What often gets lost when I’m building a year-end NHL draft ranking that runs 100 players deep in a draft that boasts more than 200 picks, is that my rankings are not indicative of where I would actually be able to take Player X.



Sure, if every NHL team followed my rankings on draft day they’d run out of players before the middle of the fourth round, but my ranking diverges in significant ways from the lists put together by each of those teams.



And the end result is that if I were to pick for any of the 31 NHL teams in late June, there would probably still be a player or two in the 50s or 60s on my list when my team’s name was called for its seventh-round pick.



That doesn’t mean you don’t do your homework to ensure that your ranking extends well past that range, though. Because every draft is different and you must prepare for the unexpected. If, by chance, the 2019 class runs into the 80s or 90s of my list, the evaluations...