Ranking Prospects Post-Matthews

[GhostofPotvin29]

Corey Pronman ranked all of the teams' based on their prospects, the Leafs were #1 with this write-up.  It's an Insider article so I won't reproduce anything more from it:

1) Toronto Maple Leafs Previous rank: 2 

Toronto has the best farm system in the NHL and it isn't close. Based on my prospect definitions, there are zero reasonable arguments for anyone to even be in the same conversation. Not only do they have a ton of elite talent in players like Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander, but their depth is elite too. There are at least 20 prospects in this system that would fit in many other teams' top 10.

Actually had this ready to go 2 hours ago but passed out after reading that.

 

[Frank E]

Corey Pronman ranked all of the teams' based on their prospects, the Leafs were #1 with this write-up.  It's an Insider article so I won't reproduce anything more from it:

1) Toronto Maple Leafs Previous rank: 2 

Toronto has the best farm system in the NHL and it isn't close. Based on my prospect definitions, there are zero reasonable arguments for anyone to even be in the same conversation. Not only do they have a ton of elite talent in players like Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander, but their depth is elite too. There are at least 20 prospects in this system that would fit in many other teams' top 10.

Actually had this ready to go 2 hours ago but passed out after reading that.

So, this is as good as it gets?

 

[bustaheims]

Corey Pronman ranked all of the teams' based on their prospects, the Leafs were #1 with this write-up.  It's an Insider article so I won't reproduce anything more from it:

1) Toronto Maple Leafs Previous rank: 2 

Toronto has the best farm system in the NHL and it isn't close. Based on my prospect definitions, there are zero reasonable arguments for anyone to even be in the same conversation. Not only do they have a ton of elite talent in players like Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander, but their depth is elite too. There are at least 20 prospects in this system that would fit in many other teams' top 10.

Actually had this ready to go 2 hours ago but passed out after reading that.

What a difference a few years makes! It wasn't that long ago that, in spite of the Leafs having been awful, the prospect depth was ordinary at best.

 

[Misty]

Corey Pronman ranked all of the teams' based on their prospects, the Leafs were #1 with this write-up.  It's an Insider article so I won't reproduce anything more from it:

1) Toronto Maple Leafs Previous rank: 2 

Toronto has the best farm system in the NHL and it isn't close. Based on my prospect definitions, there are zero reasonable arguments for anyone to even be in the same conversation. Not only do they have a ton of elite talent in players like Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander, but their depth is elite too. There are at least 20 prospects in this system that would fit in many other teams' top 10.

Actually had this ready to go 2 hours ago but passed out after reading that.

What a difference a few years makes! It wasn't that long ago that, in spite of the Leafs having been awful, the prospect depth was ordinary at best.

With their recent acquisitions, I would think Arizona would have to be in the conversation for top ranked prospect pool...

 

[McGarnagle]

I heart Soshnikov, who fills the gap left when Kulemin was shown the door. He's not as sturdy or defensive as Kulemin, but Soshnikov plays a pretty similar game, which I have dubbed: heavy Russian. High skill and puck possession + wrecking ball mentality.

I like shoshnikov as well, but I don't see all that much in common with Kulemin, apart from being russian. Kulemin didn't go out of his way to make big hits, nor agitate, and really didn't have much flash to his game. I see a much closer comparable to uncle leo, but with more tools on the offensive side than the defensive.

 

[herman]

Caveats which could explain why we're number 1 by Pronman's definition:

Pronman: Defining a prospect is important when assessing a pool since many players live on the boundaries of being a prospect or not. For purposes of this ranking, a player is graduated if they have played 25 games or more in any NHL season, or 50 total in their career. Ultimately, the inclusion or exclusion of one player doesn't move a team up or down 12-15 spots, unless you're talking top-10 overall prospects.

In terms of tiers, the Maple Leafs are their own tier up top, then after jumping down about five stories we have the Coyotes, Jets and Blue Jackets in a tier, then I'd put everyone from the Hurricanes (No. 5) through the Flames (No. 9) in another tier, before a marginal decline begins from the Predators (No. 10) onwards. Each team's previous rank refers to the edition preceding the 2015-16 season.

We're not going to be this high up in his rankings next year with Matthews, Nylander, and probably Marner coming off the board after playing 25 games.

 

[McGarnagle]

I still don't really know what to think of Rychel yet. He is not expansion draft exempt either.

