Film Room: Why Ethan Belchetz's special skill set makes him a top 2026 NHL Draft prospect

There might not be a more misunderstood player in the NHL than the complementary player. The players who make their linemates’ jobs easier by winning battles, creating space around the slot, and getting pucks inside. 

It’s often assumed these are the third-line and fourth-liners, but they populate top-sixes just as much as the classic play-drivers, even if their skill set is limited in scope.

When games get tight, it’s these complementary players who are often at the centre of breaking through. 

Ethan Belchetz is one of these players, with a rare combination of skill, power, and size, playing a style built on making top-scorers better.

Plus, he has flashes of what he could become with polish, building intricate passing plays and setting up high-danger offence off the rush. 

The counting stats – 34 goals and 25 assists in 55 games – are far from mindblowing, but dig deeper, and there’s a combination of certainty and special upside here. 

Net-front & retrieval game

Unquestionably, the most polished, most consistent part of Belchetz’s skill set is his net-front game. At 6-foot-5, 227 pounds, it’s no surprise that a Belchetz is a challenging one to see through. He can play the heavy net-front pressure piece, digging in, battling, and adjusting constantly to create traffic. But what really makes him good is his range. 

Belchetz prefers to play a motion game, moving in and out of the crease, timing his movements with the play around him. He spins off pressure, pops out to the hashmarks, and works across the crease, keeping his stick free for deflections. With terrific hand-eye coordination and skill, he tips shots down, across, and up, even when heavily pressured. Instead of funnelling everything on net, he kicks pucks out back to the slot if he doesn’t have a great look, too. 

Those skills also translate to Belchetz’s rebound and in-tight finished game. He’s a skilled shooter at the end of his reach and even in tight to his feet. Plus, he locks opponents to his back or hip constantly, allowing him to reach out and swipe at loose pucks. Even if those skills don’t result in direct chances for him, he’s constantly creating space for his teammates to walk inside (off-puck assists). 

In the modern NHL, the best net-front presences detach, win races behind the net for loose pucks, and either extend the cycle or direct play back inside. Good news: Belchetz thrives there, too. 

The net-front battling and position-winning give Belchetz a leg up for those short retrieval races, and he occasionally throws a shoulder back into the opponent to create more space. While he will drive a puck into the crease, it’s the playmaking touch that really shines down low, as he hooks and slips pucks inside, showing a rare ability to deliver pucks accurately while fending off pressure. He makes the quick plays inside, and he also stretches out possession, cutting away from pressure or climbing the wall as he looks for a lane to open. 

The numbers, from a 13-game manually tracked sample, really hammer home his impact here:

• Short retrievals: 95th percentile
• Cycle escapes to the middle: 88th percentile
• HD chances: 93rd percentile
• Off-puck assists: 97th percentile
• Forecheck xG: 80th percentile
• Forecheck xA1: 89th percentile

Given that Belchetz is as complete a net-front player as we’ve seen in recent memory, it’s easy to project him to a top-nine, complementary role. It might be his best area right now, but it’s not his only high-impact area. 

Transition & open-ice playmaking

Top-six forwards in Belchetz's projected archetype usually have advantage creation skills, even if they don't always come out in flashy ways. That means setting the table in transition with quick passing plays, setting up chances off the rush, taking pucks in space to the middle, and more. 

Belchetz does all of those things, and more. Give him a bit of space, and he’ll often cook up an impressive passing sequence. Most frequently, that space comes as the F2 in the rush. Instead of carrying pucks himself, Belchetz quickly passes, then relocates, often as short support, to receive a pass inside space and then finds an open target. 

The variety and skill of his deliveries are impressive. Belchetz reads incoming pressure, spins, and fluidly passes inside. With larger gaps, he delays, draws them in, and passes through them to the middle-lane driver. He hooks and slips pucks, reaching out and pulling pucks in before releasing. 

It’d be easy to assume that, because Belchetz is relying on getting pucks inside space to make his high-skill passes, that he’s not actually creating these advantages. That’d be the wrong assumption. Just like other big, skilled wingers, it’s often his initial pass in transition that starts the entire sequence, whether it’s a quick play off the wall on breakout or a lateral pass in the neutral zone. 

Plus, Belchetz, with increasing frequency, operates at the traditional driver in transition. He catches pucks in motion, works give-and-gos, and even manipulates defenders through his routes. There are legitimate high-end playmaking moments, where he shifts the defence towards and creates a high-value lane, as well as high-end dangle and drive moments. 

