Re-ranking the 2020 NHL Draft class six years later
The 2020 draft was lauded as one of the deepest of the past decade, featuring multiple potential stars, if not superstars, at the top. The prediction was somewhat right. This is a strong class, featuring many impact NHLers, but maybe not superstars. The emerging elite players aren’t all the ones we expected.
This is not a re-draft. It’s a re-ranking.
We’re not picking the players that teams should have selected based on their needs in 2020, considering how their careers are going.
Instead, we’re re-ranking players based on the value they provide, with a heavy emphasis on analytics. To order them, we considered production, the number of seasons they spent in the league, Stanley Cups, remaining development runway, and players' market value. The eye test also played a large role. Players providing more game-breaking skills and three-zone impact rose higher.
We’re also showing our own draft ranking back then, and reflecting on the lessons we learned while watching these players develop.
The top four could be ordered many different ways, depending on how much weight you attribute to the above criteria.
Tim Stützle is the most exciting player in the class, the one possessing the most game-breaking skill. He has the best track record. Arriving in the NHL at 18-years-old, he immediately started contributing to the Ottawa Senators, claiming the title of “best in class” and holding it for a while.
There are more challengers now.
His own teammate, Jake Sanderson, emerged as a contender for that title in his rookie season. He has now moved ahead of his teammate in our eyes, earning the number one spot in the blue line, accumulating impressive defensive numbers while driving the play in a comparable way to Stützle.
A pair of wingers have also evolved in their NHL careers, improving each year.
Boasting a similar production to Stützle over the past couple of years and showing similar flashes of skill, Lucas Raymond feels like the appropriate choice at number two overall on this current list, considering he’s also boasting significantly better defensive results. He’s generating offence, limiting chances the other way, and becoming one of the very best play-drivers in the league as a result.
Tim Stützle slots in third on this list ahead of Seth Jarvis. While Jarvis is a more well-rounded player, there’s a gap between the two players’ ability to drive offence. The two players' environments may also play a small role in their results. Jarvis is fitting perfectly in Carolina’s system, in a way that maximizes his talents and helps him drive the play.
We feel there may be more untapped potential in Stützle's own game. Lacking the same consistency in system and identity, the Senators haven’t been able to fully maximize his talents.
Brock Faber slots at fifth overall, edging out Quinton Byfield, Yaroslav Askarov, and Luke Evangelista. These four players form the next tier.
Role mostly determined the other of that tier. Faber played No. 1 minutes for the Wild before the acquisition of Quinn Hughes, picking up points at the expected rate while driving offence. His underlying numbers, especially defensively, have improved this season. Having a superstar partner on his line should continue to boost them.
Byfield and Evangelista are also playing top-level competition, establishing themselves as two of the best play-drivers in the NHL.
Evangelista controls the game to a level that only Raymond matches on this list. He’s the prospect with the most surprising development on this list and the biggest riser in a redraft. That being said, on average, Byfield and Evangelista have scored more at a middle-six level than a top-line one. They also haven’t consistently acted as top-of-the-lineup forwards for their club.
One of the tallest and fastest players in the NHL, Byfield’s special attributes confer high-end value. He may also have more remaining potential, as we’ll explain below. That’s why he’s slotting ahead of Evangelista.
Anton Lundell is also pushing himself in that second tier of players. Not only is he getting a bigger role with the Florida Panthers, but he’s controlling the play better than ever before.
The next tier extends from Alexis Lafrenière to John-Jason Peterka.
Their respective clubs have not always offered those players the best opportunities. As a result, they haven't truly established themselves as primary contributors to their clubs. Some have earned that title for stretches and others could very well get it still, seizing upcoming opportunities.
Lafrenière and Marco Rossi’s decent-to-good play-driving numbers and production over more seasons pushed them ahead of Dylan Holloway, who only has that one dominant campaign yet. John Jason Peterka may have the highest scoring and offensive upside of that next group, but his playstyle clashes with the other four. His game still has to mature to make him a more reliable and effective player.
As for the rest of the list, the arguments and criteria used for the rankings remain the same: a mix of role, eye test, advanced stats, team context, and development. You’ll see the reasoning in each blurb.
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Jake Sanderson is already one of the best defencemen in the NHL.
