Prospect Info: HFOIL 2020 Prospect Rankings (Poll #11)

[5 Mins 4 Ftg]

Berglund vs Benson (5th on the list) … In 2 yrs who knows where either would be.
Same can be said for Lavoie(6th) vs Savoie (not in top 11).
Pretty sure Maksimov was pretty highly regarded 1 and 2 yrs ago on our lists.

Flawed lists lol.

 

[Samus44]

At this point you can start to remove Safin from the list. I get the impression the team is looking at moving on.

When the Condors' roster was depleted, Safin was never called up, despite his reasonable production in the ECHL.

Doesn't strike me as a move that shows much interest in a player.

Safin is certainly a project and a highly suspect one at that but I think being confined to the ECHL was due to his last season of junior being a disaster with injuries and being traded. I think they just wanted him to be in a familiar place getting his confidence back. Teams that are actually good at drafting and developing will do this from time to time. I think Holland is a fan of letting guys dominate and be confident before moving up. Bakersfield wasn't a good team and it would have been easy to stall any development by calling him up to play more limited minutes at a higher level on a bad team. I suspect Safin at this point is really going to have to earn any opportunity though.

 

[Behind Enemy Lines]

Great point. That's why I went with Kesselring and thought about Savoie. Berglund is a sensible pick but I see him as RH Lagesson in terms of ability and that ranks him lower for me as I don't have confidence in his upside given his age. I wouldn't vote him for a bit but I think Mazura is a real wildcard for the same reason, upside.

I think you can cluster a few of the Oil secondary d-prospects together including Berglund, Niemelainen and maybe one or two of the American college kids in this long shot range. Defensive depth is always critical and one among the cluster could break into a depth NHL defender. But you measure that against others like smallish skilled forwards who are also long shots but if they hit with longer development could have more impact. You see at times mid/late draft smaller players break through having broken through size bias which often exists.

It is so hard to make the NHL and with tertiary prospect/suspects I'd value the higher upside potential over utilitarian game.