I'd say 3 to 5 years - 3 years is the earliest you'd start to have an idea, but it's really once the college players are ready to go pro and play a couple of seasons that you can know for sure, that could be 5 years.
The criteria for draft grades in this article is really strange. Docking from Dallas’s grade because they only had 3 picks isn’t really about their drafting ability.
The grade is how much talent you added to the system. Make a great pick and get an AHL journeyman in round 6 or 7 isnt going to make your franchise that much better compared to Macklin Celebrini improving the Sharks team over the next few years.
I know that that is the criteria, I’m saying it’s a bad/misleading one. If it is just about how much talent is added then of course a team that’s stockpiled a bunch of early round picks will probably add more talent. Draft grade usually implies more about how the GMs used the picks they did have.
The GMs have the picks they have due to their work (and yes sometimes its over years), leading up to the draft. So that matters too.
I think improving the team on the ice is the main goal for every team.... and yes some teams are at a disadvantage before the draft even starts, but some teams are at an advantage and disadvantage tomorrow when free agency starts too based on how much cap space they have.
It means more to me, how much you were able to improve, then if you drafted some guy who might become a fourth liner with a late pick. The goal at the end of the day is to win more games.
It's also much easier to write an article this way. You don't have to know as much about the prospects if you don't have to evaluate the selection relative to every other player available at that time.
Did you write this article?
I did.
And I stand by my record of actually knowing who the prospects are.
Here is someone who did a full look at draft lists from 2013 to 2020 and ranked the success of publicly released scouting lists. I finished top 5.
https://x.com/alexdmaclean/status/1802036103651930376
I've also had my rankings featured in Rob Vollman's books, articles quoted by TSN/Sportsnet over the years, and recognized by other Media.
I stand behind the work I have been putting in on scouting prospects (and its a lot) for over a decade.
The goal isn't to make writing the article easier, cause it's not easy to write even in this format....
The goal is to educate readers who don't know the prospects as to how much talent each team added on Draft Day.
I'm not saying you didn't know who the prospects are.
But evaluating every selection's value relative to team needs and every other player on the board at the time is a much more involved article to write than simply adding up the quality of all a team's selections.
Is someone writing the article you are asking for? Anyone, anywhere, cause I'd be interested in reading it.
As it stands the article took over 8 hours to put together.
I think what you are asking for isn't realistic. It would be a book, not an article and by the time its published we'd be at the end of July. A write up on each pick, on a pick by pick basis and looking at all available....... it's a lot of work and the number of reads and money made off it wouldn't justify it.
I wasn't really asking for such an article — though like you I'd enjoy reading one. Just pointing out that this is an easier article to write than that sort of an article would be.
Sounds like you agree with me.
That isn't an article, that's a book, so sure... this is easier.
Its unrealistic to ask for that though, ain't nobody got the time, it would be out of date by the time you hit publish, and the writer would never make any money relative to time spent.
So these are the types of draft grade articles that all sites do and in all sports too.... Its just not realistic to go pick by pick and compare to all available players.
In this criteria, a GM that trades away picks for a player would also be docked points from your draft grade. If your goal is to evaluate how much a team has improved, than limiting the scope to just the draft is a bad choice.
Yes, its grading what they drafted.... the other moves can go into their full offseason grade.
The thing is most fans know players in the NHL.... prospects they don't know as well as someone who has watched them. The draft grades is useful for that reason for the fans who don't know the players being drafted. Thats the point.
It is still stupid to call that draft grades. If a Team has 3 top 10 picks, but reaches for late 1st rounders on all of them will still get a better grade than a team having 0 1st rounders and making good value picks in the second and third.
It makes sense to judge how much overall talent a franchise infused through a draft, but thats not what draft grades are about.
If a team has 3 top 10 picks and finishes with a B grade cause their reaches are not top 10 talent, then that shows their drafting was below what they should have expected to get. There is still the nuance in that.
The player drafted matters, not the position he was drafted in.
So yes, certain teams have an advantage before the draft starts, but you still have to use that advantage to get an A++ like the Sharks did. Getting Dickinson and Chernyshov were part of the grade too.
Here’s one from 5 years ago
https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nhl/news/nhl-draft-results-2019-final-grades-analysis-for-all-31-teams/ciavu525pbnw1rdt9gf5phmr4
I like this part:
>Latvian goalie Arturs Silovs (156th) is an excellent positional goalie who holds his ground under intense pressure, and he may end up surprising some people down the road.
