2019 NHL Draft Prospects Rankings – December Edition

It has been a bit of a tumultuous start for our beloved Blueshirts this year, with the team experiencing stretches that have given fans of all types—the optimists, realists and pessimists—reason to point and yell, “I TOLD YA SO!” As we currently write this in mid-December, the team is recently off of their bye week and mired in stretch of truly abysmal play. Given the team’s recent play, what better way to ease the pain then by looking towards the future: the 2019 NHL draft.

Right off the bat, we want to make one thing abundantly clear: it is WAY too early to come to definitive conclusions for the vast majority of these players, and these rankings absolutely will change as the year progresses. There is a lot of hockey to be played before the 2019 NHL draft, and teenagers often can make tremendous leaps in their games in just a matter of months. That said, these ranks should hopefully serve as a good barometer of the prospect landscape right now, and offer you all some players to keep a close eye on as the season progresses and we get a better idea of where the Rangers will end up picking.

Despite the way that certain members of the prospects analysis community within the Rangers fanbase may act at times, analyzing the abilities of teenagers to play a sport where often the difference between success and failure is an odd bounce of a rubber disc, is far from an exact science. There are a number of techniques that one can use for prospect analysis—traditional scouting, analyzing the numbers, researching the opinions of other experts to obtain contrarian viewpoints, etc.—and it is our opinion that you are doing yourself a disservice if you rely too heavily on only one technique. That said, everyone has their different methods, and this can lead to vastly different prospect rankings, especially once you get past the first group of blue chip prospects. For this reason, we like to provide you with the rankings of multiple of our writers, who each offer insight into why they made some of the decisions with their ranks that they did. We provide the ranks and write-ups for each writer individually, and then offer an aggregated prospect ranking at the end. Enjoy, and if you have any questions please feel free to hit us up on Twitter: Drew Way, George Obremski and Shawn Taggart. One last note before we begin: unless otherwise stated, all player demographic data is courtesy of eliteprospects.com

Before I get into discussing my ranks, I want to talk about my process a bit, which I think can help provide some context to some of the decisions I made when making my ranks. If you have no interest in this part, I’ve bolded the first sentence of where I begin to talk about my rankings, to allow you to more easily skip down to it.

Anyone that has read anything of mine in the past knows I’m a big proponent of analytics, so I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I have a fairly large spreadsheet I use when creating and updating my ranks that, among other things, includes box score stats, primary point production numbers, and a variety of advanced analytics for the leagues and players they are available for, including possession and expected goal numbers, primary point production (courtesy of prospect-stats.com) and Corsica’s NHLe, projected WAR, adjusted points and prospect value metrics. While I haven’t added them to my spreadsheet yet, I also use Evan Oppenheimer’s betweenness data, which provides value insight into who truly drives play and production for a team.

However, despite my affinity for analytics, I’m also a big advocate that you can’t analyze any hockey players, but especially prospects, using only numbers. Traditional scouting (the eye test) is also vital to my process. To be abundantly transparent, I am not a pro scout, nor am I a professional prospect analyst. I have a full time job that is not hockey related, I have a wife and a six-month-old son, and I have a social life, so to say I watch even remotely as many prospect games as the pros do would be a blatant lie. However, between my TV package and various streams available on Reddit and some other sites, I’ve been able to watch a few games containing NHL prospects a week for about the past year or so, and as I watch I take notes on what I’m seeing, and slowly develop my own profiles of players with the help of these notes. My prospect spreadsheet currently is about 80 players deep, and I’ve had the chance to have at least one viewing of about 60 of these players to this point (and every one that made my first round ranks), and I’ve had at least two viewings of the majority of the top-30 or so guys.

