We're going to go deep on that whenever we're back from our break. Stick around and we'll see in a minute. All right. We know why a huge portion of the listeners are here. They want to hear Wheeler talk about his top 100 drafted prospects. It dropped, we're recording this on Monday.

It dropped earlier this morning. It's always a welcome thing for me because, as I said, I only know about prospects what Wheeler and Pranman tell me. So this is a very important day for me. Scott, let's just get started with, I would love to hear you talk about the process and what goes into you coming up with this list. Because I think that's an important bit to just kind of understand exactly what you're going for. Because God knows you're tired of answering the question. in comments and on Twitter and whatever else. So hopefully we can save you from that here.

Yeah, it is certainly the most common question. I joke with readers that the first accusation of recency bias was made before 9 a.m. this morning. So it was barely fresh and there was already an accusation of recency bias. So I think it's always important to stress off the top that this ranking, this summer ranking in particular, tends to skew towards the previous draft. swatting a little bit higher than you might expect versus guys who've maybe proven it for a little bit longer. And the reason for that is that Connor Bedard and Matt Vehmichkov and Adam

Fantilli and Owen Power and Luke Hughes and all of the young players who would technically factor into this U23 ranking if they weren't in the NHL are gone. And so the true premium talent from the previous draft class tends to graduate. And as a result, the 2025 class that hasn't had the opportunity to do that tends to skew towards the higher end of the list because their top guys are still here and the top guys from the previous lists aren't there. So that's the sort of first disclaimer that I always make about this list. And then the second disclaimer is that I don't like all 32 teams and I have a bias against all 32 teams and we get that out of the way early so that I can't be accused of having bias against any one particular team. So no, that that's

sort of the two things, those are the two most common things is sort of, why don't you like my guy? And I already had a comment on Twitter this morning from Demi, Demidov, asking why Ivan Demadov was ranked third on the list after he was, I should say, first on the winter list when I last did this. But no, it's a process. It's sort of you come out of the draft and this is the next thing on my list. People will notice that I haven't written anything at the athletic in two weeks. and that's because I've been working on this every day. And so it's sort of going back over my 2025 list.

It's going over about 150 guys. I'm not doing repeat viewings on any of these guys at this point. I've seen them all play enough. There were actually two players. The protest kid with Washington, I watched a little bit more of him, not the one who's in the NHL, the one who crushed it in Windsor last year.

Ilia, right? His brother is a 6-5 mutant. just like he is. Protas, possibly the largest man I've ever seen play hockey in my life. I would, when I was,

when I was doing the cap. There's a little bit of Eric Lindrosse there. The caps, he's got the Eric Lindra's head. That's it. You're like, this guy's got the, he's got a head like a cinder block.

Like I walk past him in the, in the locker room. I was like, this is, this is, he's a, this is, Nikola Yokic or something, right? Like, this dude,

this dude should be playing power forward. He's enormous. But yeah, The big thing is that this is also sanity checked. So it's my list and these are my decisions at the end of the day and it's my one through 100 and there are always 20 or 25 kids that get excluded that I also wish could have been on the list and that are very comparable players to the kids who are in the 90s. There's always a lot of what about this kid at 97 versus this kid that you didn't include,

right? And I often say, yeah, that kid could absolutely be at 97. So there's a little bit of that. But it's also sanity check. So I send this list in the final. days before I hand it off to Izzy, who's our sort of overlord on the prospects beat now with Corey and I are Wrangler, in the final days before I sort of hand the Google sheet off to him that feeds into the user interface that we have at the athletic, I send it to sort of the six

or seven scouts that I'm closest with and say, is there anything here that looks completely out of pocket to you? And sometimes they'll send something back and I won't even make a change, but other times I'll sort of read. That's when I go back and sort of watch some more recent tape on some of the kids and use that as an excuse to sort of check myself a little bit. But it's, you can rest assured that I have nothing against your team. And if I do, I have something against every other team. And I put a lot of thought into this.

