Before I get into discussing my ranks, I want to talk about my process a bit, which I think can help provide some context to some of the decisions I made when making my ranks. If you have no interest in this part, I’ve bolded the first sentence of where I begin to talk about my rankings, to allow you to more easily skip down to it.

Anyone that has read anything of mine in the past knows I’m a big proponent of analytics, so I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I have a fairly large spreadsheet I use when creating and updating my ranks that, among other things, includes box score stats, primary point production numbers, and a variety of advanced analytics for the leagues and players they are available for, including possession and expected goal numbers, primary point production (courtesy of prospect-stats.com) and Corsica’s NHLe, projected WAR, adjusted points and prospect value metrics. While I haven’t added them to my spreadsheet yet, I also use Evan Oppenheimer’s betweenness data, which provides value insight into who truly drives play and production for a team.

However, despite my affinity for analytics, I’m also a big advocate that you can’t analyze any hockey players, but especially prospects, using only numbers. Traditional scouting (the eye test) is also vital to my process. To be abundantly transparent, I am not a pro scout, nor am I a professional prospect analyst. I have a full time job that is not hockey related, I have a wife and a six-month-old son, and I have a social life, so to say I watch even remotely as many prospect games as the pros do would be a blatant lie. However, between my TV package and various streams available on Reddit and some other sites, I’ve been able to watch a few games containing NHL prospects a week for about the past year or so, and as I watch I take notes on what I’m seeing, and slowly develop my own profiles of players with the help of these notes. My prospect spreadsheet currently is about 80 players deep, and I’ve had the chance to have at least one viewing of about 60 of these players to this point (and every one that made my first round ranks), and I’ve had at least two viewings of the majority of the top-30 or so guys.

It should also be quickly noted for transparency’s sake that I have not had the privilege of watching any of these players in person, and it is MUCH easier to scout a player when you can watch in person, because when you watch on TV, your viewing is limited to what the camera man decides you can see, and you miss a lot of what happens away from the puck. In the same vein, some people fall in love too quickly with players when they do see them live once or twice, and make wrong assumptions based off of a tiny sample size of live viewings. Elias Pettersson is a good example of this; Corey Pronman was discussing on a recent appearance on Craig Custance’s podcast that one of the reason he and many others didn’t rank Pettersson as high as he should have is because in his in-person viewings, which largely took place at tournaments in North America, he was good but not spectacular. However, many of the European scouts were absolutely infatuated with Pettersson, because their in-person viewings of him took place in Sweden, where Pettersson completely dominated in league play for a player his age. The morale of this story: yes in-person scouting is crucial, and allows you to see things you can’t see on tv, but you can’t solely rely on it for your analysis—or any other one mechanism for scouting).

The last piece of my process is that I read and research the work of a number of other prospect analysts that I trust and respect. While I obviously form my own conclusions about players, prospect analysis is far from an exact science, and I place a lot of value in reading the views of analysts and bloggers that I respect in the industry, particularly when they are contrarian to my own. Nothing is worse than living in an echo chamber, and I purposefully seek out to views of those with contrarian views to force me to think of things from a different perspective.

One last note before diving into discussing my rankings: I firmly believe that placing prospects into tiers are far more valuable than simply ranking them 1-31 (or however deep the rankings go). Often, there is very little differentiating a wide range of players in a set of draft ranks, and it can be misleading to only have numeric ranks. In my rankings, the tier a player is in is far more than important than the numeric ranks, and you could reasonably argue any ordering of the players on the same tier. Sure, the numeric ranks indicate slight preferences I have between the players on the same tier, but they are all roughly the same caliber of player in my opinion.

With all of that out of the way, let’s get to the rankings!

Shawn and George both discuss Jack Hughes and Kaapo Kakko talk in their own write-ups below, and I’m sure everyone reading this is aware of them by now, so I’ll just leave it at they are 1 and 2 in my ranks, respectively, and both are on their own tier.

The 3rd slot is where it gets interesting for many, but due to the absolutely incredible season he’s having, I put center Kirby Dach on a tier of his own at 3. He has 14 goals and 27 assists (17 of which are primary) in 29 games, good for 12th in the entire WHL in points per game with 1.41 (one spot behind my boy Ty Smith—come on now you knew you weren’t getting through a prospects piece from me without mention of Ty Smith). In terms of primary points per game, he’s still 14th best among players of all ages in the WHL with 1.07. When you filter the list to players in their draft eligible year or younger, the numbers are even more impressive—Dach’s 1.07 primary ppg is first by a long shot, with Reece Newkirk and Dylan Cozens placing second and third with 0.89 and 0.86 primary ppg, respectively.

In term’s of Corsica’s adjusted points per game model, which adjusts production to account for age and league quality variances, Dach is 2nd in the entire 2019 draft class, behind only Kaapo Kakko. He’s also 2nd in Corsica’s prospect value model behind only Kakko, which accounts for league, projected production and probability the player will make the NHL. It should be noted that in my opinion, while Corsica’s league adjusted data is a fantastic tool to aide with prospect analysis, it does notoriously underrate the USNTDP players, something to just keep in mind when analyzing Jack Hughes & Co.

In terms of his scouting profile, the 17-year-old Dach (turns 18 in January) already has an NHL-ready body, standing 6’ 4’’ and just shy 200 lbs. Despite his size, he’s also a very good skater, possessing great agility, good top-end speed and efficient edgework. He has an incredibly high hockey IQ, silky smooth hands and great vision, leading to him being on a very short list for the argument of best passer in the 2019 draft class. He is a fantastic possession player, and effectively uses his power and length to ward off defenders and have his way in the offensive zone. Perhaps the thing that has impressed me the most about him in my viewings this year is his shot—more specifically his confidence in his shot. He’s always possessed a good shot in my opinion, as his has good accuracy, a quick release and a decent amount of power, traits that allow his wrist shot to be a major plus in his arsenal. While he is certainly a playmaker first, his increased confidence in his shot, and therefor increased usage of it, has allowed him to become much more of a goal-scoring threat, which has further opened up the passing lanes for him as defenders now have to honor the potential for him ripping one on net.