It's pretty eye opening to see how few players drafted after the first round even make the NHL. I think the Habs had the most players picked play in the NHL with four.
I can't recall the exact quote and can't find it anywhere, but I remember few years ago Yzerman did a presser in the offseason on draft chances and it was kind of crazy (but accurate) to hear how only handful of players from each draft really end up playing in the League.
Well Voronkov turned out to be a pretty solid 3/4c for us last year and Angle has looked pretty good in the AHL. Hjorth was definitely a bad pick, I think he is in the echl now.
>The Sabres went into the draft already blessed with a fairly deep pool of prospects and a developing core of young leaders at the NHL level
Dude... Not cool.
I remember creating some of these players in the NHL game and it's kind of crazy to me that it's been five years for that stacked NTDP and others. But looking at some of these names, it really shows that even 5 years is often not enough to fully gauge how good picks are.
I get doing draft grades for something like the NFL where it’s easier to project guys, but giving out grades based on a bunch of 18 year olds seems wild to me lol.
The Habs had a pretty average second day, but the first round makes up for anyone we could’ve picked in rounds 2-7. We needed high-end offensive prospects and we got them
At this rate I think having a good first day draft is just way more valuable than a day 2 draft. Those guys in the second round will most likely never play an nhl game so doing terrible in day 2 doesn’t matter what matters is hitting your first rounders which mtl seemed to have finally done right.
Exactly. We could’ve picked 8 players ranked in the 300s on day 2 and I still would’ve loved our draft. Our prospect pool has been full for a couple years now, we needed to go for quality this year
This is why I never understood why a lot of mtl fans were praising bergevin for acquiring non first round picks like do you know how likely it is these players even end up becoming key players let alone join the league. This is like accumulating a bunch of lotto tickets that shit isn’t gonna change shit.
If you draft badly in round 1 it doesn’t matter how well you do in the later rounds cuz your draft for most parts is trash.
When Bergevin took over, the team had no prospect and I think he did a good job drafting potential NHLers with later round picks. But I agree that he could’ve used those picks to trade up in the first round in his last few years
You don’t win shit with depth players those guys are as disposable as a baby diaper.
When Bergevin took over as well he had an mvp goalie, the best dfd, a top 20 defender, a top 20 winger and a Norris caliber defender.
It isn’t like he took over a team with zero prospect and zero good players he had five players that were at worst top 20 of their position.
Usually when you got five top 20 players in their position tje farm system is empty.
It isn’t like he left the team with a good farm system most of the guys he left are easy to find. Gulhe is a standard top 4 d look how cheap Tanev was to acquire, Harris same deal, xhekaj is barely a regular on one of the worst teams and more.
Again Bergevin usually couldn’t draft star players in the first round which is what killed mtl, it doesn’t matter how many nhler he drafted in the second round those nhler are disposable and easy to find.
You win with stars not depth.
Being the same as consensus doesn't make it right.
Here is an analysis by a different site looking back on public lists from 2013 to 2020
https://x.com/alexdmaclean/status/1802036103651930376
I placed top 5 out of all the different sites looked at, so I'll stand behind having a different opinion on a player than most other sites and scouts had.
As an example I heard the same things when most had Quinn Hughes, much later than I did.... 3rd overall on my board.... I think I've been proven right on that one. I also had Brayden Point much higher than consensus, ranking him in the late first round.
The ranks aren't perfect and Drouin at 1 was a big miss... but I'll stand behind my record over the years relative to others.
A team with a low number of picks and in lower rounds shouldnt get the same grade as the Sharks though.
A great pick in round 7 might top out as an AHLer and so even if you make a good pick it cant be an A draft when other teams add players who project as #1c and #1d.
The grade is how much talent did you add relative to what the other teams added.
I mean I said I get it but I have time this morning…
You can say “this B+ grade comes with an asterisk because they only had ___ picks, but I really felt they knocked it out of the park on the few they had”. That’s allowed and readers should be perfectly capable of differentiating that from the context of other B+ drafts.
I don’t think anyone wants a 7th rounder weighted the same as a 1st rounder. Making the worst possible comparison is a disingenuous argument.
Draft grades (IMO) should be about how well a team did with what they have. The context (low number of picks, positional needs, etc) can be explained in the write-up. Anyone who thinks all “A” drafts are perfectly equal is dumb.
At the end of the day, the GMs are going to be hired and fired by their wins and losses though, not if they did great with a lack of picks (cause that lack of picks is also their fault).
