Revisiting Preseason Rankings for 2018 NHL Draft

Scouting is not an exact science and hindsight can be hilarious at times.

The draft year offers a ton of time for development and so much can change from September to June.

Still, it’s both fun and educational to look back — to laugh and learn.

After publishing my preseason rankings for the 2020 NHL draft — my top 124 following the Hlinka Gretzky Cup — I decided to take a look back on my preseason rankings from 2018 and 2019.

I wanted to see how those rankings held up come draft day. For better or worse.

33) Nando Eggenberger

38) Anderson MacDonald

40) Libor Zabransky

49) Pavel Rotenberg

54) Gilian Kohler

57) Lukas Wernblom

62) Carl Stankowski

Third Round

66) Egor Sokolov

67) Kirill Nizhnikov

68) Samuel Salonen

69) Jake Tortora

71) David Levin

73) Adam Liska

77) Jake Gricius

83) Keegan Karki

86) Krystof Hrabik

88) Oliver True

89) Samuel Bitten

90) Eli Zummack

91) Liam Kindree

92) Brodi Stuart

93) Chase Wouters

Honourable Mentions

94) Ivan Muranov

95) Kyle Topping

97) Jacob Semik

98) Sean Comrie

Only two of those 26 prospects remained in my final top 100 for 2018: Wouters (87) and Tortora (94). The other 24 had fallen off my list.

Bust is a strong word considering most those kids are still teenagers heading into this season and the majority of them took a decent step last season despite not getting drafted again in 2019 as overagers.

Truth be told, I still have some level of hope for upwards of 20 of those 26. MacDonald, Rotenberg, Kohler, True, Bitten and Semik are the only ones that I’m willing to write off right now. True and Bitten both have older brothers having success in the AHL — Alex True and Will Bitten — but I don’t foresee the younger siblings amounting to much. MacDonald was once a hyped prospect — considered a first-rounder or even a top-10 talent for his draft class in his younger years — but he’s struggled with mental health after failing to live up to those expectations. Rotenberg, Kohler and Semik just don’t seem to be progressing.

Stankowski is a smaller goalie that has struggled with injuries and illness. Karki is a huge goalie making the move to WHL Everett but his numbers have left a lot to be desired. Muranov made Russia’s world-junior team as an undrafted forward, but his stat-lines weren’t very promising overall. Hope is fading for those three.

Outside of those nine, though, I still think there could be some NHL players among the other 17. Hrabik and Liska took big strides and could have been drafted in 2019 — dare I say should have been drafted? I’m excited to see what Zabransky and Comrie can do in the WHL as 19 year olds with Saskatoon and Kelowna, respectively. Kindree could have a breakout season for Memorial Cup host Kelowna too, and Topping will be one of the leaders on that team again. I’m still a big fan of the little guys Tortora and Zummack as well. Not all hope is lost for them.

Lastly, I should share the 44 players drafted within the top 100 in 2018 that didn’t appear in my preseason rankings. However, eight of them were overagers and I typically don’t include overagers in my rankings until the second half of the season — keeping my focus on the first-time eligibles for the first half — thus those eight wouldn’t have appeared in my preseason top 100 even if I liked them that high.

My final rankings did include overagers for 2018 and of those 44 omissions from my preseason top 100, the following 28 were included in my final top 100, with only 16 not ranked in the end:

First Round

19) Jay O’Brien — 50

26) Jacob Bernard-Docker — 46

27) Nic Beaudin — 43

28) Nils Lundkvist — 26

Second Round

34) Serron Noel — 35

38) Alexander Romanov — NR

43) Ruslan Iskhakov — 97

44) Albin Eriksson — 98

45) Scott Perunovich (overager) — 80

46) Martin Fehervary — 67

47) Kody Clark — NR

49) Kirill Marchenko — 52

50) Adam Ginning — 55

52) Sean Durzi (overager) — NR

57) Axel Andersson — NR

60) David Gustafsson — 38

61) Ivan Morozov — 53

Third Round

66) Cam Hillis — 62

67) Alec Regula — 70

68) Tyler Madden — 90

70) Jakob Ragnarsson — NR

71) Jordan Harris — 92

73) Ty Emberson — 57

74) Niklas Nordgren — 39

75) Oskar Back — 82

76) Semyon Der-Arguchintsev — 95

78) Sampo Ranta — 73

79) Blake McLaughlin — 47

80) Marcus Karlberg — NR

81) Seth Barton (overager) — NR

82) Bulat Shafigullin — 77

84) Jesper Eliasson — NR

85) Lukas Dostal — 99

87) Linus Karlsson — NR

88) Joey Keane (overager) — NR

89) Logan Hutsko (overager) — NR

90) Dmitri Semykin — NR

91) Nathan Smith (overager) — NR

92) Connor Dewar (overager) — NR

Fourth Round

94) Matej Pekar — 49

96) Luke Henman — NR

98) Ryan O’Reilly — 83

99) Slava Demin — 69

100) Adam Mascherin (overager) — NR

I was still low on a lot of them, but at least they were on my list when it came to the final rankings.

The most regrettable miss is Romanov, who looks like a real player in the making for Montreal after standing out at the World Juniors. Durzi was really good in the OHL playoffs and Los Angeles could wind up winning that Jake Muzzin trade if he pans out as a pro.

Barton and Dewar were frustrating misses since they were playing in my backyard — in the BCHL and WHL, respectively — but I did have them getting selected in my 2018 mock, albeit both as seventh-rounders when they went in the third round. I had Barton at 195 and Dewar at 201. Barton was taken at 81 and Dewar at 92.

As bad as that discrepancy looks, I’m still considering it a small victory of sorts in taking a glass half full outlook on these 2018 results.

For that draft year, I published five rankings of my top 100 prospects: preseason (Sept. 16), midseason (Feb. 5), following regular season (March 29), following under-18 tournament (May 1), and final following the combine (June 4).