And it's a year. This list is a year in the making. I am not throwing this together just to bother you on Twitter, I promise. Do you hear that? Wheeler hates all of your prospects equally. An equal opportunity hater. That's that's that's the way it goes. I'm blown away by how long,

how long some of these writeups are, dude, like consistently. The fact that you have so much to say about, about all these guys, A, it's impressive, and I'm impressed by your work.

And it also makes like, I get secondhand anxiety on, on Izzy's behalf because he has to go, he has to go through, you know, 17,000 words of prospect analysis or whatever it is. I mean, it's such an undertaking.

And it's always, it's always such a, it's always such a great read. So, yeah, Yeah, people often look directly at the number, but the gray area should be in the actual writing, right? And there is a lot of gray area with these things. And you can lose sight of that when they're ranked one, two, three, and you wonder why kid at three and kid at number five are two slots apart.

Well, the reality is that there's a lot of gray area between a kid who's that close to another kid, which is why we try to use tiers and put them into buckets and sort of soften the blow for fans. if you will. Add some nuance that goes beyond just the actual number. Yeah. Yeah. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter to the vast majority of people because they see the number and they see, which is all right.

As long as someone's learning something and someone's taking away something and we're filling in a bit of a knowledge gap, then we're doing our job. It's a very healthy way to look at it. Congratulations. Congratulations on Landon. I haven't always looked at it. Yeah.

Oh, I know. It's been 10 years in the makers. is. I want to get into the list. Yeah, let's go. The first team I want to talk about, we were just talking about him. So let's just kind of transition into this. It was San Jose Sharks, and we were talking about Ascarov. He's obviously a superstar in the making, at least projects as one.

They've got Will Smith. They've got Celebrini. I was just talking with Rob Rossi, comparing them to the penguins when they drafted all those high draft picks. And that's a very lofty expectation. But then you also go to this list. They've got Michael Mesa at number two. They've got Sam Dickinson at number six.

They already have all these young kids that are showing they can do it at the NHL level. My question to you is, what's the likelihood all these players end up being high-end players? And in your mind, what's the timeline for the San Jose Sharks to be a good team? Because it certainly seems like they've got the building blocks to be like an absolute powerhouse if all these guys hit. And that's not a stretch for them to hit. Yeah. And the most interesting part of it is in the goalies, even with a goalie of Ascarov's talent, always come with some risk that they are not going to be what you need them to be in a big moment. I think that's true even.

I mean, we've seen that be true even of Connor Hellebuck. Sam Dickinson not worried about or at least less worried about than I was at the time of the draft. I had him very, very high in the draft several spots ahead where he was picked. But there was always this concern with Sam. The big thing with Sam was sort of the decision making on the pucks. he coughed up last year a year ago a lot of pucks in his own zone, even at the OHL level and into the Memorial Cup. And sort of people wondered whether he was making his decisions quickly enough.

The sort of hockey IQ IQ piece was there, whether he was just this highly skilled sort of six-foot three defensemen who can fly. And oftentimes that carried Noah Hanofin for a long time, right? So that can carry you to become a very good player. But they need Sam Dickinson. And Hanofin was kind of the comp that a lot of people used for him. But they need Sam Dickinson to be better than Noah Hanofin if they're going to win a Stanley Cup with him as their number one.

Noah Hanifan has never been a number one on a Stanley Cup winning team, right? So that's part of it. But I'm still less concerned about that. The most fascinating piece of the puzzle for me, for the sharks, and I think it's one of the stories to watch in the NHL over the next few years, is what it looks like with Misa Smith and Celebrini. And who plays with who? Who ends up at center?

We know that Celebrini is the one C. all three of those guys are natural Cs. We know that Celebrini and Smith already have chemistry and that they've already spent a lot of time playing Will Smith away from his natural center position by playing him on the wing with Celebrini. Misa has played his best hockey in his career at center and is a natural center.

