Lafreniere tops TSNBobMcKenzie's Final Draft Rankings. MORE:
Bob McKenzie's Final Draft Rankings: Lafrenière simply elite, lock at number oneIn this most unprecedented of National Hockey League seasons, it’s been said the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs will require an asterisk for posterity’s sake.A whole boatload of asterisks is required for this one.* No one knows exactly when the draft will be held. Probably October, if all goes well, maybe November. We just don’t know.
- The 2020 U.S. college hockey playoffs as well as the NCAA tournament, including the Frozen Four championship in April, were all cancelled.“That is a lot of important, high-pressure hockey to be missed,” one NHL scout said. “It leaves a pretty big hole in terms of what a normal evaluation on a player would be. What will that mean? I have no idea.”
“I know we lost so much by all the spring playoffs being washed out,” a scout said, “but if the draft isn’t until October or November, and the European leagues or maybe even the junior leagues are starting up in September or October, we could be watching [the 2020 class] again for another month or two before the draft. It’s bizarre, really.
“He’s a top-line NHL winger right now,” a scout said. “He’ll walk into the NHL whenever we play next season and he’ll be a top player.” While he’s the clear favourite to be No. 1 this year, some scouts did allow that it’s not heresy to suggest there may be a player or two in this draft, prospects who didn’t perform at Lafreniere’s level all season, who could eclipse Lafreniere in future years.
“He puts it all together so well,” a scout said. “He can move his feet, hands and mind at top speed. It’s his ability to process everything so quickly that stands out.” If there are any questions about Byfield’s game, they are more relative to the comparisons with Lafreniere and Stutzle than any actual glaring weaknesses.
Drysdale is an elite skater, incredibly agile, with outstanding hockey sense and offensive instincts. At 5-foot-11, he’s not a big pro-style blueliner, but he’s shown to be a capable defender who uses his smarts, body positioning, gap control and stick deployment to his advantage.TSN’s top five is rounded out by Saginaw Spirit forward Cole Perfetti, who has played both centre and left wing.
He’s viewed by the scouts as having high-end hockey sense and creativity, which makes him a more effective playmaker than a goal-scorer, but don’t sleep on his ability to put pucks into the net. If there’s a knock on him, some scouts say he plays a bit too much on the perimeter. Nevertheless, he’s viewed by many as an elite offensive skill forward.Like Lafreniere, Rossi has a late 2001 birth year. In fact, he missed being eligible for last year’s NHL draft by only eight days.
But in the second half of the season he exploded offensively, and so did the projections, even though his consensus ranking on the TSN list improved by only one slot from mid-season. As previously mentioned, two of TSN’s 10 scouts have Sanderson as the top defenceman in the draft and ranked him third overall, behind only Lafreniere and Stutzle. He was No. 3 on the high side, No. 11 on the low side.
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