Welcome to the second article of the Blueshirts Breakaway 2020 NHL draft coverage! All season long, you’ll get prospect rankings and analysis from our draft analysts Drew Way, George Obremski and Rich Coyle. Time permitting, the plan is to provide you all with prospect analysis in a variety of forms throughout the season, including not only rankings but a smattering of articles and Q&As as well. Emphasis on the time permitting however, as to be completely candid, we had hoped to have a few articles in between our initial 2020 NHL drank rankings and this version, but sometimes life gets in the way.
Below, you will find the individual top-31 rankings of each of our analysts, as well as an aggregated ranking that averages the individual lists of each analyst. All of our analysts are actively maintaining their own rankings on an ongoing basis that go far deeper than the 31 we published today. Both the aggregate and individual lists rank players 1 through 31, and sort them into tiers which group players together that the analyst feels are of a similar overall ability level. In this edition, we added a +/- column to the rankings table, which serves as a means to track how much each player has risen or fallen since our last rankings. We also include an “others receiving votes” section at the very end that lists the players that at least one of the analysts gave a first-round ranking to. Lastly, we note players that fell out of the first round from the last edition, and list out the biggest risers and fallers from October until now.
We think it is important to reiterate the fact that each of our analysts strongly believes that the tier a player is grouped into holds more weight than the individual ranking. A quote from Drew regarding the methodology behind tiers, which was posted in the initial article as well, is that “in essence, if I have a group of players on the same tier, that means that if I’m a GM drafting, then I deem this group of players as all about equal in terms of their overall ability and potential to become an impact NHL player. I’m a massive advocate of always drafting the best overall player, but, if I have a handful of players left on the same tier I am deciding between, this is where things like positional need come into play.”
As mentioned above, each of our analysts are actively maintaining their own rankings throughout the year that go far beyond just the first round, so please do not hesitate to reach out to any of them if you have any questions about any 2020 NHL draft eligible player. Feel free to leave a comment on this article, but your best bet is to reach them on Twitter via the following links: Drew Way, George Obremski and Rich Coyle.
Aggregate Rankings
Drew Way
George Obremski
Rich Coyle
Others Receiving Votes
As you can see if you analyze each of the individuals rankings lists, a number of players received first round votes from at least one of the analysts, but did not make the cut for the aggregate Blueshirts Breakaway first round rankings. For you convenience, below is a quick list of these players along with where they fell in our aggregated full rankings list, which goes well beyond 31 players :
- Daniil Gushchin: 32nd overall, received one first-round rank (Rich)
- Carter Savoie: 33rd overall, received one first-round rank (Drew)
- Jake Sanderson: 36th overall, received one first-round rank (Drew)
- John-Jason Peterka: 38th overall, received one first-round rank (Rich)
- Marat Khusnutdinov: 43rd overall, received one first-round rank (George)
- Lukas Reichel: 44th overall, received one first-round rank (Rich)
Players That Dropped Out Of Round One
A couple of players were featured in the first round of our initial 2020 NHL drank rankings in October that have since fallen out of the first round. Below is a list of these players and where they currently stand in our overall ranks:
- Daniil Gushchin: Ranked 25th in October, fell to 32nd
- Théo Rochette: Ranked 30th in October, fell to 47th