And after moving from the wing in his first two years of junior in the OHL with Sagina predominantly two center this year obviously exploded 60 goals, 134 points, all of that. But Misa has also played a lot of wing Every time he's played for hockey Canada, he's played wing at the CHL NHL or CHL NTP series in November, which they tried for the first time. He played the wing for the team CHL there. I expect that he'll probably play the wing at the World Juniors this year. So they need to figure out what that mix looks like because we've seen the two-headed monster work.

We've seen dry-sidling, and not that this is dry-sidle and McDavid or Rantaninan and McKinnon, but we've seen that work. when there's three guys that all believe they're that level of talent, and I think all three of those guys are capable of becoming 70 to 90 point players in the league. Like I think they're legit three of the 10 most talented young players in the world right now. You're not all going to get there. You cannot have, I mean, the Leafs have obviously had it to a certain degree with Marner and Nylander and Matthews, but it's pretty hard to sustain three guys, especially when one of them has to play on a different line from the other two. to sustain their egos and their confidence and the point totals that they think they should be getting and the power play touches that they think they should be getting.

So that, for me, them all coming up at the same time, whether you can build a winning team around three young players, whether at some point in the next five years, six years, one of those guys gets disillusioned and frustrated and that kind of a thing, who plays with who, who plays at center, who plays on the wing. that to me is going to decide whether this Sharks team can do it into the future. They've got good other prospects coming, Quentin Musti, Igor Chernyshav, who played with Misa in Saginaw last year. They were the best line in the O'HL last year. They're now both together in San Jose. We're going to see Luca Kagnoni break into the league this year, who's been a couple of years ago, was one of the best players in the WHL, and last year was one of the best young D in the HL. but he's a 5-10, 5-11 defenseman, which the game seems to be trending away from a little bit.

So there are other things around the edges that will make a difference. They need Colin Graff to be good and some of their other young players to be good. We haven't even talked about Eklund. They need Eklund to continue to take steps there. But it's going to make or break on whether all three of Mesa, Zalabrini, and Smith can become the Nielander, Marner, Matthews. And then eventually, once all those guys get paid, you're going to have that conversation all over again, right? So that to me is what, what's interesting.

Because Celebrini is going to be the alpha there, I think. But where do Misa and Smith end up in the long run? And how impactful are they in whatever roles they're sort of given, if you will? And they don't have to add. If Misa was drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks, for example, he just immediately becomes the guy with Bedard, right? And that's not necessarily going to be the case with Sellebrini for him. It's interesting.

We have to talk about the Islanders because they have the number one player in your top 100. It's, of course, it's of course Matthew Schaefer. But they're interesting beyond just him. And that's something that I think that I was taken with as I went through it. They've got six prospects overall, right? Is it six or five? Five in the top 34 and six overall, yeah. Which is a pretty serious swing from where we.

We saw them in past iterations of this. They added a lot of not just names on the list, not just, you know, prospects who have a chance. These are, these are guys who figure pretty prominently into it. And they did it in a relatively short amount of time. Yeah, it's been very interesting to watch Matthew Darsh operate over the last several months. You could sort of see him work the room in Buffalo at the combine this year and all of the people that he was talking to. and then he'd go out in front of the media and say, we're not going to rebuild here.

We're going to turn this around. And yet I think his actions have signaled pretty loudly that he is committed to at least sitting in it a little bit. And I know they tried to move those picks at 16 and 17 where they ultimately took H.S.N. and Eklund. But the fact that they didn't and the fact that they're now committed to building around this young core that they have turned around in a very short amount of time. Like you are underselling how quickly this has happened for them. They were for the last

five, six, seven years, a basement dwelling team in my pool rankings. One of the teams whose fan base was just convinced that I didn't like their guys and that their guys were better than I thought they were. And yet it's it's been tough for them. They had to move on from William Dufour, who was one of the only prospects of relevancy that they had. And Dufour couldn't cut it. And Holmstrom was their top guy. And Holmstrom's a third line penalty killer in the NHL now. And they just didn't have much coming. Obviously, Dobson before that was kind of the exception to that. Now suddenly you've got the three kids from this year who were three, despite the fact they were drafted at 16 and 17, were three of my top 12 prospects. You've got Callum Ritchie, who you acquired in the Brock Nelson