He started his draft year projecting mostly as a shutdown defenceman. Opponents simply couldn’t get around him in the neutral zone. He then added multiple layers of offensive skills in the second half of his season, boosting his stock. His NCAA years, where the play flowed through him more often, transformed him into a true play-driver from the back-end.
We ranked him 9th overall in 2020.
His uncommon development influenced how our team now evaluates draft-year defensive prospects. Contrary to many of their peers, some top defensive prospects want to manage the game and earn their teams wins more than they want to experiment with their skills. When they do give themselves permission to push the offence, they can become two-way forces, leveraging their tools and instincts to quarterback the play, while still mitigating risk.
We now value high-end tools and a pro-like game more than ever before, recognizing the large role these players will play at the next levels, roles that will then give them the minutes to develop offensively and produce.
There may be some parallels between Sanderson and Carson Carels in the 2026 NHL Draft class.
In a draft filled with hard lessons, the Elite Prospects team can at least look at Lucas Raymond as a win.
We ranked him third. He ends up second here.
Coming into his draft season, Raymond was supposed to challenge for the first overall slot, but limited minutes in the SHL and average international performances tanked his stock, to the point where we questioned his placement in the top five.
What kept him high were his motor, three-zone engagement, and all-around projectable abilities. We anticipated the higher-end offence would resurface in a consistent and larger role. It did.
Players who combine effort and higher-end thinking with skill are the ones you bet on.
Tim Stützle can make plays at blazing speed, carrying the puck across zones, cutting around defenders, and passing through them in the offensive end. He quarterbacks the powerplay and is turning into more and more of a goal-scorer as he matures. His physical game is also improving.
He could easily reclaim the title of “best-in-the-class” if he either improves his defensive play or takes his in-zone playmaking even further, becoming an offensive superstar.
He slots in at third in this re-ranking. We ranked him 8th.
Ouch.
In hindsight, this miss was the best thing to happen to our team. It came in our first year of scouting, and such an obvious error accelerated our development, teaching us a valuable lesson we now fully integrate into our scouting.
Creative players with high-end tools experiment. They commit mistakes as they try to figure out the limits of their own abilities and how they can best influence games with it. Without overlooking those mistakes, one has to evaluate players on their best moments, when everything clicks and they take over games. That’s their NHL potential. Those are the players who become top-six line-drivers.
I wrote a full retrospective on our Stützle draft-year evaluation a couple of years ago.
Making the right play at the right time, going to the net, working the walls, forechecking hard, and making plays to space, Jarvis is turning into one of the best wingers in the NHL and one of the league’s top play-drivers. His impact extends to all three zones and his motor stands out every shift.
In a way, his ranking hurts even more than Stützle’s.
While we ranked him in a similar spot as many other scouting outlets (12th overall), we liked him a lot. He was one of Mitchell Brown’s (our Head of Scouting) favourite players in the draft, specifically. We simply didn’t have the experience needed to confidently push a player of his profile as high as he deserved.
In his draft year, despite some minor size concerns, Jarvis was already playing an NHL-style game, rushing the puck dynamically and working the walls with advanced techniques. These kinds of players are now slam-dunk top-five to top-ten players on our boards.
We ranked Carter Bear and Victor Eklund aggressively in 2025 due to some of their similarities with Jarvis.
Brock Faber ascended rapidly to the number one role in Minnesota’s blue line in his rookie year, filling in for injured players. Covering more ice than anyone, he constantly put himself in opponents’ way, knocking the puck away from them, retrieving it, and absorbing hits on the forecheck to pass to teammates.
Few players can reliably make those plays while spending half of the games on the ice. Faber’s effort never wavered.
That being said, as he succeeded not by out-skilling opponents, but by outpacing and outworking them,
Shouldering that kind of load over multiple years may have proven difficult. We started to see cracks in his No. 1 armor in the past couple of years. That said, the addition of Hughes will ease his burden. Hughes should also help Faber develop additional secondary skills and facilitate his defensive reads.
When evaluating the defenceman, one should do it in the context of his draft selection at 45th overall and subsequent trade to the Wild. This is a player whose value only became clear at the NHL level.
