2023 Offseason Prospect Pool Rankings, 10-6

Once more, Scott Wheeler has released his list of the top 50 drafted NHL prospects, and so I am going to take a look at how the RHL’s prospect pools stack up. This time I have also included his top 10 goalie prospects. For a summary of where these rankings came from and what I’m doing, check out my previous article, just so I can’t be accused of pumping the word count of this article with the criteria on back-to-back days.

10 Vegas Golden Knights

S45 – Rutger McGroarty (LW, 19) – Traded

S13 – Cutter Gauthier (C, 19)

G6 – Trey Augustine (18)

Vegas has agreed to trade McGroarty away at this point, but when I did the math he was included, so they sneak into the top 10 for the moment, with apologies to the Sabres, who will narrowly bump Vegas out of this spot as soon as the trade is processed.

9 Calgary Flames

S48 – Brennan Othmann (LW, 20) – Traded

S40 – Liam Ohgren (LW, 19)

S23 – Jimmy Snuggerud (RW, 19)

S19 – Ryan Leonard (RW, 18)

The Flames made the tough decision this year to trade back from the 3rd overall pick to add some depth to their prospect pool, and ended up picking Leonard 6th overall after a further trade. While Perfetti has graduated from this list, he looks poised to contribute sooner rather than later.

8 Vancouver Canucks

S39 – Matt Coronato (RW, 20)

S37 – Andrew Cristall (LW, 18)

S31 – Marco Kasper (C, 19)

G5 – Sebastian Cossa (20)

Last February Vancouver decided to trade Nathan MacKinnon, which ended up netting them Aatu Raty, the 25th overall pick this year (Theo Lindstein), the 89th overall pick (Ethan Miedema), Matthew Coronato, and Buffalo’s 1st next year. That was certainly a choice.

7 Carolina Hurricanes

S44 – Colby Barlow (LW, 18)

S26 – Pavel Mintyukov (LHD, 19)

G1 – Jesper Wallstedt (20)

Carolina’s prospect pool is highlighted by the top goalie prospect in the league. Wallstedt enters the sim this year after 38 games in the AHL, and likely will spend the whole season there this year unless Marc-Andre Fleury spends a long time hurt.

6 Montreal Canadiens

S33 – Dylan Guenther (RW, 20)

S30 – Marco Rossi (C, 21)

S8 – Simon Nemec (RHD, 19)

The Canadiens drafted in the top 5 for three straight years, and though none of those picks have made the jump to being full time NHLers, they were still able to put together a very impressive run this past season to lead the Atlantic with 107 points.