2020 Sleepers

[Jamie]

Which prospects do you see either being picked in later rounds (no 1st round expected players) that might turn out to be gems/diamonds in the rough/etc? Or someone on know ones radar that might jump into the first round?

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[themelkman]

Cross Hanas was pretty good on my viewings this year. People will say Jarvis but this guy kept right with him and did well. Probably goes in the third or fourth and could be a steal

 

[DatDude44]

Matteo Costantini. High end IQ, great hands, very good vision and goal scoring ability, super smooth skating and good feet(great at corralling bad passes without losing much speed), possesses a high work ethic and is extremely humble.

I wouldn’t be shocked if he ended up the 7th rd diamond in the rough a la Ondrej Palat

 

[Jabs102501]

Maxim Beryozkin

 

[LeProspector]

Brady Burns in the Q, see him ranked as low as the seventh round in some mocks.

 

[TheGhost]

This one is likely completely off the board (he has a slight chance of being a 7th round pick), but I’ll mention Luke Mylymok. Played for Salmon Arm in the BCHL this year, and even though his regular season numbers were average at best, he has tools that could make him a decent player at higher levels. Also for what this is worth, in the most important games of the year (games vs top teams, playoff games, etc), he was far and away the best player on the ice

 

[Outofbodyinhungary]

I think marko Stacha is, I think he could end up the best Slovak player taken (if he does indeed get drafted).

 

[themelkman]

This one is likely completely off the board (he has a slight chance of being a 7th round pick), but I’ll mention Luke Mylymok. Played for Salmon Arm in the BCHL this year, and even though his regular season numbers were average at best, he has tools that could make him a decent player at higher levels. Also for what this is worth, in the most important games of the year (games vs top teams, playoff games, etc), he was far and away the best player on the ice

Is that a real team name? Weird one

 

[BondraTime]

Is that a real team name? Weird one

That’s the City, The team is the Silverbacks.

 

[Kevin Musto]

Christoffer Sedoff is someone I'm interested in.

He's going to be a real project pick, but his work ethic is really good.

If he reaches his potential, he could be the next Hjalmarsson.

Far from a sure thing, but since he's probably available in the 4th or 5th round where most players don't pan out anyway, he's worth swinging on.

 

[TheGhost]

That’s the City, The team is the Silverbacks.

For a junior a team with as brief of a history (franchise first played in 2001), they have a very impressive alumni list as well. Travis Zajac, Josh Manson, Riley Nash, Taro Hirose, amongst others. The team had 4 players drafted from their roster in 2004, including 2 first round picks.

 

[Killerjas]

Mancini from Frolunda

 

[Richard88]

Dmitri Rashevsky (forward) and Isaac Phillips (LD)

 

[pgfan66]

Matteo Costantini. High end IQ, great hands, very good vision and goal scoring ability, super smooth skating and good feet(great at corralling bad passes without losing much speed), possesses a high work ethic and is extremely humble.

I wouldn’t be shocked if he ended up the 7th rd diamond in the rough a la Ondrej Palat

First time I'm hearing this name, so just out of curiosity: If his entire skillset is high-end, why will he drop to the 7th round?

 

[McGilliScout]

I'm seeing the attention slowly rise on him but Wyatt Kaiser is an interesting potential sleeper.

 

[DatDude44]

First time I'm hearing this name, so just out of curiosity: If his entire skillset is high-end, why will he drop to the 7th round?

He’s been overlooked his entire life. And playing in the OJ obviously doesn’t help with that. I’m not sitting here saying he’s Cale makar.
But he does have a uniquely high end skill set and I believe he’ll be a late bloomer. I think he needs time to continue to grow, develop and mature physically. I also think his draft stock will drop due to mostly going USHL then college for 3 or more years and teams losing his draft rights etc...

 

[Maplebeasts]

Ozzy Wiesblatt

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

I've tried to take some time to think about this question, and I think the best answer is Skotnikov. I don't think he's a mid/late round caliber player, but thats where I think he'll be picked. I think he's very underrated, and has the makings of a good NHL goalie. I don't see much weakness in his game.

 

[rakish]

Instead of trying to find players I like, I tend to look at categories of players that are undervalued. Today I'll write about birthdate.
These are picks after pick 50. If you look at forwards by age they were selected (x axis), and the pick used (the y axis), then calculate the number of NHL games played using 2005-2015, you see that if draft first-time players (17 year olds), there are 594 picks. They produce about 28.5 games per pick (as of now). Picking D1 players (18 year olds), 215 picks with 27.7 NHL games per pick, and D2 players (19 year olds), 105 picks produce 25.4 NHL games per pick. Nothing exciting.

But if you divide by month, it shows that the most undervalued players were undrafted and young (May to Sept birthday) and chosen in their second year.

The image may be too blurry to see, but the green bars (NHL games played per pick) are much bigger for the group selected just over 1 year in. Also note how little you receive from drafting Jan, Feb, and March born players (bars 6-8 for 17 year olds, bars 18-20 for 18 year olds)

Defensemen are a little simpler. You get almost twice as many games from 19 year old picks as you do from 17 year olds. Over this 10 year span, there were 374 17 year old defensemen picked, generating an average of 15.9 NHL games per pick. 18 year olds were 103 pics with 22.2 NHL games per pick, and 19 year olds 62 picks, 27.8 NHL games per pick.

Defensemen by month creates a chart with green bars very similar to forwards.

Next time I sit down, I will talk about the players that fit into this undervalued areas.