We saw glimpses of that higher-end potential with the USNTDP, calling him the program’s best defenceman for stretches and a Chris Tanev-like defensive type. Ranking him 37th overall, we banked that his rush defence and puck-moving capabilities would translate at least to a top-four role, despite a lower offensive involvement in his draft year.
Faber shot past that projection.
As a re-ranking can be quite painful for an evaluator, we’ll take the wins where we can, even if they’re not clear ones.
One look at Quinton Byfield’s highlights in his draft year told you all you needed to know about his potential. A 6-foot-5, top-end skating, puck-carrying, scoring, playmaking forward, Byfield seemed to have all the elements necessary to become an elite NHLer.
The primary concerns around his game were that he lacked hockey sense and that his tools advantage allowed him to dominate his peers.
So far, Byfield’s offence has been more muted at the NHL level. On the surface, it may seem like the concern was validated. He does lack some finishing and playmaking precision, but it’s still too early to make a final judgment on his potential.
He has yet to be given the full reins of the Los Angeles Kings, sharing top-line duties and featuring more often on the second powerplay. The team’s system is also stifling offence, favouring puck management over creativity. He has adapted well to those demands, playing lower-event hockey and tilting the ice in his team’s favour significantly.
Playing with an elite playmaker like Artemi Panarin would do wonders for his game, giving him more offensive freedom and enabling him to translate his strong underlying numbers to actual production, making his true value shine.
His best years may still be ahead of him.
Yaroslav Askarov may very well be the most gifted goaltender in the game of hockey. He’s elite in lateral coverage with great skating, twitchy feet, explosive pushes, and insane flexibility. These talents stapled onto a 6-foot-3 frame put his pure athleticism in league with the very best in the NHL.
What makes Askarov special is the control he has over his body. He can push his body to the extremes of his range of motion and still maintain control over his limbs. He can make a huge save in the full splits, keep his chest vertical, and pull back in his legs to return to the butterfly to be ready for the next shot. Moves reserved for desperate situations for other goalies are just tools in the toolbox for him.
Despite the talent, Askarov is yet to truly make his mark on the league. He’s struggled to find his form on a consistent basis behind a weak San Jose defence. This has kept him from having the breakout season many fans expected from such a highly touted goaltender.
Although Askarov has proven in stretches that when he’s on, he can shut down the best teams and players in the world. We’re already seeing the actualization of the Vezina-calibre goaltender that San Jose hopes will be crucial in turning their rebuild into a dynasty.
The longer development time for goaltenders makes it difficult to place Askarov among his peers, many of whom have already solidified an NHL role. Still, the calculation remains similar to what it was on draft day. Few things in this league are as valuable as an elite goalie and his potential extends beyond even that.
A Stanley Cup immediately gives you a boost in these rankings. It has to. That’s the ultimate goal, and Lundell played his part in helping the Florida Panthers get there last season.
His wide skating stride and lack of special elements prevented him from rising further on our draft list. While he already controlled the play at a high level in Liiga, we questioned if he would be able to put up high numbers in the NHL. He settled at 10th overall.
In the end, he became about what most envisioned.
In the absence of Aleksander Barkov, Lundell has also shown that he can drive the play at a top-six level and score at a higher rate. That being said, he has not nearly replaced his Finnish counterpart’s contribution, suggesting that he is indeed more of a second-line or middle-six pivot in a Championship team.
Luke Evangelista could be scoring more, but based on possession metrics, he’s one of the very best play-drivers in the NHL.
Playing a methodical, calculated game, focused on keeping opponents in front of him, and building plays through quick and deceptive passes, Evangelista wins almost all of his shifts. And he’s not only a clever tactician, but also a hard and skilled battler, who fights at the net and wins and protects pucks on the boards.
Watching him in his draft year, Evangelista’s defensive habits already stood out. There were flashes of higher-end playmaking, deception, and physical skills, but we didn’t expect him to be able to control the NHL game like he has, given his closer-to-average tools and slower pace of play. In the end, his hockey sense prevailed.
Evangelista went from a fourth-liner role in his rookie season in the OHL to a 111-point scorer in his third season, by deconstructing the opposition’s play and building it back up for his team. With technical improvements, he managed to translate that style to the NHL.
