D Ryan Merkley - Peterborough Petes, OHL (2018, 21st, SJS)

[Firebrd828]

I haven’t seen his last 2 games, but from what I’ve heard he’s been pretty bad in both of them...

He went down in a heap early in this game, and took a couple of minutes to get up and off the ice. He returned to the game, but you could tell it affected his game. Wasn't the same after that.

 

[clay]

Putting up huge numbers for Guelph this year and leading his team in scoring as a draft year defenseman by a large margin. Should there be more hype?

 

[QJL]

Putting up huge numbers for Guelph this year and leading his team in scoring as a draft year defenseman by a large margin. Should there be more hype?

He is very poor defensively. Any team that takes him will be taking a big risk at developing that part of his game. In my opinion he doesn’t stand out enough offensively among others in his draft class to justify anything more than a late 1st round pick.

 

[93LEAFS]

Putting up huge numbers for Guelph this year and leading his team in scoring as a draft year defenseman by a large margin. Should there be more hype?

He's a highlight and a box-score guy. Watch 5 games of his and come back. He's immensely frustrating. Not only is not good defensively, he seems to lack an effort to improve it.

A lot of his production is PP driven. For example, Logan Stanley has more 5v5 points.

He seems like a Derrick Pouliot or Ryan Murphy. He's probably the guy I'm most curious to see where he lands on Bob's next list. Because, most of the places I trust for opinions are notably down on him, but they were prior to Bob's first list and he was still top 10.

 

[Tkachuckycheese]

Definitely has that boom or bust capability. A team that has a very strong stay at home defenceman could really let this kid play. Kinda like what Ottawa had with Methot and Karlsson.

 

[Apotheosis]

Definitely has that boom or bust capability. A team that has a very strong stay at home defenceman could really let this kid play. Kinda like what Ottawa had with Methot and Karlsson.

He has to want to play defence though. I'm extremely high on his offensive capabilities, as are most. He legitimately has Karlsson tools, right down to skating, edge work, vision etc. But the difference is, guys like Karlsson and other lesser OFD's, they at least use their traits to their advantage when having to play defence. Merkley is lacklustre in effort when it comes to defence and as 93Leafs said, he doesn't score much 5v5 at the moment. If I'm the Leafs, I take a flyer on him and hope we can develop him in the next 2-3 years. But he's not going top 10 and i'm sure of that.

 

[schnapshot]

He's a highlight and a box-score guy. Watch 5 games of his and come back. He's immensely frustrating. Not only is not good defensively, he seems to lack an effort to improve it.

A lot of his production is PP driven. For example, Logan Stanley has more 5v5 points.

He seems like a Derrick Pouliot or Ryan Murphy. He's probably the guy I'm most curious to see where he lands on Bob's next list. Because, most of the places I trust for opinions are notably down on him, but they were prior to Bob's first list and he was still top 10.

Maybe more like an Anthony DeAngelo where he is a very offensive Dman with crazy numbers?

 

[93LEAFS]

Maybe more like an Anthony DeAngelo where he is a very offensive Dman with crazy numbers?

All 3 of them work. Murphy had crazy numbers too.

While Merkley is believed to be very difficult to work with, I don't think he's viewed as toxic in the same way DeAngelo was.

 

[landy92mack29]

When I watched him vs Soo he was really good defensively but he played more as a 4th forward. He was moving the puck effortlessly and had the puck on a string but the amount of odd man rushes against Guelph because of his over aggressiveness was way too many. But when he was actually back he did a good job using his body and stick.

 

[izzy]

hed be a decent risk for the blues to take if they had a pick to get him (they wont) because he can be heavily sheltered behind petro and parayko and deployed with a stay at home dman like gunnarsson or whatever the left side situation is with dunn and edmundson + walman waiting. basically like a new shattenkirk

 

[PuckLife]

When I watched him vs Soo he was really good defensively but he played more as a 4th forward. He was moving the puck effortlessly and had the puck on a string but the amount of odd man rushes against Guelph because of his over aggressiveness was way too many. But when he was actually back he did a good job using his body and stick.

Was this what you mean by good defensively against the Soo? LOL.

 

[TheProspectNetwork]

Does anyone else feel like Ryan Merkley is very underrated? 1.22 P/GP in the OHL for a RHD who doesn't turn 18 until August. Not to mention he does not play on a good team and he has by far the most points on Guelph. I know there are concerns about his defensive play, but he is putting up historic numbers this season. He is a top 10 player in my books.

 

[Thebesthockey]

Does anyone else feel like Ryan Merkley is very underrated? 1.22 P/GP in the OHL for a RHD who doesn't turn 18 until August. Not to mention he does not play on a good team and he has by far the most points on Guelph. I know there are concerns about his defensive play, but he is putting up historic numbers this season. He is a top 10 player in my books.

agreed smart player; i see allot of drew doughty in him

 

[Dack]

Does anyone else feel like Ryan Merkley is very underrated? 1.22 P/GP in the OHL for a RHD who doesn't turn 18 until August. Not to mention he does not play on a good team and he has by far the most points on Guelph. I know there are concerns about his defensive play, but he is putting up historic numbers this season. He is a top 10 player in my books.

Yup. I think he could be played at the wing as well if a team can't iron out his defensive abilities. He's an amazing skater, incredibly shifty, has good hands and is smart too. I don't know if he should go top 10 based on this draft class (don't know enough about the 4-10 skaters but I certainly value him that highly.