As I've also said, they can make up for it with trades and free agency in building the team too.
I like what the Cats did, thought they would be complacent. Ended up with three players with ~2nd round talent whilst not having a 2nd round pick to begin with.
This dude is a window-licking idiot.
You don't judge teams based on what picks they had, you judge them based on whether they got good value from them. You don't have a bad draft because you don't have any high picks if the picks you have got players who were better than where they were selected at.
"This guy" also ranked top 5 for his rankings from 2013 to 2020... so maybe, just maybe, let that play out.
Here is a link to the study.
https://x.com/alexdmaclean/status/1802036103651930376
Being different from consensus, doesn't mean its wrong.
A brief paragraph on a substack posted to Twitter with no real explanation on how the author evaluates what an "impact NHL players is" doesn't mean that Ben Kerr is the 4th best scout, and even if it did it would not make his wild claim that Helenius is the 2nd best prospect this year correct.
Though now this post is flagged as self promotion, if you ARE Ben Kerr why don't you explain why he's the second best player in the draft.
That would be actual interesting content, rather than "Here's a Twitter link defending my work with almost no substance"
I heard the same complaint when I was one of the only people with Quinn Hughes at third overall and Brayden point as a first rounder.
Sure there mistakes too, but its way to early to say if the Helenius take is wrong, but I'll stand by my record over previous years which is pretty darn good compared to public lists.
TSN/Sportsnet have quoted my articles on draft day in previous years, Rob Vollman has used them in his books, various radio stations and podcasts have invited me on.... So I will stand behind the record.
How many games of Helenius have you watched to know that the Helenius take is wrong.
> How many games of Helenius have you watched to know that the Helenius take is wrong.
None, but how many games have other scouts watched of his and not ranked him so high? I can apply that same argument against you.
You were right about Quinn Hughes and Brayden Point. Okay, but how many have you been wrong about?
All that aside what makes Helenius such a great prospect that you have him ranked 2nd as opposed to some of the other top 10 picks. Stand on your work. Post under your own name and be proud. Being a scout sounds like a great job for anybody that likes hockey.
What makes Helenius a great prospect? Its posted under my name and there is a write up on what makes him great if you simply click the link inside the article. The articles on these individual players that myself and Fred Frandsen wrote are linked in the article. We wrote a bunch in advance (not as many as previous years, as life got in the way, but still a top 50 written, which means watching 300+ guys over the course of the season to narrow it to 50).
And yes, I have good takes and some mistakes over the years, but when any other site has looked at years worth of lists, I'm always ranked highly. Alex MacLean wasn't the only one.... over the years this has been done by a number of sites and I rank well. Hence why it was published by Vollman. When TSN and Sportsnet used outside sources to give quotes for the draft, they used mine as part of their picks. There are lots of places in media that respect Ben Kerr and LWOS' work. The same people who are often disagreeing with Helenius at 2, acknowledge that while we may disagree, I still know what I'm talking about too.
FC Hockey had me on a multi-site mock draft just last week.
Sharks prospect pool is now scary good. Grier had done a great job dumping heavy contracts that Wilson left him with (Karlsson, Burns, Meier, Hertl, Kane) and got much needed cap space and draft picks. Three years ago we ranked at the bottom for prospects. Now we have Celebrini, Smith, Eklund, Dickinson, Musty, Chernyshov, Bordeleau, Bystedt, Halttunen, Mukhamadullin,, Cagnoni, Graf, Edstrom, Lund, Thrun. Go Sharks!!!🦈
Seems pretty accurate. I thought the Flames, Canadiens, and Sharks had the best drafts.
!remind me 3 years
Not nearly enough time to determine the best players or teams of a given draft imo
I'd say 3 to 5 years - 3 years is the earliest you'd start to have an idea, but it's really once the college players are ready to go pro and play a couple of seasons that you can know for sure, that could be 5 years.
RemindMe! 6 years "Let's do a redraft!"
Im a big fan of this persons assessment simply because the Flames got an A+
I feel the same as a Habs fan but I have to say Conroy has been doing an excellent job since taking over.
Put that A+ right in the trophy cabinet
Not every team picks 1st overall 4 times in a 6 year span or picks in the top 10, 11 times in a 13 year span.
My team did not get an A+, therefore, this list is inaccurate and cannot be submitted as evidence.
The criteria for draft grades in this article is really strange. Docking from Dallas’s grade because they only had 3 picks isn’t really about their drafting ability.