So, why doesn’t this version of Belchetz appear in every game? 

The biggest reason may very well be usage. 

Belchetz splits his time between a trio with first-rounders Jack Nesbitt and Liam Greentree, and a duo with Nesbitt and a variety of other wingers. Greentree is an established OHL scoring star who plays a very puck-dominant, shooting-focused game. He prefers stretching out possession rather than working give-and-gos, which puts Belchetz and Nesbitt into supportive roles, emphasizing their retrieval and net-front skills. But away from Greentree, Belchetz takes on more of the play-driving burden, with plenty of success.

Statistically, the contrast between Belchetz’s results with and without Greentree is striking – his playmaking, transition, and advantage creation metrics skyrocket when he takes on more driving responsibilities, and it doesn’t come with any tradeoffs in his net-front, shooting, or defensive games. 

Though he’s seldom the player carrying pucks across the blueline, he’s usually the one creating that opportunity for someone else through his variety of short-range and cross-ice passing, which gives him more opportunity to get another touch later in the sequence and set up a chance. The key will be finding consistency. 

Touches, pace, & physicality

Of course, it would be incorrect to put all of the blame on Belchetz’s usage. Too often, he simply doesn’t have the pace and meanness in his game. Both of those directly impact the number of puck touches he’s getting. He’s roughly around OHL average in puck touches per 60 – this is a high-end forward! Without Greentree, that rises to only the 66th percentile, or roughly in line with the 5th or 6th most-used forward on a team. 

It’s great that Belchetz can generate so much offence without needing the puck a ton – that's a real, projectable skill. 

However, he is clearly missing possession opportunities by gliding into battles and not taking the extra step to really engage an opponent physically. His pace with possession can be glacial at times, too, gliding and waiting for lanes to materialize and getting swallowed up by back pressure. When the competition ramps up and touches become more infrequent, his offensive game might be negated as a consequence. 

But those who have watched Belchetz for any extended period of time know that he has it in him. There are games where he crushes opponents, gets in extra shots, inflicts pain along the wall, and he’s not shy about standing up for his teammates. The same ability to seal contact and win positioning makes him an effective physical player defensively, too, where he accumulates a ton of breakups. 

As hockey fans, we often default to “he just needs to try harder” when players aren’t doing what we expect them to. Sometimes effort is the problem. More often, it’s not having the tools or reads to make those flashes consistent. 

In Belchetz’s case, skating improvements will be a solution. Despite what his height and weight suggest, he’s not a particularly refined skater. His depth varies. Sometimes his cuts are sharp and sudden; other times, they get away from him. There are bursts of speed, especially early in shifts, and sequences where he can’t create any separation. It both prevents him from winning races as well as gaining the speed and leverage he needs to inflict the punishment he wants. Those bursts of speed, along with his flashes of surprising agility and heel-to-heel skating, suggest that he could take some strides in the coming years. 

All this began improving down the stretch. It wasn’t every night, but in February, it was more nights than not that he had that extra urgency physically, that he kept his feet moving off-puck, that he found that extra burst and quickness, and that he leveraged his frame with projectable contact skills. 

The projection

Just as Belchetz really started ascending in February, his season was cut short due to injury. Add in his so-so performances at CHL USA Prospects Challenge and even back to the Hlinka Gretzky Cup, and it’s fair to wonder if he might slip come draft day – perhaps slip a bit too far. 

While Belchetz does have a lot to improve, the NHL’s top complementary players were far from complete packages at this stage of development. He plays a more physical game than Matthew Knies did in his draft year, playmakes more than Cutter Gauthier did, and brings a more diverse game than the myriad of net-front scorers do, like Anders Lee and Morgan Geekie. 

Adding another layer of certainty to his projection is that he’s one of the better defensive wingers in junior hockey, accumulating a ton of stops on the backcheck and at the top of the defensive zone with his reach and sealing ability.

Plus, he has the upside. Belchetz is just starting to break through as an open-ice playmaker and transition creation. While he has to find more touches by upping the pace and physicality, that he's such a capable offence generator with limited touches will be a highly valuable skill in the NHL. 

Put it all together, and there’s no doubt that Belchetz could be one of those special complementary players in the NHL. There might be more patience required than some of those picked around him, but the payoff – a top-six net-front and wall creator – could be worth the wait.