transaction. And Callum is an excellent player, has been one of the best players in the OHL, the last two seasons, is now going to turn pro and quite likely start in the NHL and be given every opportunity to be an everyday player for them this year. You've got Cole Eiserman, who's a very enigmatic polarizing prospect, but puts the puck in the net and can shoot the puck better than virtually any prospect on the planet. They acquired Will Zellers. There's been some effort there to, not to rebuild necessarily, but to reset. And then winning the lottery and getting Schaefer just changes, changes everything in terms of not just what he brings, but maybe in terms of your psyche and the way that you're thinking about your team and the timeline for

your team and how you want to build your team and all of that. So really, really interesting team after they had become for me, and I know Islanders fans were tired of us talking about them this way at the athletic over the years, but they had just become such a middle of the pack, middle of the road, boring hockey team. And now suddenly you've got this injection of young players and the dynamic has changed. And not only that, and I just, I try not to put too much emphasis on this, but Ecclind just has this light about him, and Acheson just has this light about him. And we all saw Schaefer basically wrap the media around his finger in draft season as well, right?

Like they've got some personality all of a sudden. And Barzell has that too, and he's always had that sort of fashion angle. And he's a pretty unique character in his own way. But they now have these real personalities. And I think they're going to get some more national media attention, and they're going to end up on TV more in the state. and they're just more relevant now because of these kids. And it's going to be fun to watch them come up together because like Acheson is just a jackass to use it to be honest, right?

Like he's just a prick and so is Eklund. And they're going to be knocking guys around and getting under guys skins. And it's just going to be a fun team to watch once these guys break into the league, which regardless of their talent. and they're all very talented. I think that will make them more relevant and on top of being in the New York TV market and all of that. So I'm interested to see what they can,

what Darsh in particular can do with it now because he's got a couple of different paths he can go down. He can sort of go into a hardcore rebuild or he can try to work around the edges and work these guys in. And I'm not sure what the path is, what the right choice is with Sorokin and Barzell

and those guys. He's got some decisions to make here. We need to ask about Gavin McKenna. I've, you know, just because of the space he occupies overall and also over the last week. And in some regards, it's unfair because he's a year younger than the youngest players on, on these lists, right? But if you had to place him in this group today, where does he end up? Where do you think I would place him, Sean? It being the prospect expert that you are.

It would be number one? Yes. Yeah! Yeah! Apologies. See, you do hate the Islanders. You do disrespect that organization. See, you're slotting him immediately ahead of Matthew Schae for the kids not even been drafted yet. What the hell? Yeah. Yeah. No, McKenna is outside of the position that's going to be sit next to his name for the next 20 years, which is going to be left wing, obviously. Outside of that,

it's all there. I think ideal world, the true, true sort of transformational first overall picks, that get uniform sort of generational talk about them when you ask outs. They almost always have to be centers. It's very hard for a defenseman to be that. There are teams that don't even believe that you should take, not to get Islanders fans further sort of on me here. But there are teams that believe you shouldn't even take defensemen first overall. We almost got you out of this.

We almost got you out of Isles fans jail. It's just really, really hard for natural wingers and defensemen to get that kind of status, the Bedard sort of status. But I don't think he's far off of the Bedard-Celebrini realm. And I think there's a real chance that he's one of the, even as a teenager, that he's one of the leading scorers in college hockey this year,

that he's in the Hobie Baker conversation in college hockey this year, that he has the kind of season that Celebrini and Fantilli had as freshman, which was sort of shifted the conversation. It used to be, okay, you play 40 games in college as a freshman. if you're a 17, 18-year-old freshman and you have 40 points or 45 points in 40 games, that changed with Celebrini and Fantilli, right? They took 45 points and made it 60 points as freshmen. And then it's been tough since for guys to sort of match and reach that level.

