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By The OilKnight 01/28/2020

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If you have followed me for awhile on social media, you’ll know I highly value what I call NHL translatable skills when it comes to scouting prospects. In particular, the most important to me are: Skating (speed/agility/acceleration), Smarts (also known as hockey IQ or hockey sense), Puck skills (stickhandling/creativity), Shot (release & accuracy), and Stats (production). I also lean heavily towards players with a high compete level. Some call it determination, work ethic or “motor”. If a prospect is a great skater, with a high hockey IQ, good puck skills & a relentless work ethic, odds are I’m going to be a fan of his game. Stats are important but typically I don’t care HOW MANY POINTS a player gets, I care more about HOW they get them. I use tiers in terms of production and work from there based on the translatable skills.

On the flipside, I also factor in Red flags in my analysis and penalize a player’s ranking accordingly. Let’s face it, not EVERY SINGLE prospect drafted in the 1st round all make it. Typically, if you go back over the years you can point to a few things that directly caused the player to fail at the NHL level. All the top prospects had skill & Junior production, but likely also had red flags that were underestimated or ignored. The red flags I look for: Lack of compete level (poor effort, lazy, loses too many battles), poor skating (including speed), poor decision making (low hockey IQ), Inconsistency (takes shifts & games off), and too much flashiness.

Now the last one is a much debated topic among draft enthusiasts. For me, NHL players are too good to fall for the behind the back, spin-o-rama, no-look passes that many prospects can get away with in Junior. Sure, it might work the odd time but it’s more likely a player like that will become a turnover machine – which drives coaches crazy and gets you stapled to the bench. So, skill & creativity is definitely a good thing, but too many unnecessary low percentage, high risk plays are a red flag for me because they don’t translate well to the NHL usually. Really, that falls under decision making. And I don’t care what anyone says, there is ABSOLUTELY a difference between a “Junior style game” and a “Pro style game”. Just because a prospect has a monster Draft+1 year doesn’t mean they are automatically going to succeed at the next level.

So that’s how I come up with these rankings. Keep those in mind when reviewing the list. I’m confident having viewed countless games in all 3 Major Junior leagues that most of these Top 31 will all be drafted in the first 2 rounds of the 2020 Draft. Again, this list isn’t necessarily where I think each player will be drafted in order but who ranks as the best prospects in terms of potential NHL impact down the road. Enjoy.

RANK	POS	NAME	LEAGUE	HT	WT	Movement (up/down)
1	LW	Alexis Lafreniere	QMJHL	6’1″	192
2	RD	Jamie Drysdale	OHL	5’11”	170
3	C	Quinton Byfield	OHL	6’4″	214
4	C	Marco Rossi	OHL	5’9″	179
5	RW	Dawson Mercer	QMJHL	6’0	179
6	RW	Jacob Perreault	OHL	5’11”	198
7	LW	Cole Perfetti	OHL	5’10”	185
8	C	Jan Mysak	OHL	6’0″	176
9	LW	Vasily Ponomarev	QMJHL	6’0″	176
10	RW	Tyson Foerster	OHL	6’1“	194
11	LD	Kaiden Guhle	WHL	6’3“	187
12	RW	Ty Tullio	OHL	5’9“	161
13	RW	Jack Quinn	OHL	5’11“	176
14	C	Seth Jarvis	WHL	5’10“	172
15	LD	Ryan O’Rourke	OHL	6’2“	181
16	C	Mavrik Bourque	QMJHL	5’10“	165
17	C	Connor Zary	WHL	6’0“	181
18	LD	Lukas Cormier	QMJHL	5’10“	170
19	RW	Ozzy Wiesblatt	WHL	5’10“	183
20	LW	Antonio Stranges	OHL	5’10“	170
21	C	Jean-Luc Foudy	OHL	5’11“	168
22	RD	Will Villeneuve	QMJHL	6’1“	163
23	LD	Jeremie Poirier	QMJHL	6’0“	192
24	C	Ridly Greig	WHL	5’11“	159
25	LW	Jake Neighbours	WHL	5’11“	201
26	RW	Jaromir Pytlik	OHL	6’3“	196
27	RD	Justin Barron	QMJHL	6’2“	187
28	RD	Braden Schneider	WHL	6’2“	209
29	C	Tristen Robins	WHL	5’10“	174
30	LW	Will Cuylle	OHL	6’2“	201
31	C	Hendrix Lapierre***	QMJHL	6’0″	181

Other notables: Martin Chromiak, Brandon Coe, James Hardie, Luke Evangelista, Ethan Cardwell, Evan Vierling, Pavel Novak, Justin Sourdif, Connor McClennon, Lukas Svejkovsky, Ryan Francis.

*** Lapierre is injured having suffered his 3rd concussion in the last year. His status is still uncertain hence the ranking.

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