Eligibility
Players eligible for this ranking are players who are Calder Eligible this season. To recap: Eligible players must not have played more than 25 regular-season games in a single preceding season, six or more regular-season games in any two preceding seasons, and must have been younger than 26 by September 15th, 2026.
Grading Explainer
The 1-to-9 Rating Scale
Grades are a short-form, accessible way to convey complex information. Not everything will be covered appropriately by them!
Our grades aren’t for where the player is now, though that’s a major component. Instead, they are a projection of how each individual tool will stack up in the professional ranks.
The midpoint, 5, represents a confident NHL-calibre projection for that grade, albeit on the lower end of the lineup. Each successive step moves up the lineup:
3: Pro-calibre
4: AHL & top-flight pro-calibre
5: NHL-calibre
6: Top-six, top-four, and 1B goalie-level
7: High-end
8: Elite
9: Arguably the best in the NHL
Glossary
Adaptability: Mental flexibility; the ability to find another play when one closes.
Advantage creation: Plays made with the intention of maximizing the next player’s time, space, and options, usually through drawing pressure before passing.
Angling: The ability to hold the middle of the rink and push opponents to the outside, usually by winning the inside.
Anticipation: The ability to fill in the gaps of perception based on knowledge, experience, and structure.
Awareness/Scanning: How often, when, and where a player scans the ice.
Body positioning: A player’s ability to put their body between the puck and an opponent, often by cutting through the opponent’s hands.
Change-of-pace/delay game: Ability to attack at varied speeds, usually combining skating and handling skill. A delay game sees the puck carrier regularly cut back off the rush to gain access to the back layers of the attack.
Details: Catch-all term to describe a myriad of subtle skills, including, but not limited to: Stick placement, poke check ability, first touch plays on the forecheck, net-front skills, faceoffs, angling, and gap control.
Gap control: The management of distance between the defender and attacker; though not exclusively, tighter is usually better.
High cycle: Modern offensive strategy where carriers cycle along the half wall, instead of behind the net, to create time, space, and opportunities to get inside.
Manipulation: The use of movement, puck positioning, passing, and deception to move defenders away from the player’s desired space or lane.
Mechanical ability: The combination of skating and handling ability; the ability to stack weight, move freely, and make movements with opposing momentum.
Off-puck offence: The movement a player makes into pockets of space to support the offence or to become a scoring threat.
Off-puck defence: How a player defends away from the puck, including net-front defence, gap control to deny passes, and rotations.
Pace: Divided into mental and physical. Mental is the speed at which a player makes reads and executes. Physical is the consistency of feet moving: Keeping feet moving through open space, receptions, and while stickhandling.
Proactive contact: The ability to initiate contact before the opponent, usually before touching the puck on a retrieval; the player who initiates first has a much higher percentage of winning the ensuing battle.
Processing: The speed at which a player picks up on the details of a play, including the speed, direction, momentum, and more of teammates and opponents.
Puck acquisition: A player’s ability to get the puck, broken into two categories: Supporting plays to get pucks through passes and winning pucks in battles. The latter becomes increasingly important the higher the level of competition.
Surfing: A rush defence strategy that sees the defender pivot early to skate forwards and skate across using shuffle steps, closing the distance while keeping their stick in the middle. Commonly used among USA Hockey defenders and off neutral zone turnovers to re-gap.
Tactical awareness: A player’s ability to play within their team’s structure at even-strength and on special teams; a high level of tactical awareness leads to more predictability for teammates and better play outcomes since decisions can be made faster.
Timing: The ability to organize movements to be in position to make the next play at the right time.
Weight shift: The ability to stack weight over a single leg and push off, leading to more explosion and separation.
Chess Master
Vision
Tactician
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