We saw James Hagen's last year was knocked for having a point per game freshman year, right? I don't think we're going to be talking about a year from now Gavin McKenna having a James Hagen season, which was 37 and 37, I believe. I think we're going to see Gavin McKenna find the highlight real and be on ESPN and change the conversation about college hockey a little bit. And he wouldn't just be number one here. He would be in a tier of his own. I should say, though, the one place where he isn't in as much of a tier of his own

as people maybe think has been in the reported number, that 700K number that just became the number after a college hockey. website sort of reported, quote unquote, reported that it was 700 U.S. and that that was the number that he was looking at. In talking with people around college hockey and rival agents who have players of the first or second overall caliber who are now having these conversations, I don't think that's the number. Everybody I've spoken to over the last couple of weeks, now this isn't me reporting that it's not the number, but everybody I've spoken to over the last couple of weeks doubts that number and would be shocked if it's more than 300 or 400. And that's

300 or 400 with bonuses. And that the base number in terms of what's guaranteed in terms of NIL money and contributions for sponsorships and that kind of a thing is probably in the twos, the high twos. There are lots of kids getting 100K offers and that kind of a thing. But the 700 number, there are people who I truly, truly trust, who are in the trenches of this with top clients right now. And that's not Gavin McKenna's people. They would, I'm sure they're quite happy that the 700 number is. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's like $2 million, $10 million, $1,000. But yeah, I don't, I don't think we're quite at that kind of stratosphere for the number, even for a player like McKenna, who is frankly the biggest recruit in college hockey history and a player who announced his, just the fact that he announced it on SportsCenter, I think speaks to him being. in a bit of a different category than Celebrini or Jack Eichel were at the same time, right? It does make sense, though, considering the finances of college hockey.

Like, it's not bringing in the money that college football and even college basketball bring in. Now, in saying that, Penn State is throwing around bigger money than anybody else in college hockey. And the Pagula connection there is real. And, I mean, the arena is named after the guy, right? Like, it's, it's, the money that Penn State has at their disposal, just Michigan State, in this case, it was Michigan State, Denver and Michigan were all considered by McKenna with Michigan State, obviously, becoming the runner-up.

They just could not, could not get there with the money that they've been told by the school is at their disposal from a pot sort of standpoint. And they've also, with MSU, they'd also dedicated some of that pot to Caden Lindstrom and Eric Nelson and Riker Lee and the rest of their recruiting class, right? Everybody's operating from a pot. They've given a ton of it at Penn State to McKenna. and it's the biggest number ever given to a college hockey player, no doubt. But I just don't think we're, I don't think we're in the stratosphere that people maybe think right now with the total NIL money that these kids are going to start to get.

Once you end up getting towards a million, you know, because that's worth of $700,000, you're getting close towards a million, which is Starfoot. It is a million Canadian. Yeah, right? Like almost dead on at this point. That's, that's football star money. And that's when you got to like tap the brakes a little bit.

And that one didn't quite pass the smell test for me. So I'm glad you, I'm glad you brought some clarity to it. As I typically do, I want to talk about goalies for a second. And I know they're not a part of your top 100, but I was lucky enough to get a link to see your goalie's piece. It drops tomorrow. Where did you get that? I know a guy. So Scott, Scott sent me the link.

And I wanted to, the first thing that, I want to ask you a trend question. I don't want to ask you specifically about any of. of these goalies. But to me, trends in this league start with the scouts. Like, that's where this, like, when you look back at a trend, whether it's smaller players or whether it's big defensemen or it's big goals, to me, it all starts with the scouts. And now, we just went over all the Vesna Favits and Halebuck and McKenzie Blackwood and Jake Ottinger are all monsters. They're giant goleys. But Dustin Wolf last year, proving that a small, fast goalie can still get it done at this in the in the highest level and then i look at your list and like tray augustine i absolutely

love what i've seen from him he's six foot one the guy who just went 20th overall uh pewter andreanov yeah onrionov yeah six foot evan vivi right below him he's six foot ivankovich nebakov carter george where there are a lot of six there's a lot of five 11 six foot guys a lot of small goalies and i'm wondering and i and i've like theorized this just looking at like in like jet Greaves in Columbus. He's not a highly, but I love the kid. I love what he's doing. Columbus in particular, Andriana of Jet Greaves. They're next two top goalie. They have four legit goalie prospects there. Two kids who just missed the top 20 here. Evan Gardner and Sergey Ivanov, who was excellent in the KHL last year. And Gardner, obviously, in Saskatoon and the

