I put Brook with Suzuki as I do think he can be a top pairing D, as long as they keep him at RD. Though I seem to be higher on Brook then most around here, when I did my rankings for this season I badly wanted to put Brook at #1 but just couldn't put him over a kid that looks like he's going to put up around 300 pts over his 17/18/19 age seasons. I think Brook has that tools that you want for today's NHL although perhaps if things don't go as hoped he ends up more a 2nd pairing D. Just really love just about everything in his game, but we'll see what happens next year when he turns pro.
Goalies are so hard to predict, at least for me as it's the only position I never played at any level, even in pick up games or just messing around with friends on the pond. I remember being at the Habs development camp when Halak was there but I thought the Swede, Christopher Heino-Lindberg looked better. I remember getting fed up with Garon in the playoffs vs Hamilton and then thinking he would be a very good NHLer after we merged with Hamilton the next year as he looked so much better.
It's very hard to compare people's rankings cause each person will rank things based off different parameters and then you have the varying amount of differences between how much each person has seen 30+ prospects (as I can attest how difficult and time consuming this is) vs their knowledge and understanding of this ever evolving game. Not to knock anyone, but I know for me it took me a long time of ranking prospects to get a feel for it and even then it's more a waste of time trying to predict the future. It's more for fun and to create discussions.
With Olofsson some took offense to my view of him as a more offensive DLR, as he brings the physical tools that DLR had at the same age, size, speed, skating, strength. He's on pace to have about the same production as DLR did at the same age in the same league. Both played for Team Sweden at the WJC's, although DLR was a 3 timer and Olofsson will only be a 2 timer. The concern now is his offensive game, he hasn't recorded a point in any game in 3 months and that's very troubling. Now his teammate who was picked 2 spots after him in the draft is more then double the points in 2 more games played.
Poehling likely is closest to the NHL since it's harder for D and I really hope they don't rush Brook. The NCAA is a tough league to compare with others since they only play 30-40 games and mostly just Friday/Saturday. The average age vs the CHL is 3 years higher as I believe for the CHL it's 18.5 or so and the NCAA it's 21.5 or so. Those 3 extra years of physical maturity are very big, but on the other hand they have odd schedules as well since it's a very diluted league, with 60 teams the level of competition varies wildly, as really it should be broken into 2 leagues and the top league shouldn't be playing the 2nd league as they just can't compete other then by having older players (22, 23, 24).
In the NCAA usually the top teams, the ones with the NHL draft picks as the bottom 10-20+ teams might not have even 1 NHL draft pick on their team, they tend to have a weaker schedule in the 1st half and then after the holiday break they start the 2nd half and that's where the schedules usually get much tougher in mostly conference only games before the playoffs and then the national tournament for the 16 teams that make it. It's actually a big part of how they decide on teams for the tournament, other then the ones that get an auto bid for winning their conference titles in the playoffs, the rest are chosen by record vs strength of schedule. It's a crazy formula called RPI pairwise rankings.