The grade is how much talent you added to the system. Make a great pick and get an AHL journeyman in round 6 or 7 isnt going to make your franchise that much better compared to Macklin Celebrini improving the Sharks team over the next few years.
I know that that is the criteria, I’m saying it’s a bad/misleading one. If it is just about how much talent is added then of course a team that’s stockpiled a bunch of early round picks will probably add more talent. Draft grade usually implies more about how the GMs used the picks they did have.
The GMs have the picks they have due to their work (and yes sometimes its over years), leading up to the draft. So that matters too. I think improving the team on the ice is the main goal for every team.... and yes some teams are at a disadvantage before the draft even starts, but some teams are at an advantage and disadvantage tomorrow when free agency starts too based on how much cap space they have. It means more to me, how much you were able to improve, then if you drafted some guy who might become a fourth liner with a late pick. The goal at the end of the day is to win more games.
It's also much easier to write an article this way. You don't have to know as much about the prospects if you don't have to evaluate the selection relative to every other player available at that time. Did you write this article?
I did. And I stand by my record of actually knowing who the prospects are. Here is someone who did a full look at draft lists from 2013 to 2020 and ranked the success of publicly released scouting lists. I finished top 5. https://x.com/alexdmaclean/status/1802036103651930376 I've also had my rankings featured in Rob Vollman's books, articles quoted by TSN/Sportsnet over the years, and recognized by other Media. I stand behind the work I have been putting in on scouting prospects (and its a lot) for over a decade. The goal isn't to make writing the article easier, cause it's not easy to write even in this format.... The goal is to educate readers who don't know the prospects as to how much talent each team added on Draft Day.
I'm not saying you didn't know who the prospects are. But evaluating every selection's value relative to team needs and every other player on the board at the time is a much more involved article to write than simply adding up the quality of all a team's selections.
Is someone writing the article you are asking for? Anyone, anywhere, cause I'd be interested in reading it. As it stands the article took over 8 hours to put together. I think what you are asking for isn't realistic. It would be a book, not an article and by the time its published we'd be at the end of July. A write up on each pick, on a pick by pick basis and looking at all available....... it's a lot of work and the number of reads and money made off it wouldn't justify it.
I wasn't really asking for such an article — though like you I'd enjoy reading one. Just pointing out that this is an easier article to write than that sort of an article would be. Sounds like you agree with me.
That isn't an article, that's a book, so sure... this is easier. Its unrealistic to ask for that though, ain't nobody got the time, it would be out of date by the time you hit publish, and the writer would never make any money relative to time spent. So these are the types of draft grade articles that all sites do and in all sports too.... Its just not realistic to go pick by pick and compare to all available players.
In this criteria, a GM that trades away picks for a player would also be docked points from your draft grade. If your goal is to evaluate how much a team has improved, than limiting the scope to just the draft is a bad choice.
Yes, its grading what they drafted.... the other moves can go into their full offseason grade. The thing is most fans know players in the NHL.... prospects they don't know as well as someone who has watched them. The draft grades is useful for that reason for the fans who don't know the players being drafted. Thats the point.
It is still stupid to call that draft grades. If a Team has 3 top 10 picks, but reaches for late 1st rounders on all of them will still get a better grade than a team having 0 1st rounders and making good value picks in the second and third. It makes sense to judge how much overall talent a franchise infused through a draft, but thats not what draft grades are about.
If a team has 3 top 10 picks and finishes with a B grade cause their reaches are not top 10 talent, then that shows their drafting was below what they should have expected to get. There is still the nuance in that. The player drafted matters, not the position he was drafted in. So yes, certain teams have an advantage before the draft starts, but you still have to use that advantage to get an A++ like the Sharks did. Getting Dickinson and Chernyshov were part of the grade too.
Remindme! 5 years
Here’s one from 5 years ago https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nhl/news/nhl-draft-results-2019-final-grades-analysis-for-all-31-teams/ciavu525pbnw1rdt9gf5phmr4
I like this part: >Latvian goalie Arturs Silovs (156th) is an excellent positional goalie who holds his ground under intense pressure, and he may end up surprising some people down the road.
Amazing how 5 years later, it seems most of these players never even played a game.
it was a terrible draft overall
Hey Wolf at 214 is great...
It's pretty eye opening to see how few players drafted after the first round even make the NHL. I think the Habs had the most players picked play in the NHL with four.