WHL, all four of the goalies that they've drafted recently in Columbus are 5-11, six foot. So my question to you is talking to scouts, the way the least, league is going. It's faster. It's more skilled. I'm curious, is there any, like, shift to maybe trusting these smaller, faster goalies a little more than the big guys? Or is it still just going to be the, you've got to be the exception. You've got to be the UC Saros. There's one out of a million of these small golies are going to be good enough to do it. And the scouts still trust the big dudes more. I think the fact that four of those guys that we just talked about are congregated in one organization and two of them in Saros and the team that just drafted Ivan Kovic in Nashville

are in another organization, I think speaks to the fact that it isn't there for everybody. I still talk to scouts and by and large, they're prioritizing the six four, six five goalies. There are still teams that don't want to take. Despite Dustin Wolf's success last year, there are still teams that think he's the exception to the rule and that it's too hard against the way that guys shoot it in the NHL now and that there's too much room in the net and guys are going to pick corners on them and all of that. I've often argued almost exactly the opposite that the ability to stick with pucks and, and you, I mean, you know this better than me as an actual goalie, but the ability to stick with pucks to fight for second and third,

you've got to be quick on your feet. You need the agility. You need to be able to move in the NHL. Now, there are also guys who move too much and start to swim and there's a certain control to it as well. But I find the big goalies really struggle with closing their fight, like Sebastian Kosef, For years, closing his five hole has been an issue. And once he's down, he doesn't move like some of these other guys. And I don't think it's coincidence that COSA has struggled at the HL level to, I mean,

he's been a good goalie at the HL level and a starter at the HL level, but hasn't been a dominant goalie at the HL level, at least in line with being a first-round pick, right? And so same way I feel about it at the NHL level. Everybody's prioritizing size at the NHL level right now. And I mean, we talked about protests off the top, but there aren't very many. six five, six forwards in the NHL. Certainly there are plenty of defensemen

that look like that, but there aren't many forwards. And yet these forwards keep getting drafted super, super high. And I think what made the protest picks so successful is that they weren't top ten picks. You weren't taking that swing in the top ten. You were taking it in the third round, right? So now, those guys go

first round in a redraft all day, but I do think there are limitations to being big just as there are limitations to being small. And there are guys at both ends of the spectrum when they're special who can do it. But there are also the Michael Rasmussen's in Detroit who've struggled to carve out a niche. Elmer Soderblum in Detroit who had all the skill in the world that struggled.

Logan Brown was at, I believe, 11th or 12th overall pick by the Ottawa Senators, who has now forgotten about as a prospect. So it goes both directions. And I think more often teams actually make mistakes on the big guys. You almost never hear about a 510 forward or a 511 goalie who's drafted too high, right? You do often hear about the 6-5 goalie who's drafted too high or the 6-5 forward who's drafted too high. So I think there's teams that can work in the margins and find value there.

In saying that, the NHL playoffs, there is truth to the NHL playoffs looking a certain way. But you're not drafting, you don't have to draft 12, 5, 10 forwards. you don't have to draft. You just have to find the really good ones. You've got to find the Logan Stankovans. You've got to find the Lane Hudson's. I don't think you can be ruling those out because you've convinced yourself

that all six forwards or all six defensemen and all 12 forwards have to look exactly the same or play exactly the same style. I mean, Phil Kessel won Stanley Cups. There's guys of all sorts of shapes and sizes and attitudes that find success in the NHL. And I think scouting departments are often told by their general managers,

