So the likely scenario is that Prospects 1-3 will graduate next season and our top prospect is then a goalie (albeit promising) with 2 more years left on a KHL contract. I guess it is then that we will begin to feel the nauseous magnitude of our all-in deadline trading the past years, unless Gorton can pull some more Hayes/Vesey kind of magic...
We signed Vesey, Stromwall and Gilmour this year, and acquired Mika, which nobody expected, so let's see what the Fisherman does in the coming year. Also, Graves could become a very good prospect. He has a ton of tools: as big as McIlrath, good skater even for a small guy and spectacular for a beast, shots the puck at 104 mph, on PK and PP units in Hartford. He's shown a lot of improvement, but needs to become a lot more consistent, release the shot faster and pick his defensive spots a little better. But it was just his rookie AHL season after the Juniors and he did well enough to be an All Star. I have high hopes for him, he could very realistically be a quality top-4 defenseman. There's no guarantee and he could stop developing at the age of 21, but realistically, the most likely scenario is as a good second pair guy with terrific size.
Depending on how Shesterkin plays in the KHL, he could be seen as a top prospect within a year. Who knows, maybe another kid like Nieves, Day, Gropp or Rambo overperform all expectations. It does happen every now and then. I heard there was a goalie prospect we had a dozen years ago in whom the management had so little faith, they spent 2 first round picks drafting goalies (Blackburn and Montoya). Some Swedish guy named Henrik that nobody paid attention to like pimping top prospects like Kloucek and Novak. Whatever happened to him?