 

[Dr Salt]

Luke Evangelista and Ethan Cardwell. Evangelista looks lik he can be a solid all around middle sixer, Cardwell has a good hockey iq, and if he can grow more in terms of physicality and keep the improvement he had throughout the course of the OHL campaign, he could be a solid player. Helps he's on the younger end of the draft.

 

[rakish]

So, part 2. What do all these charts mean? I'll have a couple 19 year old defensemen at the end of my draft board, some 18 year old defensemen, but no 17 year old defensemen.
Who I got for 19's defensemen:
My model says the 10th and 47th (two teams) best 19 year old defenseman last year was the undrafted Adam Wilsby, He was 39th as an 18 year old the previous year.
22nd best 19 year old last year was Declan Carlile, 57th and 69th (two teams) the previous year as an 18 year old.
25th best 19 year old Ilya Solovyov, previously did World Juniors.
31st best Peetro Seppälä, has been in Liiga for along time, which I think is a good sign.
37th/77th , Axel Rindell

For 18's:
4th: Alex Cotton
5th: Zach Uens
11/42: Samuel Johannesson
17th: Mason Lohrei
21st: Billy Constantinou

So probably 6 or 7 of these guys will end up on my draft board because historically overage defensemen produce a lot of NHL games/pick. Next time I'll point out the overage forwards I like.

 

[SeaOfBlue]

Instead of trying to find players I like, I tend to look at categories of players that are undervalued. Today I'll write about birthdate.
These are picks after pick 50. If you look at forwards by age they were selected (x axis), and the pick used (the y axis), then calculate the number of NHL games played using 2005-2015, you see that if draft first-time players (17 year olds), there are 594 picks. They produce about 28.5 games per pick (as of now). Picking D1 players (18 year olds), 215 picks with 27.7 NHL games per pick, and D2 players (19 year olds), 105 picks produce 25.4 NHL games per pick. Nothing exciting.View attachment 350218

But if you divide by month, it shows that the most undervalued players were undrafted and young (May to Sept birthday) and chosen in their second year.

View attachment 350219

The image may be too blurry to see, but the green bars (NHL games played per pick) are much bigger for the group selected just over 1 year in. Also note how little you receive from drafting Jan, Feb, and March born players (bars 6-8 for 17 year olds, bars 18-20 for 18 year olds)

Defensemen are a little simpler. You get almost twice as many games from 19 year old picks as you do from 17 year olds. Over this 10 year span, there were 374 17 year old defensemen picked, generating an average of 15.9 NHL games per pick. 18 year olds were 103 pics with 22.2 NHL games per pick, and 19 year olds 62 picks, 27.8 NHL games per pick.

View attachment 350228

Defensemen by month creates a chart with green bars very similar to forwards.

View attachment 350241

Next time I sit down, I will talk about the players that fit into this undervalued areas.

Would it not make more sense to bin the data based on who made it and how many games they played vs. games they were eligible to play and then have a separate variable counting the number of guys who could not play any (or a certain threshold) of games? That way, rather than trying to average a huge range of games with the vast majority of values being 0 and dragging the average down, you get a number which tells you both 1) How many players in a particular range made it and 2) How many games players in those ranges played.

This is assume you are comfortable using games played as a variable. It's not the best variable to use as an evaluator, but it's acquisition-value ratio is very solid. Very easy to acquire, and it is not the worst way to evaluate the success of a player.

I will say though, the construction of this model is very impressive. Definitely something I would love to learn how to do properly. Read and comprehending complex models is easy, but building them is definitely a talent I need to improve.

I like the results. If you are looking at OA defensemen specifically, Alex Cotton, Zach Uens, Samuel Johannesson and (long shot swing) Nathan Larose are the four best for me this year I would say. Carlile, Wilsby and (I took a bit of swing on the last one) Ryan Siedem are the other three OA defensemen I have on my board. I do not use an official model to build my boards, but I think of it much like a neural network with a lot more personal bias I figure using personal bias actually makes it more authentic and accurate to how teams actually draft.

Not convinced about guys like Lohrei, Meehan, Constantinou or Calisti at this point in time, but I am still looking at guys all over the place when I can. Especially when it comes to OAers.

 

[SeaOfBlue]

The biggest sleeper on my board is probably Nathan Larose out of Cape Breton. Late 00' defender who is a D+1 but is not far off from being a D+2.

Known for being a defensive guy with good size (6'2", ~200 lbs), he also had 17 goals in only 51 games last year and was 6th best defenseman in the entire CHL in ES P1/GP.

From what I have seen and based on his numbers, I can see him being worthy of a 4th or 5th round pick.

 

[rakish]

Part 3, I've had enough of talking about age, there's not going to be many overage forwards on my board this year, let's move on in our hunt for sleepers.
What I'm really looking for is how much you outscored your team, and how good your team is. Young draft picks like Byfield can't be expected to outscore his team as much as old draft picks, such as Rossi. So we will chart the players by 10th/year, so the first group will be early September and much of August.


This is forwards, OHL, WHL, QMJHL, youngest group. Now draw a line from the top left to the bottom right, we only care about north of our imaginary line. The y axis is how good your team is. The x axis is how much you outscore the second best player on your team (base 60). If you can't see, the dot at the top right is Crosby. The second group has our sleeper of the day, Ridley Greig. My model has Greig 95th for the decade among forwards, so he should be the 9th forward to come off the board in a normal year. But this is a very good year for forwards at the top of the draft, my model has him 12th among forwards.

 

[JJTT]

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