Does he have the 'drive-train' to play the power forward game? He's got hands for sure, but the wheels are just climbing towards average. Is he a slightly slower, more offensive-minded Tobias Lindberg?

Kerby Rychel too me is going to be Carter Ashton 2.0.

Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me much. If you're not at least at average speed in today's game, you had better be absolutely elite in other areas of the game to make it up.

 

[herman]

I heart Soshnikov, who fills the gap left when Kulemin was shown the door. He's not as sturdy or defensive as Kulemin, but Soshnikov plays a pretty similar game, which I have dubbed: heavy Russian. High skill and puck possession + wrecking ball mentality.

I like shoshnikov as well, but I don't see all that much in common with Kulemin, apart from being russian. Kulemin didn't go out of his way to make big hits, nor agitate, and really didn't have much flash to his game. I see a much closer comparable to uncle leo, but with more tools on the offensive side than the defensive.

There are certainly differences, and your observation about Sosh going out of his way is a good one. I was thinking more along the lines of the largely North-South game (which is rather not traditional Russian hockey), fearless disruption style checking, and scoring touch. I think it might be a bit of an Ovechkin effect.

The PPP article (that I read after I wrote my own hot take) compares Soshnikov to a Kulemin-Grabovski-Komarov hybrid.

 

[McGarnagle]

What a difference a few years makes! It wasn't that long ago that, in spite of the Leafs having been awful, the prospect depth was ordinary at best.

It is pretty amazing. I wonder though, if we had finished 2nd or 3rd in the lottery, would the article have been so clear cut... we have great offensive prospects, but on the defensive side, it's an awful lot weaker...

 

[CarltonTheBear]

What a difference a few years makes! It wasn't that long ago that, in spite of the Leafs having been awful, the prospect depth was ordinary at best.

From January 2014: http://theleafsnation.com/2014/1/25/tln-top-20-leafs-prospects-midterm-rankings-the-final-list

After Rielly our next 6 top prospects were: Holland, Finn, Percy, Leivo, Ashton, D'Amigo.

Now I'm sure most of us felt like those prospects would become NHL players eventually, so that's also a cautionary tale of good prospects being different from good NHLers, but that's still a massive different in quality.

 

[McGarnagle]

I heart Soshnikov, who fills the gap left when Kulemin was shown the door. He's not as sturdy or defensive as Kulemin, but Soshnikov plays a pretty similar game, which I have dubbed: heavy Russian. High skill and puck possession + wrecking ball mentality.

I like shoshnikov as well, but I don't see all that much in common with Kulemin, apart from being russian. Kulemin didn't go out of his way to make big hits, nor agitate, and really didn't have much flash to his game. I see a much closer comparable to uncle leo, but with more tools on the offensive side than the defensive.

There are certainly differences, and your observation about Sosh going out of his way is a good one. I was thinking more along the lines of the largely North-South game (which is rather not traditional Russian hockey), fearless disruption style checking, and scoring touch. I think it might be a bit of an Ovechkin effect.

The PPP article (that I read after I wrote my own hot take) compares Soshnikov to a Kulemin-Grabovski-Komarov hybrid.

Actually Grabovski is a good comparable, in my mind, despite being a centreman. Hopefully he pans out to be as good as any of those guys.

 

[herman]

I think Pronman's criteria leaves some teams a bit short (e.g. Buffalo) in terms of 'developing player' depth since his focus is solely on 'non-NHL' depth.

 

[herman]

Actually Grabovski is a good comparable, in my mind, despite being a centreman. Hopefully he pans out to be as good as any of those guys.

The commentors noted some concern about Soshnikov's playstyle; based on Grabovski's health issues, he might not have much runway left to his game if he keeps playing harder but not smarter.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

I think that you could definitely make a case for Arizona deserving the top spot in the rankings, particularly if you're going to put a higher emphasis on depth and positional balance. The Leafs are really lacking on the defensive end of things. While in the past 2 months alone Arizona has acquired/drafted 3 very good prospects there (DeAngelo, Chychrun, Dineen) in addition to their impressive collection of forward talent.

But yeah in terms of just high-end talent with Matthews/Marner/Nylander the Leafs are in a league of their own. Although it'll be funny to see how much the ranking drops a year from now when all 3 of them are "graduated".