While remaining an outlier — a slower-paced, not high-end skilled, top-six forward — there are some lessons to draw from Evangelista’s ascension, namely the value of an upward development curve, hockey sense, and pro-like habits. Players who can keep the game in front of them, methodically prevailing in each area of the ice, stacking and snowballing their advantage, may become more valuable for us.
Some of these elements can also explain Benjamin Kindel’s early success. Liam Ruck’s profile (2026 NHL Draft) also reminds us of Evangelista.
The biggest disappointment of the 2020 class, Alexis Lafrenière was supposed to dominate, becoming a top-end NHL playmaker and breaking the point-per-game mark every season. The Rangers decided on a different future for their top prospect, instead recruiting Panarin and giving him the deployment that would have allowed Lafrenière to potentially reach his upside.
The Rangers can’t be blamed entirely for Lafrenière’s trajectory, however. It’s highly unlikely that he would have reached his upside considering his inability to take over shifts.
There are two lessons to draw from Lafrenière’s situation. Exceptional prospects coming through the junior ranks tend to warp perceptions. We expect too much out of them, amplifying the positives and making some negatives. Lafrenière’s slower pace of play and lack of engagement in battles were also apparent even in his draft-year. These weaknesses should have factored in more in his projection.
Some of those concerns echo in Gavin McKenna’s play, too.
Here’s our complete draft retrospective on Alexis Lafrenière.
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Our team loved Marco Rossi as a prospect. Seeing him rack up points, take contact, and make plays in traffic like an NHL veteran, we pushed him way up our board, despite the size concerns. If Rossi were to make it as a centre in the NHL, he would have to become an outlier. To an extent, he did.
Slotting on the first line with the Wild, Rossi showed that he could support the play very well, becoming an effective complement to Kirill Kaprizov. Rotating to the right spot, he gave timely passing options, won his battles around the net, and found scoring chances at the doorstep. His physical and short-passing skills shone.
That being said, one can tell by the team’s attitude toward him and by his inclusion in the Hughes trade that his profile is not favoured in the NHL. Small, non-elite centres are not what NHL general managers consider winning chips.
This perception may continue to play its part in Rossi’s career. At the moment, he remains mostly a complementary player who may not get another opportunity to play with a Kaprizov-level talent.
While we stand by Rossi’s ranking (4th overall) to a point, we underestimated how much NHL front offices value size and overestimated his playmaking skills and overall skill level, seeing him as a better line-driver than he was.
Dylan Holloway's development is another testament to the fact that the environment largely influences success. One can’t properly evaluate the upside of a player until he has had the chance to play in his projected role for an extended period of time.
Had Holloway remained in Edmonton, he would have likely dropped down the list. But the trade to St. Louis offered him top-six minutes and a chance to show how his high-octane, pressure game can translate to scoring. He became one of the top play-drivers in the NHL. This season, he’s going through injuries and an expected regression, but his future seems a lot more promising in St. Louis than it ever was in Edmonton.
We ranked Holloway at 18th overall. His potential remains very much in flux. If he goes back to being more of a supportive piece, then our first ranking would look more accurate. If his scoring and underlying numbers shoot up again, then he could continue to rise on this re-ranking.
One could easily make a case to push J.J. Peterka up this list. He’s producing more than some of the other players ahead and his underlying numbers also look more favourable in 2025-26. But we do have some reservations about his play.
When combined, Peterka’s skating ability and passing skills elevate his offensive potential. He outraces the opposition and funnels play to the slot, generating consistent looks and picking up his share of points, but his game lacks efficiency. Taking a volume approach to offensive generation, he’s more spamming plays until they work instead of balancing risk and reward.
This playstyle makes him reliant on percentages going in his favour. It may hurt his defensive metrics over his career and his chance of winning consistently.
So while Peterka has outperformed his draft-year expectations, becoming a top-six player after being selected in the 2nd round, there’s another level that his game could reach. Improving his decision-making could turn him into a play-driving force.
As for our own projection, it missed the mark, just like his German counterpart Stützle's. We ranked him 24th, a reasonable spot at the time, but portrayed him more as a future top-nine, two-way supportive player, more focused on forechecking than creating. We also questioned his skating ability.
