Projecting what teenage hockey players will ultimately be when they are 24 years old is a difficult exercise with a high inherent error rate that even the best evaluators will encounter. Everyone makes mistakes, and plenty of them. But the difficult nature of the job doesn’t excuse the errors or mean we can’t learn from them. That’s why I write this article every season. I use it to reflect on my misses and determine if there was anything I could have seen at the time to avoid doing it again.
I was worried about Vlasic’s hockey sense and whether he would have any offense at higher levels. You can be a good NHL defenseman without offense, but you need to be able to make a pass at least. Vlasic’s tools were always obvious. He’s huge and quite mobile for his size and he would tease you with flashes of skill, especially during his U.S. NTDP days. I thought he was an NHL player at the time; it was his college career that worried me. I thought he looked average in Hockey East and lowered his projection. I don’t think that assessment was off. He wasn’t amazing in school, but the tools still looked excellent and I shouldn’t have moved the needle so drastically from a guy I projected as a No. 4-6 NHL D to someone who wouldn’t play.
Faber as an amateur always stood out due to his skating and competitiveness. There was no doubt he was an excellent defender who was a clear NHL-level skater. He didn’t show much offense with the U.S. NTDP or in college, though. He wasn’t a regular power-play type at lower levels, which is why it was surprising when he turned into a PP1 type in the NHL. I don’t think even his biggest backers would say they realistically expected a 47-point rookie season at the top level, but they would argue his hockey sense was good enough for him to be a very good two-way player. The amount of plays he’s shown he can make has been surprising to an extent, but some scouts would argue that when you’re that good a skater, all you need is decent hockey sense and skill to have a lot of NHL success. I focused too much on the lack of offense in Faber’s game and looked past all the clear NHL qualities in his play, including the fact that he did show decent enough puck-moving. The NTDP is a very talented team and only one defenseman can get the power-play time, which makes it difficult when evaluating kids such as Vlasic and Faber.
Alexander Holtz, Jacob Perreault, Brendan Brisson
I grouped these three players together because their skill sets and play styles are similar. They are highly skilled wingers who can rifle a puck, but there were questions on how their games were going to translate to the NHL due to so-so footspeed and compete. All three of these players — Holtz in particular, who went in the top 10 — were excellent junior players full of highlight reels. I thought all three of them would have legitimate NHL careers. Holtz is up in the NHL and Brisson has gotten games, but it’s fair to say all three players’ development hasn’t gone as planned. That’s the risk when your whole bet is based on skill and not a true athletic profile reminiscent of most NHL players or a very high compete level. If you are going to bet on skill, you better be sure the skill isn’t just very good but special, and I would argue these players’ pure talent doesn’t rise to that level.
Alexander Holtz was drafted No. 7 by the New Jersey Devils in 2020, but his development hasn’t gone as planned. (Stephen R. Sylvanie / Imagn Images)
I was very high on Ceulemans going into his draft year, projecting him as a top-four NHL defenseman. I saw a tall, right-shot defenseman who skated well, had good skill and even played with some bite. He could be a bit wild at times, but I thought he showed he could make enough plays and had a lot of NHL tools. He still went in the first round, and it was a tough time to evaluate players due to the limited COVID-19 season, but numerous NHL scouts said “buyer beware on his hockey sense.” That ended up being a major issue at the college level where he fought the puck at times, wasn’t as crisp a defender as I thought he could be and was a middling player at that level. He could ultimately end up playing in the league, but he’s clearly not the top prospect I had him rated as and I completely misevaluated his sense issues that at least some scouts did see.
I was stunned when Seattle took Ryker Evans No. 35 in 2021. He was a slightly undersized re-entry defenseman who played hard and skated well and pointed in the shortened COVID WHL bubble season, but I didn’t view him as a true puck-mover in the NHL. I underrated exactly how much offense was in Evans’ game, as he went on to be a great AHL player shortly after and is now an important part of Seattle’s offense several years since the draft. His defending is good enough at his size due to his feet and motor. I don’t know if he’s more than a No. 4/5 D on a good team, but he’s a legit NHL player who can play both ways, and I didn’t think he was more than a camp invite type going into his second NHL draft. I just completely whiffed on this one and didn’t do the research that I should have in his draft season.
There’s merit to doing this type of article, as I think it benefits my process and can inform readers, too. But there is an uncertainty around when to make the call to speak. How long do you wait to determine if a projection was wrong? Is it two years, four years, 10 years? Player development can fluctuate over the seasons and make it difficult.
Why do I mention this? Because I’m doing something today I absolutely, positively dread every time I write this article: mentioning a player for the second time. In 2022, I wrote up McMichael as a player I was too high on. Now, in 2024, I’m walking that back.
My evaluations of McMichael have fluctuated wildly. I went from a bottom-six forward in his draft season in 2019 to a potential top-line forward a year or two later. Then, in ’22 after he struggled a bit in the NHL, was sent back to the AHL and wasn’t lighting it up there, I saw a potential middle-six forward. A broken clock must be right at some point. I’m not going to sit here and tell you how wrong I was, because it’s unclear which prediction was the wrong one!
McMichael has been excellent this season as a leading part of a surprising Washington team. My concern in junior was his skating (as it was for some NHL scouts I talked to). Whether the feet improved or I misevaluated it, his skating hasn’t been an issue this season. He’s playing fast enough to go with his hardworking style, high skill level and ability to score. Whatever the projection is for McMichael, he’s a very good player. I arguably shouldn’t have rushed to judgment on a then-21-year-old and I probably need to be more cautious before I mention a player in a piece like this in general.
NHL prospects I was wrong about: 2023 | 2022 | 2021-22 | 2021 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017
(Top photos of Brock Faber and Connor McMichael: Sean M. Haffey and Patrick Smith / Getty Images)
