Okay, fair enough. Out of curiosity, how much more extensively, apart from observations made at the Junior A Challenge, was Mayorov scouted to be ranked ahead of Cherepanov last month and have no invisible asterix next to his name in doing so? Also, I think I have asked this before and did not receive an answer, but what was Mayorov's position in your rankings prior to the Junior A Challenge at which he impressed you?
I don't know the answer to that right off. I can try to find out.
One thing I do know for sure is that our chief scout saw Mayorov at the junior A challenge. Our chief scout and our director of scouting have a lot of influence over our rankings (as one might expect). If you think that Mayorov came out of nowhere to appear on our rankings, this might explain it. Multiple viewings (by a couple of our scouts including our chief scout).
As for what his ranking was, before the junior A challenge, I don't know what it was, but he was not in our top 150 that we put out on November 4th. So he was a fast riser.
As I said in another post, moving Cherepanov up so much this month is an admission on our part that we had him ranked too low in previous months.
His rapid climb in one month (because we don't normally like to do that) is also a reflection of the talent pool for this year's draft. The top prospects are not considered to be head and shoulders above the others this year. No Crosby, No Ovechkin, no Malkin, etc.
As for Cherepanov's ranking, it's still subject to change, of course. His No. 1 ranking is not based simply on one tournament (the world juniors). If we ranked players that high based on just one tournament, then Ruslan Bashkirov would be ranked much higher for his performance at last year's world under-18. Six goals as a 16-year-old. Since then, he has not impressed us so much and he has dropped. The same could happen to Mayorov if he doesn't keep up the performance he showed in Yorkton.
It's unlikely that Cherepanov will drop because we've got a pretty good read on him now and he's proven himself against older players, but really, it's up to the player to continue to perform (and I don't mean just points) or his stock drops.