Peterka’s motor still stands out, but his skating output has more than made up for some of his mechanical quirks. His playmaking is now the centre of his game.
Dawson Mercer is somewhat living up to his draft-year projection. The only missing piece is the scoring. His 56-point season three years ago is more in line with what we would expect from him, considering the high-end skills he displayed in the QMJHL.
In moments, he can shift the puck around sticks, pierce inside defensive formations, deceive defenders, and fire off passes. The defensive side of his game also shines, especially his motor. He annoys opponents on the forecheck and backcheck, closes on them fast in the defensive zone, and can play both centre and wing effectively.
Although he’s an effective complementary player, Mercer lacks the dynamic moving ability that makes the success of top-end scorers. He tends to stand in spots and look to force passes through, turning the puck over. If he can add that dynamic touch and push his scoring back above the 50-point plateau, he will have fulfilled our expectations.
We ranked Kaiden Guhle 20th overall. The Montreal Canadiens drafted him 18th overall.
The defenceman has largely fulfilled his draft-year expectations, becoming a solid, shutdown, top-four defenceman, who can face elite competition on a regular basis. Not as violent as in the WHL, he’s focusing more on managing the opposition’s speed and pushing them to the outside, only dishing out some hits from time to time.
At the time, we underestimated the players of Guhle’s profile. Ranking him after Helge Grans, a more finesse-oriented puck-mover who hasn’t managed to reach the NHL, is an error we wouldn’t commit anymore.
Now, the Guhles of this world are all getting pushed up our board. We’re banking on their mobility, physical ability, and defensive foundation making them a valuable part of an NHL team’s back end.
Jake Neighbours’ success has been another great lesson for Elite Prospects. At our inception, we didn’t value these types of players at all, ranking them all way lower than they deserved or not even putting them on our board. We looked for playmakers and scorers who could break down the opposition while avoiding turnovers. But the truth is that the NHL is made up of different player archetypes, each with distinct skills and value.
After being selected at 26th overall, Neighbours made a quick NHL transition, fulfilling a supportive, power forward role for the team, winning back pucks, driving the net, and connecting passing plays in transition. While he likely won’t ever become a high-point-getting player, he’s flashing higher-end playmaking and accumulating decent underlying numbers while providing hard skills.
Everything written about Neighbours also applies to Will Cuylle.
Rewatching his draft tape years later, he was an obvious miss, a player we would push up our board significantly now, despite a lack of high-scoring numbers.
Cuylle showed some scoring skills in his draft season, flashing a higher-end release and advanced playmaking. While his skating mechanics lacked refinement, his pure power made up for those. Players like him don’t rely on fine agility to be effective, but on their balance, strength, and charge-ahead speed.
All NHL teams would take a player like Cuylle, someone who can shut down the opposition, rotate to the right spots, and work the front of the net and the boards.
Tyson Foerster is playing a variation of his draft-year game in the NHL, focusing on positioning, finding passing lanes, and building plays. He’s not outpacing the game or forcing plays as much, but controlling the opposition with his positioning and waiting for scoring chances to appear, leading to great underlying results.
Foerster’s skating improved over the past seasons, but it remains a significant weakness. His lack of elusiveness and quickness likely shaped his style of play, making him rely on his range, passing, and anticipation to drive the play.
A lesson we learned over the past seasons is that a skating deficiency becomes a fatal flaw only when a player relies on it to create. It’s not the case for Foerster. He may never become a dynamic creator or a true power forward, lacking the physicality and explosiveness, but he has other ways to contribute.
Alexander Nikishin, a player we didn’t rank, is positioned to become the biggest steal of the 2020 draft.
Watching him in his draft year, although we were impressed by his physicality and playmaking, we believed he dominated the MHL competition mostly through his superior physique and questioned his skating, some of his reads, and his remaining development runway.
As it turns out, Nikishin had that development runway. He became a better mover, more reliable, and refined his offensive instinct. His multiple assets earned a big role on SKA’s blue line in 2022-23, shining the spotlight on his talent.
Although his impact with Carolina has been more muted than anticipated, he has just started his NHL career.