It should also be quickly noted for transparency’s sake that I have not had the privilege of watching any of these players in person, and it is MUCH easier to scout a player when you can watch in person, because when you watch on TV, your viewing is limited to what the camera man decides you can see, and you miss a lot of what happens away from the puck. In the same vein, some people fall in love too quickly with players when they do see them live once or twice, and make wrong assumptions based off of a tiny sample size of live viewings. Elias Pettersson is a good example of this; Corey Pronman was discussing on a recent appearance on Craig Custance’s podcast that one of the reason he and many others didn’t rank Pettersson as high as he should have is because in his in-person viewings, which largely took place at tournaments in North America, he was good but not spectacular. However, many of the European scouts were absolutely infatuated with Pettersson, because their in-person viewings of him took place in Sweden, where Pettersson completely dominated in league play for a player his age. The morale of this story: yes in-person scouting is crucial, and allows you to see things you can’t see on tv, but you can’t solely rely on it for your analysis—or any other one mechanism for scouting).

The last piece of my process is that I read and research the work of a number of other prospect analysts that I trust and respect. While I obviously form my own conclusions about players, prospect analysis is far from an exact science, and I place a lot of value in reading the views of analysts and bloggers that I respect in the industry, particularly when they are contrarian to my own. Nothing is worse than living in an echo chamber, and I purposefully seek out to views of those with contrarian views to force me to think of things from a different perspective.

One last note before diving into discussing my rankings: I firmly believe that placing prospects into tiers are far more valuable than simply ranking them 1-31 (or however deep the rankings go). Often, there is very little differentiating a wide range of players in a set of draft ranks, and it can be misleading to only have numeric ranks. In my rankings, the tier a player is in is far more than important than the numeric ranks, and you could reasonably argue any ordering of the players on the same tier. Sure, the numeric ranks indicate slight preferences I have between the players on the same tier, but they are all roughly the same caliber of player in my opinion.

With all of that out of the way, let’s get to the rankings!

Shawn and George both discuss Jack Hughes and Kaapo Kakko talk in their own write-ups below, and I’m sure everyone reading this is aware of them by now, so I’ll just leave it at they are 1 and 2 in my ranks, respectively, and both are on their own tier.

The 3^rd slot is where it gets interesting for many, but due to the absolutely incredible season he’s having, I put center Kirby Dach on a tier of his own at 3. He has 14 goals and 27 assists (17 of which are primary) in 29 games, good for 12^th in the entire WHL in points per game with 1.41 (one spot behind my boy Ty Smith—come on now you knew you weren’t getting through a prospects piece from me without mention of Ty Smith). In terms of primary points per game, he’s still 14^th best among players of all ages in the WHL with 1.07. When you filter the list to players in their draft eligible year or younger, the numbers are even more impressive—Dach’s 1.07 primary ppg is first by a long shot, with Reece Newkirk and Dylan Cozens placing second and third with 0.89 and 0.86 primary ppg, respectively.

In term’s of Corsica’s adjusted points per game model, which adjusts production to account for age and league quality variances, Dach is 2^nd in the entire 2019 draft class, behind only Kaapo Kakko. He’s also 2^nd in Corsica’s prospect value model behind only Kakko, which accounts for league, projected production and probability the player will make the NHL. It should be noted that in my opinion, while Corsica’s league adjusted data is a fantastic tool to aide with prospect analysis, it does notoriously underrate the USNTDP players, something to just keep in mind when analyzing Jack Hughes & Co.

In terms of his scouting profile, the 17-year-old Dach (turns 18 in January) already has an NHL-ready body, standing 6’ 4’’ and just shy 200 lbs. Despite his size, he’s also a very good skater, possessing great agility, good top-end speed and efficient edgework. He has an incredibly high hockey IQ, silky smooth hands and great vision, leading to him being on a very short list for the argument of best passer in the 2019 draft class. He is a fantastic possession player, and effectively uses his power and length to ward off defenders and have his way in the offensive zone. Perhaps the thing that has impressed me the most about him in my viewings this year is his shot—more specifically his confidence in his shot. He’s always possessed a good shot in my opinion, as his has good accuracy, a quick release and a decent amount of power, traits that allow his wrist shot to be a major plus in his arsenal. While he is certainly a playmaker first, his increased confidence in his shot, and therefor increased usage of it, has allowed him to become much more of a goal-scoring threat, which has further opened up the passing lanes for him as defenders now have to honor the potential for him ripping one on net.