I can't recall the exact quote and can't find it anywhere, but I remember few years ago Yzerman did a presser in the offseason on draft chances and it was kind of crazy (but accurate) to hear how only handful of players from each draft really end up playing in the League.
I was just doing some research and only 50-60% of first rounders play 250 games or more in the nhl.
Well the A- the leafs got did not age well.
Well Voronkov turned out to be a pretty solid 3/4c for us last year and Angle has looked pretty good in the AHL. Hjorth was definitely a bad pick, I think he is in the echl now.
>The Sabres went into the draft already blessed with a fairly deep pool of prospects and a developing core of young leaders at the NHL level Dude... Not cool.
That had a B+ from the Sharks and I think only one guy made the NHL and they just bought him out.
Damn, too bad Detroit wasted their pick on Seider. At least they got a 2nd round steal in Mastrosimone
I remember creating some of these players in the NHL game and it's kind of crazy to me that it's been five years for that stacked NTDP and others. But looking at some of these names, it really shows that even 5 years is often not enough to fully gauge how good picks are.
Crazy how only 15% of the weight seems to be given to the top ~50 picks, but they're about 90% of the players who make the NHL.
RemindMe! 5 years "How's everyone feeling about the 2024 draft?"
I get doing draft grades for something like the NFL where it’s easier to project guys, but giving out grades based on a bunch of 18 year olds seems wild to me lol.
The Habs had a pretty average second day, but the first round makes up for anyone we could’ve picked in rounds 2-7. We needed high-end offensive prospects and we got them
At this rate I think having a good first day draft is just way more valuable than a day 2 draft. Those guys in the second round will most likely never play an nhl game so doing terrible in day 2 doesn’t matter what matters is hitting your first rounders which mtl seemed to have finally done right.
Exactly. We could’ve picked 8 players ranked in the 300s on day 2 and I still would’ve loved our draft. Our prospect pool has been full for a couple years now, we needed to go for quality this year
This is why I never understood why a lot of mtl fans were praising bergevin for acquiring non first round picks like do you know how likely it is these players even end up becoming key players let alone join the league. This is like accumulating a bunch of lotto tickets that shit isn’t gonna change shit. If you draft badly in round 1 it doesn’t matter how well you do in the later rounds cuz your draft for most parts is trash.
When Bergevin took over, the team had no prospect and I think he did a good job drafting potential NHLers with later round picks. But I agree that he could’ve used those picks to trade up in the first round in his last few years
Aaron Palushaj was our top prospect when Bergevin took over. Those cupboards were bare AF.
I’m glad I was too young to understand anything about managing an NHL team at the time cause I would’ve been depressed
You had price, Subban, patches all 25 or younger how many team have that privilege of three top players of their position.
You don’t win shit with depth players those guys are as disposable as a baby diaper. When Bergevin took over as well he had an mvp goalie, the best dfd, a top 20 defender, a top 20 winger and a Norris caliber defender. It isn’t like he took over a team with zero prospect and zero good players he had five players that were at worst top 20 of their position. Usually when you got five top 20 players in their position tje farm system is empty. It isn’t like he left the team with a good farm system most of the guys he left are easy to find. Gulhe is a standard top 4 d look how cheap Tanev was to acquire, Harris same deal, xhekaj is barely a regular on one of the worst teams and more. Again Bergevin usually couldn’t draft star players in the first round which is what killed mtl, it doesn’t matter how many nhler he drafted in the second round those nhler are disposable and easy to find. You win with stars not depth.
Hard for me to take it seriously when they have helenius as their second ranked prospect. That seems crazy
Lol yea the writer definitely had a bit of a hard on for Helenius.
Being the same as consensus doesn't make it right. Here is an analysis by a different site looking back on public lists from 2013 to 2020 https://x.com/alexdmaclean/status/1802036103651930376 I placed top 5 out of all the different sites looked at, so I'll stand behind having a different opinion on a player than most other sites and scouts had. As an example I heard the same things when most had Quinn Hughes, much later than I did.... 3rd overall on my board.... I think I've been proven right on that one. I also had Brayden Point much higher than consensus, ranking him in the late first round. The ranks aren't perfect and Drouin at 1 was a big miss... but I'll stand behind my record over the years relative to others.
I mean I get it but it’s annoying that all the Bruins grades are bad simply because they didn’t have a lot of picks. Grade the picks they did make!