 

[lawrence]

He kinda reminds me of Timonthy Liljegren. offensive dman with speed but certain type of liability. That said Merkley seems to be a guy that gets caught and not actually making poor decisions type of dman.

Does anyone else feel like Ryan Merkley is very underrated? 1.22 P/GP in the OHL for a RHD who doesn't turn 18 until August. Not to mention he does not play on a good team and he has by far the most points on Guelph. I know there are concerns about his defensive play, but he is putting up historic numbers this season. He is a top 10 player in my books.

same. Defence can be taught, or trained. Offence not so much, which he brings.

 

[Castle8130]

Yup. I think he could be played at the wing as well if a team can't iron out his defensive abilities. He's an amazing skater, incredibly shifty, has good hands and is smart too. I don't know if he should go top 10 based on this draft class (don't know enough about the 4-10 skaters but I certainly value him that highly.

This is exactly what I'm thinking, hands like his should not be wasted. If anything, he should be put on the wing and switch over to the d position on their power play because he can run one very well.

 

[Castle8130]

Was this what you mean by good defensively against the Soo? LOL.

Ive played defense for 10+ years and have considered myself a defensive dman and can say that first one was his partners fault, but i get your point.

 

[kabidjan18]

A top 10 pick? The defensemen he's prohibitively rated under: Dahlin, Boqvist, Hughes, Smith. Do you dispute any of those? You would have to dispute at least one of those to argue he should go in the top 10.

 

[Dominance]

A top 10 pick? The defensemen he's prohibitively rated under: Dahlin, Boqvist, Hughes, Smith. Do you dispute any of those? You would have to dispute at least one of those to argue he should go in the top 10.

Uhm, who made the “only four d-men allowed in the top-10 rule”? Not to mention that Hughes has looked horrific at the WJC and that means a lot to scouts.

On Merkley, I think he’s become one of the players who are commonly expected to be shit on, but ever since late November, he has been significantly better defensively, and you can’t discount his remarkable offensive abilities. Will be interesting to see wher he is drafted.

 

[kabidjan18]

Uhm, who made the “only four d-men allowed in the top-10 rule”? Not to mention that Hughes has looked horrific at the WJC and that means a lot to scouts.

In the last 21 drafts there has been exactly one draft with more than four d-men in the top 10. That means that more than four defensemen are taken in the top 10 in 4.76% of the time. So is it a hard and fast rule? No, but if something occurs over 95% of the time then most would consider that high enough confidence to best characterize a situation. This, not because it would prohibitively produce the expected result, but because a characterization of the situation where one includes the 5th defensemen would yield far more false positives than the chosen standard would yield false negatives. "Ok, well I want to be difficult, what if this year is that 4.76%." Sure, that's not impossible. It's unlikely, the majority of credible 2018 mock drafts still do not have such a number. But ok, we'll accept that it's a possibility. I thought of making my first post much longer than it was, but I left out the next category after "prohibitive", which was "wide consensus". Athletes almost universally recognized to be better than Merkley. I had 4 in that category, but I didn't think you were foolish enough to challenge the top 4 and I figured you had the common sense to accept historical precedent. Ok, you're not, so let's hear the next four. They were Dobson, Woo, McIsaac and Wilde. Let's just assume, for grins and giggles, that we're taking 5 D in the top 10. He would then have to be better than not one, but all of them. In the world of credible scouts and scouting services you know who that is a popular opinion among? No one to my knowledge.

On Merkley, I think he’s become one of the players who are commonly expected to be **** on, but ever since late November, he has been significantly better defensively, and you can’t discount his remarkable offensive abilities. Will be interesting to see wher he is drafted.

Yes, he is. Because for every 5 people who say "I see him play all the time, he doesn't do this well, doesn't do that well" there's still one vocal individual who keeps saying "I looked at his stats on paper recently and woah he should totally be a top 10 pick." I don't think anyone would say anything bad about him if it was universally accepted that he was a solid 20-30 pick.

 

[Frk It]

Does anyone else feel like Ryan Merkley is very underrated? 1.22 P/GP in the OHL for a RHD who doesn't turn 18 until August. Not to mention he does not play on a good team and he has by far the most points on Guelph. I know there are concerns about his defensive play, but he is putting up historic numbers this season. He is a top 10 player in my books.

Historic? DeAngelo put up 71 pts in 51 games in his draft year just 3 years ago, and also was drafted outside of the top 15 because of his warts.

same. Defence can be taught, or trained. Offence not so much, which he brings.

He probably could be good defensively, if he wanted to be. But it's been an issue for years now, even under different coaches. I don't see any reason to believe he will ever be anything other than an offensive specialist.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

We see this story all the time with players like this. Their stats look great at lower levels, then they get to the NHL, they can still put up respectable point totals, but they make such negative contributions defensively that they wash out their offensive contributions. Unless this guy is a 60 point per season player, he'll have to improve his defense a lot to be more than a 6th or 7th defenseman.

 

[schnapshot]

We see this story all the time with players like this. Their stats look great at lower levels, then they get to the NHL, they can still put up respectable point totals, but they make such negative contributions defensively that they wash out their offensive contributions. Unless this guy is a 60 point per season player, he'll have to improve his defense a lot to be more than a 6th or 7th defenseman.

Basically DeAngelo minus the off-ice distractions.

 

[Frk It]

 

[NJ DevLolz]

Basically DeAngelo minus the off-ice distractions.

Goldobin was on that team. Merkley has no one near Goldobin's level playing with him

Not to mention Merkley is almost a year younger than good ole Tony D.