My 4th tier consists of Dylan Cozens and Bowen Byram. Both players were on my radar for the potential 3rd pick status coming into the season, and both have had strong seasons to this point. Not much has changed about either since I wrote my first piece on the 2019 draft back in September; the main difference in my feelings here is simply that Dach has been incredible and separated himself from the pack. If you don’t feel like opening my prior article, I’ll sum each player up quickly. Cozens is a very good skater who can play wing or center, possesses a great shot, good passing abilities, high hockey IQ and strong two-way play. Byram is the most well-rounded defenseman in the draft in my opinion; his best attribute is his skating, which is particularly impressive when you consider he’s already 6’ 200 lbs. He has a booming shot, is an adept puck carrier and displays good instincts in the defensive zone, including consistently strong gap control and stick defense.

My 5^th tier is where the draft gets a bit messy, as it consists of 10 players that, in my opinion at least, have reasonable arguments for earning the 6^th pick in the draft at this very early point: Trevor Zegras, Alex Newhook, Vasili Podkolzin, Alex Turcotte, Ryan Suzuki, Arthur Kaliyev, Pavel Dorofeyev, Raphael Lavoie, Matthew Boldy and Peyton Krebs. Each of these players features tantalizing skill sets and all can be impactful players at the NHL level if they develop properly, but each also features a question mark or two (which is typical once you get outside of the first few picks). Trevor Zegras and Pavel Dorofeyev have been two of my biggest risers since my initial draft piece. Zegras was already firmly on my radar as a top-20 pick, but his play on the USNTDP this season has been terrific, and in my opinion he’s been the teams clear second best player, behind only Jack Hughes (although it should be noted that Alex Turcotte has been injured, and many believe he’s the better player here). Zegras has but up 12 goals and 23 assists in just 22 games, and most impressively, has the highest betweenness rating on the entire team, above even Jack Hughes, indicating that he is comfortably one of the primary play drivers on the stacked U-18 US squad.

Pavel Dorofeyev is a player that was on my radar at the start of the season, largely because of his great Corsica metrics, but I (wrongfully) didn’t include him in my initial article. Since September, thanks to his impressive metrics, I’ve gone out of my way to read up a ton on him, dig into his numbers more and watch a handful of his games (outside of the USNTDP guys he’s probably the player I’ve watched the most now), and to say I’m impressed is putting it lightly. In terms of his numbers, he’s currently 9^th in Corsica’s prospects value metric among the 2019 draft class and has the 10^th highest projected WAR. He’s put up 13 goals and 11 assists in 15 games in the MHL, and while he didn’t put up any points in 12 games at the KHL level, he certainly looked like he belonged, despite clearly not being as physically mature as the competition. In terms of his scouting report, he’s among the most purely gifted players I’ve watched, but he definitely needs to add some strength before he’ll crack any NHL rosters. He is one of those players that always seems to make the right play with the puck, is a good all around skater and has great instincts in all zones. He has soft hands, good puck skills and a real accurate shot, culminating in him having a well-rounded offensive skill set. Despite his lack of strength, he’s not afraid to mix it up along the boards and play physical, and also is fearless in front of the net—qualities that should quickly endear him to any crowd that ends up having the privilege to root for him on their team.

