Hockey's Future Top 50 prospects: 1-10

[Ola]

Still laughing at the fact that Lundqvist didn´t make the list... HF has missed out on many players before but this must be the biggest omission ever.

The idea in itself to make a list like the HF does which is basically based on where the prospects are picked the last 2-3 years is pretty useless. A top 50 list which where based on potential which included all players who fill the prospects creteria would be a much more interesting read IMO. After all what matters are how good hockey players these prospects becomes when they turn pro, not how much hype they got before the age of 18...

 

[xander]

lets not take this too far. I, as a ranger fan, would also like to have seen lundqvist included, but the ommision of one or two players doesn't invalidate the entire list. People take this way too seriously...

 

[McDonald19]

Constructive Criticism for the HF crew: If you guys want to be 'more professional' like I've heard I'd suggest not condradicting yourself so blatanly. On the Pens page Malkin is behind Fluery but on the top 50 Malkin is ahead of Fluery. I realize different people make both lists but its something to consider.

Ducks page Getzlaf ahead of Bryzgalov. Top 50 Bryzgalov ahead of Getzlaf.

edit: Didn't see Forbesy's post yet.

 

[Big McLargehuge]

Honestly Fleury and Malkin aren't 1-2, it's more like 1a and 1b...

Honestly about the only change I'd make is switching Zherdev with Fleury. Zherdev is getting a tad overrated around here.

 

[McDonald19]

what other notable prospects didn't make the cut?

so far I'm hearing Svatos, Lundqvist, Cam Ward,

 

[McDonald19]

what other notable prospects didn't make the cut?

so far I'm hearing Svatos, Lundqvist, Cam Ward,

Heres another: Ladislav Smid

 

[Epsilon]

what other notable prospects didn't make the cut?

so far I'm hearing Svatos, Lundqvist, Cam Ward,

Heres another: Ladislav Smid

Some others: Kesler, Hudler, Stuart, Radulov, Picard, Kronvall, probably others

 

[HOCKEY_GURU]

Id like to thank HF for their efforts.....however im not too excited about their selctions/judgement... for starters many glaring omissions that I dont understand...if the cut off was 65 games .. there should be lots of players in this list...seems to me theyre picking personal favorites and sexy picks rather than dig in deep and research a player they dont know much about...consequently it seems the rankings are for selected players only...also id rather not see goalies , 10 were selected thus only leaving 40 skaters..apples and oranges.... of course this aspect doesnet make their rankings bad..also the fact that current stats arent used I find is silly, while a few games isnt the end all be all... id rather take the more recent info...every bit of info helps..... heers mnay names i would have considered for this list:

Kronwall
M-A bergeron
Lundquist
Hudler
Polushin
Svatos
Suglobov
Kaigorodov
Kesler
Meszaros
Ehrhoff
Ericsson
Fransson
Weber
Jokinen
Kondratiev
King
Taffe
Sjostrom
Wallin
Krajicek
Pock
Gleason
Sejna
Komisarek
Heerema
Hainsey
Plekanek

of course all these players wouldnt be in the top 50 otherwise it becomes a top 75 lol... but a case can be made for mnay to be in this list.

 

[PB37]

Mark Stuart, who was ranked 15th on April 4th by HFboards, is somehow off the list despite doing nothing to contridict his status as a top 50 prospect. Amazing...you may not be able to get them all, but I wonder why he fell off of the HF radar just six/seven months later.

 

[Cerebral]

what other notable prospects didn't make the cut?

so far I'm hearing Svatos, Lundqvist, Cam Ward,

Heres another: Ladislav Smid

Another one is Jeff Woywitka... I don't fault the HF staff though, I'm not sure if he's a top 50 prospect either. The omission of Stuart seemed pretty odd to me though...

 

[Ajacied]

I still can't understand why Kronwall is not on the list.. lol

Kronwall is currently the 5th best prospect in Sweden according to Elite prospects. If he should be on it, then so should Fransson, H.Lundqvist and Eriksson.

 

[Chimaera]

Cam Ward is the biggest oversight!

 

[Vlad The Impaler]

Yeah, I don't understand the 65 games (I think that is what it is) cutoff. Why not go with 80-82 to represent a full season. It doesn't make sense to punish a durable player and cater to one who gets injured.

Punish? You got it backwards.

Time for another HF reality check: these players are competing to make a career in the NHL. They're not trying at all cost to make some weird and questionable top 50 compilation of (mostly) unproven prospects.

 

[Ola]

Cam Ward is the biggest oversight!

Cam Ward is a player who could challenge for a spot around 50 while H. Lundqvist belongs somewhere between 4-10. He is already among the top 25 goaltenders in the world. He was the top goaltender togheter with Ty Conklin at the WC last year. Vokoun, Loungo, Dunham, Chechmanek, Giguere, Noronen, Kolzig and Gerber also participated there. Lundqvist downright out played guys like Kolzig, Dunham and Gerber when they went face to face. The reason Lundqvist made the first allstar team at the WC was because he was one of the better goaltenders there, and he had really tough competion.

H. Lundqvist is only 22 and it is not like he has come out of the blue the last year or so. He has played well at the WJC. He posted tremendous stats as a 20 y/o in the SEL. Has the best avg. saving % in the SEL ever after almost 150 games. The only difference between M-A Fleury and Lundqvist is that Fleury was good as a 17 y/o and got allot of hype.