The physical playmaker, who likes to activate and fire booming shots from the point, could rise at least a few spots if he does cement his spot in Carolina’s top four, improving his defence while maintaining his offensive impact.
We ranked Ryker Evans 86th in 2020, admiring his ability to defend the rush and manipulate the forecheck. He went undrafted that season, only to resurface as a second-round pick of the Seattle Kraken (35th overall), after improving his offensive game and becoming a point-per-game player with the Regina Pats.
Evans now provides a bit of everything for the Kraken. Anticipating plays, mirroring the footwork of attackers, and constantly relocating in the defensive zone, he’s posting good defensive results, while managing the puck safely.
While he doesn’t always feature in Seattle’s top four, he showed he could easily handle those minutes when placed there.
After years of injury and subpar play, Jamie Drysdale seems to finally be establishing himself as an effective top-four defenceman. Contrary to general expectations, it’s not his offence that is becoming the calling card, but his defence.
Anticipating rotations, angling, and boxing out attackers with his skating, he’s managing opposing attacks better and finding quicker breakout routes. With precise passing, constant movements, and by funneling shots on net, he’s also driving the offence, to an extent.
While we ranked Drysdale at 5th overall, our team was split at the time. Some of our scouts questioned his offensive instincts, predicting he would lack the creativity to establish himself as a high-end NHL playmaker, despite his elite skating.
Cole Perfetti accumulated goals and points at a high pace in the 2019-20 season, finishing as the second-highest producer in the OHL. His ability to break down defences through deception, clever passing, and high-level anticipation gave him significant upside. But as a smaller-than-average forward, lacking physical skills and explosiveness, his selection carried some risk.
So far, Perfetti has not been living up to his potential. More than his strengths, it’s his weaknesses that dominate reports on his play and he hasn’t really been an organizational fit for the Winnipeg Jets. A 50-point season last year and the departure of Nikolaj Ehlers gave us some hope that he could earn a bigger role and break out. It hasn’t happened.
Maybe in a different environment than the Jets, he would have trended differently. The organization has struggled to develop its top prospects. Perfetti seems risk-averse and unwilling to use his skills. He’s at least developing into a solid defensive player, but his career is another cautionary tale against lower-paced, undersized junior scorers. Translating their game to the NHL can be difficult.
Jack Quinn’s skill remains evident in the NHL. He’s finding space around the offensive zone, can fire off passes and pick his spot on the goalie. Skating the puck up the ice, he looks like a higher-end skill player, with his sound skating and handling posture and ability to evade sticks. He’s also scoring more than a few of the prospects ahead of him on this list, but his game lacks substance.
Struggling defensively and only generating league-average offence, he’s not pushing the team forward as much as some of the Sabres’ new additions.
Pre-draft, we thought his game lacked dimensions. He was at his best when he could move away from the play, sneak past defenders, and get passes in high-danger areas. So far, some of our concerns around his puck management and lack of diversity have been validated.
There was a running joke in 2020 that the Los Angeles Kings got the off-brand version of Lafrenière in Alex Laferriere. Six years later, one could legitimately make a case that Laferrière has been a more all-around effective player than the projected star forward.
By taking all the right routes, working the boards, and crashing the net, Laferriere supports the play well, becoming a predictable presence for teammates and creating space for them. He can play on all forward lines and pick up a point every other game.
Laferriere’s power game caught our eye in his draft year, but we struggled to project him to an NHL role. Either he significantly improved his off-puck game following his draft, or we missed that element.
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After years of AHL play and limited NHL roles, Mavrik Bourque’s results with the Stars have been quite promising this season. He’s earning more ice time, producing his share of points, posting good defensive results, and driving the offence.
As a smaller player with below-average skating, Bourque may never fully earn the favour of the NHL or merit a top-six role. In hindsight, our 2020 ranking was too aggressive. That being said, his late blooming suggests that hockey sense does end up prevailing over the long-run. Bourque anticipates the play well, knows his limits, and can engage players physically. If he continues to get his chances, his playmaking game will shine more and more.
There are some similarities between his profile and Marco Rossi’s. Both are capable of complementing top-end linemates with their puck-retrieving, rotations, and passing.