My tier 6 spans players ranked 16-24: Jakob Pelletier, Anttoni Honka, Mikko Kokkonen, Philip Broberg, Cole Caufield, Cam York, Victor Söderström, Matthew Robertson and Nils Höglander. This is the point of the draft ranks where, while I like all players and feel they are more than capable of developing into impactful NHL players, there are enough question marks where it’s possible they may never live up to the expectation of being a first round pick. Jakob Pelletier, Cole Caufield and Nils Höglander are all skilled but undersized wings with high compete levels. Personally, I think all would be excellent picks in this range; with the way the NHL is trending, their lack of size isn’t nearly the issue it once was, and they each possess a number of tools that should translate to the NHL. Pelletier is more of a playmaker while Caufield has more of a finishing touch, but both can find the open ice, attack and just flat out produce for their team. Höglander has held his own against adults in the SHL, which is particularly impressive considering he’s undersized, and he has fantastic edge work and a sneaky shot, which allow him to seemingly pop out of nowhere and fire the puck on net when you watch him play.

With respect to the 6 defensemen in this tier, you can quite literally make the argument for any of them to be first and last in this group, and each possesses a very different skillset. Anttoni Honka is probably the most dynamic of the group with the puck on his stick, particularly in transition, while Brogerg is one of the most powerful skating defensemen I’ve seen in a while. Söderström and York currently have the most well-rounded offensive games of this group in my opinion, and are the most likely to translate to a power play quarterback. Neither Kokkonen or Robertson will blow you away when you watch them, but they each possess well-rounded games and high hockey IQs, and both have the mobility and skill to contribute offensively as well.

My 7^th and final tier in this initial first-round rank of the 2019 NHL draft class actually goes much deeper than 25-31; in my spreadsheet I mentioned in the beginning of my section I have this tier stretching until my 38^th ranked player, but for the purposes of this article I had to cut it off at 31. In addition to the players you can see in my ranks—Connor McMichael, Bobby Brink, Nolan Foote, Albin Grewe, Moritz Seider, Simon Holmström and Lassi Thomson—I have the following players grouped into this tier, all of whom you can reasonably argue belong in the first round: Phillip Tomasino, Tobias Björnfot, Samuel Poulin, Thomas Harley, Michal Teplý, Nathan Légaré and Daniil Gutik.

Connor McMichael and Bobby Brink have both posted fantastic production so far this year, impressive enough for them to currently being in my first round despite being considered mid-2^nd rounders at best by me this past summer. McMiichael is currently 2^nd among draft-eligible players in the OHL with 27 primary points (17 goals and 10 primary assists) in 26 games, behind only Arthur Kaliyev’s 29 (21 goals and 8 primary assists). Bobby Brink is currently tearing up the USHL, which admittedly is inferior to the CHL leagues, but you still can’t deny his production. Bring is currently 2^nd among ALL USHL players in primary points, and comfortably the leader among draft-eligible skaters, with 24 primary points (15 goals and 9 primary assists) in just 19 games. Despite playing in an inferior league whose numbers tend to get downplayed in league-adjusted stats, his adjusted points per-game and projected WAR are up there with many players ranked much higher in the ranks of pundits, and has the same adjusted ppg (0.15) as Raphael Lavoie (who I have ranked 11^th) and nearly the same projected WAR per-82 (0.55) as Ryan Suzuki (who I have ranked 10^th).

Out of this group of players, if I had to choose one that I think is most likely to climb into the top-20 by the next time I publish a draft ranks, it is German defenseman Moritz Seider for me. Seider is a big, right-handed defenseman, standing at 6’ 4’’ and weighing 183 lbs, and is a plus skater who is excellent in transition. While he needs to add some strength, he certainly does not lack physicality in his game, and he consistently demonstrates the ability to intelligently use his body to protect the puck and lay appropriate hits on the opposition that often result in him coming away with possession. Perhaps most impressively however is his ability to jump start the offense from his own zone. In very early and small samples, Seider is showing excellently in the zone exit data being tracked by Finlay Sherratt, and when you watch him play this is perhaps the most noteworthy portion of his game. Seider has excellent vision and passing ability, and he frequently will exit his zone, and thread an outlet pass to a streaking forward, leading to a clean zone entry and maintaining possession in the offensive zone. Further, he has good instincts in the offensive zone and a capable enough shot to keep the opposition honest, which paired with his passing ability could lead to him seeing power play time in the NHL. Long story short, Seider checks off many of the boxes that comprise a modern day NHL defenseman, and if he continues to develop and play well, don’t be surprised if his name starts climbing up the ranks of many as the year progresses.