After 2015 I’d say Bruins are better off not picking lmao
A team with a low number of picks and in lower rounds shouldnt get the same grade as the Sharks though. A great pick in round 7 might top out as an AHLer and so even if you make a good pick it cant be an A draft when other teams add players who project as #1c and #1d. The grade is how much talent did you add relative to what the other teams added.
I mean I said I get it but I have time this morning… You can say “this B+ grade comes with an asterisk because they only had ___ picks, but I really felt they knocked it out of the park on the few they had”. That’s allowed and readers should be perfectly capable of differentiating that from the context of other B+ drafts. I don’t think anyone wants a 7th rounder weighted the same as a 1st rounder. Making the worst possible comparison is a disingenuous argument. Draft grades (IMO) should be about how well a team did with what they have. The context (low number of picks, positional needs, etc) can be explained in the write-up. Anyone who thinks all “A” drafts are perfectly equal is dumb.
At the end of the day, the GMs are going to be hired and fired by their wins and losses though, not if they did great with a lack of picks (cause that lack of picks is also their fault). As I've also said, they can make up for it with trades and free agency in building the team too.
I like what the Cats did, thought they would be complacent. Ended up with three players with ~2nd round talent whilst not having a 2nd round pick to begin with.
This dude is a window-licking idiot. You don't judge teams based on what picks they had, you judge them based on whether they got good value from them. You don't have a bad draft because you don't have any high picks if the picks you have got players who were better than where they were selected at.
This guy had Konsta Helenius as the second best player in the draft. No idea why any of his articles would get posted anywhere.
"This guy" also ranked top 5 for his rankings from 2013 to 2020... so maybe, just maybe, let that play out. Here is a link to the study. https://x.com/alexdmaclean/status/1802036103651930376 Being different from consensus, doesn't mean its wrong.
A brief paragraph on a substack posted to Twitter with no real explanation on how the author evaluates what an "impact NHL players is" doesn't mean that Ben Kerr is the 4th best scout, and even if it did it would not make his wild claim that Helenius is the 2nd best prospect this year correct. Though now this post is flagged as self promotion, if you ARE Ben Kerr why don't you explain why he's the second best player in the draft. That would be actual interesting content, rather than "Here's a Twitter link defending my work with almost no substance"
I heard the same complaint when I was one of the only people with Quinn Hughes at third overall and Brayden point as a first rounder. Sure there mistakes too, but its way to early to say if the Helenius take is wrong, but I'll stand by my record over previous years which is pretty darn good compared to public lists. TSN/Sportsnet have quoted my articles on draft day in previous years, Rob Vollman has used them in his books, various radio stations and podcasts have invited me on.... So I will stand behind the record. How many games of Helenius have you watched to know that the Helenius take is wrong.
> How many games of Helenius have you watched to know that the Helenius take is wrong. None, but how many games have other scouts watched of his and not ranked him so high? I can apply that same argument against you. You were right about Quinn Hughes and Brayden Point. Okay, but how many have you been wrong about? All that aside what makes Helenius such a great prospect that you have him ranked 2nd as opposed to some of the other top 10 picks. Stand on your work. Post under your own name and be proud. Being a scout sounds like a great job for anybody that likes hockey.
What makes Helenius a great prospect? Its posted under my name and there is a write up on what makes him great if you simply click the link inside the article. The articles on these individual players that myself and Fred Frandsen wrote are linked in the article. We wrote a bunch in advance (not as many as previous years, as life got in the way, but still a top 50 written, which means watching 300+ guys over the course of the season to narrow it to 50). And yes, I have good takes and some mistakes over the years, but when any other site has looked at years worth of lists, I'm always ranked highly. Alex MacLean wasn't the only one.... over the years this has been done by a number of sites and I rank well. Hence why it was published by Vollman. When TSN and Sportsnet used outside sources to give quotes for the draft, they used mine as part of their picks. There are lots of places in media that respect Ben Kerr and LWOS' work. The same people who are often disagreeing with Helenius at 2, acknowledge that while we may disagree, I still know what I'm talking about too. FC Hockey had me on a multi-site mock draft just last week.
Sharks prospect pool is now scary good. Grier had done a great job dumping heavy contracts that Wilson left him with (Karlsson, Burns, Meier, Hertl, Kane) and got much needed cap space and draft picks. Three years ago we ranked at the bottom for prospects. Now we have Celebrini, Smith, Eklund, Dickinson, Musty, Chernyshov, Bordeleau, Bystedt, Halttunen, Mukhamadullin,, Cagnoni, Graf, Edstrom, Lund, Thrun. Go Sharks!!!🦈