The Ottawa Senators taught the Elite Prospects team a few valuable lessons in 2020. The development of Ridly Greig may be the biggest one, however. We instantly learned the value of an elite motor and competitiveness and how physical skills can matter more than pure size.
We also underrated Greig’s playmaking in his draft year. His ability to spot teammates while under pressure and create lanes to them stood out immediately in the NHL. He may never become a top playmaker or scorer, but he fits the Senators’ identity very well, always moving, driving the net, and pressuring opponents.
For a time, we thought Connor Zary’s game may take off at the NHL level, following an impressive AHL stint and 34 points in 63 games in the NHL, but Zary is establishing himself more as a complementary middle-six player than a top-six driver.
Our 25th overall ranking in his draft year reflected our hopes and doubts about his projection. Yes, he was scoring at a 100-point pace and flashing higher-end release, stickhandling, and space-finding skills, along with deceptive capabilities. But his wide skating stride reduced his value in transition and left him with a more uncertain NHL future.
While Zary is not replicating his high-scoring pace in the NHL, he’s still establishing himself as an effective defensive player. This will help him continue to find roles in his years with the Flames and beyond.
If Justin Sourdif keeps up his level of play, he could continue to rise on this list. There’s nothing flashy about his game, but a bit like Evangelista ahead of him, he’s tilting the ice in favor of his team by limiting opposing attacking options, winning battles, and building plays with short passes. His career arc shows that positioning and hard skills can give a player at the NHL level an unexpected boost.
A player in search of an identity in 2020, we struggled to evaluate and project Sourdif, seeing him more as a low-certainty, top-nine shooter than a two-way player. His post-draft development changed the course of his career, leading to his role with the Caps.
Yegor Chinakhov’s time in the NHL has been plagued by inconsistency. Like many other scorers, he can go on streaks, putting up points in bunches and looking like a sure-fire top-six forwards, only to fade in the background for multiple games.
It’s likely that the delayed draft favored Chinakhov. Columbus watched him handle KHL minutes well, keep pace with the league, and flash higher-end shooting and playmaking skills. His performance boosted his stock, making him a surprise selection at 21st overall.
In hindsight, the Blue Jackets spotted something that many others didn’t, but like many other offence-first prospects selected in that range, Chinakhov hasn’t fully managed to live up to expectations so far.
It’s not easy to play defence for the Chicago Blackhawks, as one can see from the ups and downs of their two rookies Artyom Levshunov and Sam Rinzel. In that unpredictable environment where breakdowns are common, Wyatt Kaiser is emerging as a solid top-four defenceman this season.
More of a forecheck-escaping, puck-mover in his draft year, playing for Andover High in Minnesota's high-school system, Kaiser is now using his skating to shut down opponents, making himself a reliable partner for some of the younger elements on the Hawks' blue line.
As the team grows around him, we anticipate that Kaiser will cement his place in the rotation as a penalty killer and insulator.
A few months ago, Yan Kuznetsov would have been left completely off this list. The Flames put him on waivers after a couple of stagnant AHL seasons and a quiet training camp. Sometimes, all a player needs is an opportunity.
Trusted with top-four minutes later in the season, Kuznetsov is now outperforming many other rookies around the NHL, shutting down opponents with improved mobility, range, and physicality. He’s making the obvious plays in possession and activating up the ice with teammates when possible.
We’ll see if he can maintain his performance or even improve on it. If he does, his development will become another example of the value of size, assertiveness, and defensive capabilities at the draft.
A relatively mobile 6-foot-8 defenceman, Louis Crevier intrigued our team in 2020, but we believed he would top out as a depth piece for an organization, considering his lack of defensive refinement and ability with the puck. Never did we anticipate that he would find himself on this list six years later.
Exceptionally tall players do need more time to develop.
Playing second-pair minutes, posting decent underlying numbers in a weak team, Crevier has established himself as a clear NHL asset. He’s the kind of piece that other teams would covet to build a playoff-ready back-end. He’s not yet that kind of physical, shutdown force, but as a late-bloomer, he may have a bit of development runway left, more than the other defencemen who fell out of the top-32.
Honourable Mentions: Marat Khusnutdinov (BOS), Mason Lohrei (BOS), Braden Schneider (NYR), Emil Andrae (PHI), Tyler Kleven (OTT)