This draft is another case where you’re top heavy at 1 and 2 and then it opens wide where the tiering, and the understanding of where they sit in draft position will change from now up until that fateful day in June when the 31 teams come and start drafting their futures.

I have a really hard time ranking Kappo Kakko and Jack Hughes right now, because they are interchangeable and you really cannot go wrong with who gets the first overall pick because you’re getting a stud and someone who can lead your franchise due to their impact, play making skills and ability, and each has the ability to take over a game when needed.

The thing is, I’ve liked Kakko a lot more than I have Hughes to this point, and it all has to do with the level of competition they’re currently playing with and against. Kakko is playing with men right now in the Finnish pro league, and currently has an impressive 17 points (7 goals, 10 assists) in 25 games. He also has no issue taking over a game and controlling the play, which is evident in the video below.

Kakko just controls the game and plays the game very, very well. There’s nothing this kid can’t do and won’t do. He’ll be a stud. Think of this as the Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine debate back in 2016.

Now when looking at the area the Rangers would pick, if the season ended today (it’s not so don’t get angry), I have them picking at lucky number seven, something that they’ve been hovering around thanks to their own finish and also the pick they acquired during the Raanta/Stepan swap before the draft in 2017. In my mind, they go for a glaring hole and they draft an impact defenseman, which at this point at time would be the Vancouver Giant’s Bowen Bryam.

One thing I’ve liked about Bryam is how he plays both ends of the game so well. Both sides of the game, he comes across as very smart and knows what to do when he has the puck as well as what he needs to do to defend the puck. In the end, he could bulk up a bit, but the kid has the tools to be an impact defender. He reminds me of Ryan McDonagh, when McDonagh was on and was ready to take over a game with his end to end speed and hockey sense.

This draft is going to be wide open when it comes to the talent from 3-31 in the first round. The Rangers for the most part are going to have the opportunity to take a strong player when it comes to their selection in the first round come June.

This year’s draft is very similar to last season in that it’s very top heavy at 1 and 2 and then very good from 3 on. Jack Hughes is the clear number 1 pick in this year’s draft for me, followed by Kaapo Kakko. From 3 on, it varies as I have Dylan Cozens at 3, while Shawn and Drew have Kirby Dach at that number. In my opinion, the draft opens up a bit after that 3-6 range and players in that 7-15 range could go anywhere.

With the rangers probably picking in that 6-12 range, someone I think they should target is Raphael Lavoie. Lavoie has been one of the risers in the early part of the season. I’ve seen some rankings having him in the 2^nd half of the 1^st round while others have him in the middle of the round, but I think he’s a top-10 player. He can play either in the middle or on the wing. He has one of the best shots in the entire draft class and has the ability to move the puck well in tight spots. At 6’4”, he uses his size well to keep control of the puck and is able to effectively maneuver into the tight parts of the ice. With his size, skating could be a potential issue, but he is solid in a straight line and has good foot work to weave and pass defenders.

I see some similarities to Kevin Hayes with Lavoie’s game in that Lavoie has size, decent skating ability, and a solid 2-way game. Already at NHL size, he could jump in right away but I think another year in Halifax would not hurt his game as he could work on skating and bulking up a bit.

This year’s draft is another draft in which gaining multiple 1^st rounders will help a rebuilding team. If the Rangers are able to add another 1^st or 2, they can grab some solid pieces in that 15-31 range as there will be some skill and upside later in the draft as well.

For your convenience, below are the side-by-side rankings of each writer featured in this article. While the individual ranks posted above all focus on the first round, each writer is currently maintaining their own list that is at least two rounds deep, which you’ll see reflected a bit in the rankings below.

Note – The featured image at the top of the page is courtesy of NHL.com