 

[Highlander]

I actually think Soshnikov is much more intellingent than Grabovski to this point. Grabovski was like a Uzi locked on fire mode and out of hand, even in his personal life. I think Soshnikov is more measured, seems more intelligent and hopefully doesnt beat anyone up on the street.  With all due respect to Grabo whom I loved for those very qualities.

 

[herman]

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/ranking-nhl-team-prospect-pipeline/story?id=41724093

ABC News decided to publish the whole Pronman report sans paywall, so y'all can catch it if you didn't get to earlier.

 

[McGarnagle]

Thanks for the link - but in reading it, I really wonder what makes the whole article even worthwhile. Understanding Herman's point earlier in the thread about the caveats, I have hard time seeing teams - ie: Florida as the "worst" ranked team on this list, because that ranking has pretty minimal relevance to mid and long term organizational strength, what with such a young, talented core - that just happens to miss an arbitrary cutoff, that substantially benefits a particular readership bias of a rather rabid fan base.

 

[herman]

Thanks for the link - but in reading it, I really wonder what makes the whole article even worthwhile. Understanding Herman's point earlier in the thread about the caveats, I have hard time seeing teams - ie: Florida as the "worst" ranked team on this list, because that ranking has pretty minimal relevance to mid and long term organizational strength, what with such a young, talented core - that just happens to miss an arbitrary cutoff, that substantially benefits a particular readership bias of a rather rabid fan base.

It's still sort of worthwhile in a limited scope. The really successful teams will be the ones that unearth gems in the latter rounds and can maintain a fairly steady high ranking on lists like these because their pipelines are so full that annual graduations don't put too much of a dent in their 'prospect' depth. In actual practice, that is a pipe dream, particularly with the way draft rankings are set.

This article's flaws is illustrative of a point Nik made upthread about strictly sub-NHL prospect ranking being a distorted picture of a team's drafting and development prowess since most high end picks spend very little post-draft time sub-NHL. The Leafs' stature on this list the past two years has had more to do with our managerial desire to suppress prospects from coming up to The Big Tire Fire coinciding nicely with Pronman's cut-off criteria.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

Thanks for the link - but in reading it, I really wonder what makes the whole article even worthwhile. Understanding Herman's point earlier in the thread about the caveats, I have hard time seeing teams - ie: Florida as the "worst" ranked team on this list, because that ranking has pretty minimal relevance to mid and long term organizational strength, what with such a young, talented core - that just happens to miss an arbitrary cutoff, that substantially benefits a particular readership bias of a rather rabid fan base.

I will say virtually every prospect ranking system out there defines prospects the same way (basically using the NHL's definition of what a rookie is), so it's not like ESPN set up a particular guideline to specifically cater to Leafs fans.

In the end I definitely think that something like PPP's T25U25 is a better way to go when trying to determine every franchise's long-term organizational strength, but prospect rankings still have value. And in the case of Florida, they probably actually roughly agree with what Pronman wrote, otherwise they wouldn't have completely re-vamped their entire scouting staff this summer. Outside of their 1st round picks (2 of whom were lottery selections), it looks like they'll be hard pressed to come up with a single NHL regular from their 2012, 2013, and 2014 drafts.

 

[rdowdall]

Thanks for the link - but in reading it, I really wonder what makes the whole article even worthwhile. Understanding Herman's point earlier in the thread about the caveats, I have hard time seeing teams - ie: Florida as the "worst" ranked team on this list, because that ranking has pretty minimal relevance to mid and long term organizational strength, what with such a young, talented core - that just happens to miss an arbitrary cutoff, that substantially benefits a particular readership bias of a rather rabid fan base.

I will say virtually every prospect ranking system out there defines prospects the same way (basically using the NHL's definition of what a rookie is), so it's not like ESPN set up a particular guideline to specifically cater to Leafs fans.

In the end I definitely think that something like PPP's T25U25 is a better way to go when trying to determine every franchise's long-term organizational strength, but prospect rankings still have value. And in the case of Florida, they probably actually roughly agree with what Pronman wrote, otherwise they wouldn't have completely re-vamped their entire scouting staff this summer. Outside of their 1st round picks (2 of whom were lottery selections), it looks like they'll be hard pressed to come up with a single NHL regular from their 2012, 2013, and 2014 drafts.

Which is funny because, that was one of the things that has haunted the Oilers the last couple of years.  However, the Panthers have found a way to overcome it, and the Oilers, well they traded Taylor Hall for Adam Larsson.