Lets compare him with Miika Kipprusoff who also plays in the SEL this year:
Miika Kiprusoff 2004 17games in net 1.70GAA 93.00%
Henrik Lundqvist 2004 17games in net 1.71 93.86%
Henrik Lundqvist 2002(20 y/o) 28games in net 1.45GAA 94.8%

lets not take this too far. I, as a ranger fan, would also like to have seen lundqvist included, but the ommision of one or two players doesn't invalidate the entire list. People take this way too seriously...

Its about life and death! Seriously just trying to give the HF some contructive critisisim. I love HF as a insitute but their prospect ranking is turning into a joke...

 

[Gwyddbwyll]

Hockey_Guru - Taffe is graduated. Sjostrom also graduated under the old system but you're right probably re-qualifies as a prospect with 57 NHL games. I dont think they were aware of that though.

David Leneveu should be a notable prospect.

I think its interesting that of four similar goaltenders - Toivonen, Deslauriers, Ward and Leneveu.. the two that are on HF's list also match two of the biggest message boards on HF (Boston and Edmonton) and the two that arent, come from comparatively tiny forums (Carolina and Phoenix). Shows the power of HF hype.

I'd agree with trying to do a separate goalie ranking. They are really tough to do.

 

[Sykie]

what other notable prospects didn't make the cut?

so far I'm hearing Svatos, Lundqvist, Cam Ward,

Heres another: Ladislav Smid

A case could be made for Aleksander Suglobov. All the talent in the world, and he is progressing very well. He is a key prospect for the Devils and not that far away of Zach Parise in term of potential.

I could have seen him with no problem in the 30-50 range but I'm a Devil fan, so I suppose I must be a homer here...

In and all, it's a great list.

 

[pei fan]

Like I said Zherdev would go higher than thought by other posters.A bird in the
hand is worth 2 in the bush.

 

[Sum]

A case could be made for Aleksander Suglobov. All the talent in the world, and he is progressing very well. He is a key prospect for the Devils and not that far away of Zach Parise in term of potential.

Right, he probably could have been on the list.

I guess every fan would have wanted more guys of his team. Being a Devil fan, I'd have seen Suglobov and maybe Ahonen but it's the same for all the fans.

In my opinion, Lundqvist is the biggest ommission.

 

[Big Bill]

Good job HF.

Its impossible to cater to all the homers, I mean fans. I love reading the 15 pages homer comments of who should have made it.

 

[Rabid Ranger]

Honestly Fleury and Malkin aren't 1-2, it's more like 1a and 1b...

Honestly about the only change I'd make is switching Zherdev with Fleury. Zherdev is getting a tad overrated around here.

I agree when it comes to Zherdev, although I think Fleury is a tad overrated as well. I'll be interested to see how he does in the next couple of years.

 

[Mothra]

Good job HF.

Its impossible to cater to all the homers, I mean fans. I love reading the 15 pages homer comments of who should have made it.

agreed......and to add to it.....when I see people saying things like its "criminal" that playerX isnt on this list/or ranked 5 spots behind some other guy I just wonder what is going through their minds.......especially since I feel strongly that the vast majority of people here have seen at most a handfull of these players actually play (10 second video clips dont count as seeing someone play)

people complain about the cutoff for being a prospect...whether you agree with the rules or not...they are in place....and IMO it doesnt matter where you put the cutoff, someone is going to be left out....

Like many...I want to send my thanks to all that worked hard on this

 

[JR#9*]

HF did a good job putting this together...

There are alot of fans who want this guy or that guy added but it's tough to put one of these together while satisfying everybodies opinion of the way it should be constructed.

The only omission that I think is a no brainer as alot of others have pointed out is Lundquist.There is simply no way you can not have him on a top 50 prospect list of any kind based on the way he's performed and the numbers he's put up.

Maybe George or one of the others can go into why exactly he was left off the list.

Other than that great job and thanks for taking the time to put the list together.

 

[Hunter Gathers]

The only omission that I think is a no brainer as alot of others have pointed out is Lundquist.There is simply no way you can not have him on a top 50 prospect list of any kind based on the way he's performed and the numbers he's put up.

I think at this point you could have him in and Montoya dropped even further maybe into the 30s.

I still can't believe Lundqvist isn't there.

 

[X-SHARKIE]

Have to agree with Caniac and Smokey here. 100 games or a full season should be the cutoff. Very surprised at Malkin over Fleury. Also surprised to see Michalek and Vanek still ahead of Suter.....although I certainly understand I'm playing with peanuts and opinions here. Solid top 10, props to HF regardless of my disagreeance with their placement of several players.

If you saw Suter play in the AHL, I saw him twice this year, and then you saw Michalek and Vanek play at the same level. At the moment Suter is behind there progress. Not saying he’s not a good prospect, in fact he’s great, but he doesn’t deserve to be ahead of those two. I also saw Ryan countless times last year in Wisconsin.

 

[SmokeyClause]

Punish? You got it backwards.

Time for another HF reality check: these players are competing to make a career in the NHL. They're not trying at all cost to make some weird and questionable top 50 compilation of (mostly) unproven prospects.

Time for another HF reality check: That was the dumbest reality check I've seen. Whose reality are you checking, yourself?

How is this post necessary? Everyone on here (or most on here) knows that prospects, for the most part, don't care about lists such as these. But they are getting punished (using a loose definition of the word) for being durable. Obviously, they aren't feeling any pain, discomfort, or unhappiness, but they are being penalized (do you like that word better?) for nothing more than being durable.

Just because they don't care doesn't mean that it's pointless to mention. You seem upset with the top 50 list. Why should you be? The players don't care