this is the kind of player that we need to. to be finding and they go out and they scout specifically for that player. And I do think that gets teams in trouble and the teams that do it well aren't too concerned about that. They can still build a roster with plenty of identity that has one or two guys who maybe look a little different. And if those guys are value in the draft, like Stancoven was for Dallas before they traded him like Jason Robertson was when he was a six three forward who didn't play the power

forward game and didn't have speed. And everybody rode off in junior because he was a soft. soft six foot three forward. Now he's had 100 points in an NHL season. And there's still probably questions to be had about whether you can win with a player like Jason Robertson as if your go-to guy. But he's not bad value in the second round, right? So that's how I've sort of thought about the goalie question is similarly to that,

which is Carter George and Jack Ivan Kovic and Dustin Wolf are just excellent goalies. And I think increasingly the teams that recognize are going to win. in out in their goalie drafting. It seems like at the very least, the teams are a little more open to a small goal being good enough. Whereas like a few, it seems like maybe I don't know, seven,

eight years ago, it was like, no, we're not even open to the past. I mean, Dustin Wolf was the second last pick in the draft. Like Dustin Wolf and his family were celebrating in the 500s instead of in round two, right?

Like it's easy to say. That's recent history that Dustin Wolf was there. Devin Levi is the same thing, right? Not a long time ago for either of those guys. Now, we saw, maybe to your point, though, we just saw Andreanov and Ivan Kovic go among the first three or four goalies drafted this year. So maybe it's a sign. Maybe it's just two smaller goleys that people liked more than they've liked smaller

golies in previous classes. That'll be tested over time. But no, I think there could, maybe this is the start of it. We'll see. But certainly with Andreano. of and Ivan Kovic. They're both just excellent and Trey Augustine to your point off the top

and Trey's love what I've seen from that. So yeah. Let's end on this. Give us one player who's capable of making a significant, meaningful leap up this list by the next time you do it. Is there a guy who you're like

there's enough meat on the bone here where you can imagine him leveling up over the course of the next season? The one guy who's kind of, and he's been a bit of a pet favorite of mine. But the one guy that people just keep writing off and have continued to do so after he was just okay in his brief introduction to the NHL last year is Gabe Perot for me. I think Gabe is a dynamic, dynamic offensive talent. I think he thinks the game at among the highest levels of any of the players outside the NHL right now. I think he,

because he played with Will Smith and Ryan Leonard for so long, the assumption was just made that Will Smith as the skilled center was the playmaker on that line, and that Ryan Leonard as the dogged, dog on a bone, bulldog winger, was the driver on that line. And if you've actually watched that line play over its two years at the NTDP, and then it's year together at college before Will Smith made the jump last year, I would argue that Gabe Perrault was as much the driver and as much the playmaker as either of those two players. And yet has never been talked about in the same breadth as those two players because he's to the size point that we've talked about because he's a 5-11 skinny winger.

And he's not the burner either. Like he doesn't have that dynamic, dynamic speed. But when you're as talented as he is, and I think about Kent Johnson and the breakout that he had in Columbus last year, when you're as talented as those players are, you tend to figure it out and you tend to put up points at the NHL level. And Gabe will be the ultimate test for a Rangers organization that has not done a great job bringing. I mean, Capo-Caco, obviously the biggest example, but even Lafranier, you go down the list. Brennan's struggled to break through with them because of how quickly they turned the corner and how quickly they became good, they haven't really had a lot of time for incorporating kids.

And they're going to have to figure that out with Gabe again here. And he's a pretty unique player that has some doubt, some real believers, but also some people who really doubt him. And I remain bullish on Gabe. I think Perot, it might not happen for him this year, but Perot over the next two or three years, I think is going to have a breakout offensive season and have a long career as a highly, highly productive top six winger in the NHL.

That's great. This has all been great. So thank you for the time, Scotty. Jesse, thank you too. I think we're going to leave on that note. Wednesday, it's me and Mackin-Doo, folks. Back on the Frankless Wednesday show. So you can join the two of us then.

You can stick around because, again, we're making shows all through the summer. We've got plenty of good stuff planned for you, folks. Talk to you soon.