2020 NHL Draft Rankings: The preseason top 31 prospects

Last June, I wrote and released my first-ever draft rankings prior to the 2019 NHL Entry Draft. With the 2019-2020 season quickly approaching, many reputable scouting and prospect websites have begun releasing preliminary rankings for the 2020 NHL Entry Draft.

I’ve said before that the 2020 draft is projected by many scouts to be the deepest in recent memory (comparable to 2015). There are an incredible number of players with extremely promising NHL projections. In fact, there are so many that, after about the top 12, scouts’ opinions differ vastly regarding who else should go in the first round.

For the last two months, I’ve been reading up on the top prospects eligible for the 2020 draft, more out of curiosity than anything else. Doing a preseason ranking of my own has always been in the back of my mind, since I enjoy seeing how much things have changed by the end of the season.

The Prospects

I’ve written a couple of posts on some of the oldest and youngest players eligible for the draft, which you can find below:

Related

2020 NHL Draft: Eight prospects with late 2001 birthdays to watch this season
2020 NHL Draft: Ten younger prospects to keep an eye on this season
Ten standout players at the 2019 Hlinka-Gretzky Cup

I also have a third post in the works that will probably come out a bit later. However, there are a couple of things to note about this draft class. First, it’s looking increasingly likely that there will be a goalie drafted in the top 10 in Russia’s Yaroslav Askarov. He’s begun his regular season in Russia’s minor league, and has a .920 save percentage in three starts. Askarov could very well be Russia’s starting goalie at the 2020 World Juniors (a team that is notorious for only taking 19-year old players). If you thought Spencer Knight was leading the next wave of goaltending, you haven’t seen Askarov play enough.

Second, where last year was USA vs. Finland, this year will be Canada vs. Sweden. I’m not talking about World Juniors results, I’m referring to the year’s top prospects. Canadian left-winger Alexis Lafreniere, who has drawn comparisons to Sidney Crosby, is currently the undisputed top draft pick. He’s joined near the top of the rankings by big, hulking center Quinton Byfield, who shone for Canada at the Hlinka-Gretzky Cup this past August.

As for Sweden, the ‘Terror Twins’ are finally draft-eligible. Lucas Raymond and Alexander Holtz have been a formidable duo at every international tournament they’ve played in. Raymond is the sneaky, elusive playmaker, whereas Holtz is the finisher who can bury pucks on command. They complement each other extremely well, and are two of the most exciting forwards that Sweden has developed recently (they’ve had a better track record with defensemen).

There’s still an extremely-skilled Finn near the top of the rankings in Anton Lundell. The center who scouts say has the best vision in the draft is a dynamic playmaker who can feed his teammates passes from anywhere. As far as American players, though, it’s not a strong year for them. Where 2019 was littered with top-tier American talent, 2020 is a steep drop-off. The top-ranked American player on my ranking is Antonio Stranges at 17, and the top-ranked USNTDP player is Ty Smilanic at 19.

Also, you’ll probably remember that this is an older draft than in recent years. There are a plethora of late-2001 prospects projected to go in the first round (I wrote about eight of them). In fact, 20 of the 31 prospects in this preseason ranking are born between September 15, 2001 and February 28, 2002.

Generating The Rankings

So how did I come up with my final list for the preseason? Well to give myself a starting point, I first made a giant Excel spreadsheet of the top 31 players from the following five preseason rankings: Future Considerations, The Hockey News, The Hockey Writers, NHL BlackBook 2019, and Craig Button’s list at TSN.ca.

Of the five lists, there were 16 players who were on every single one. After that, there was a huge drop-off. Just to narrow it down further, I eliminated all players who were only mentioned on one ranking, took the average of the remaining prospects’ rankings, and came up with a list of over 40 players. I cut the list down to 31 and then went through and swapped some players around based on my opinion, using their skill-sets and NHL projections to make the final call.

The Actual Rankings

I think I’ve dragged this on long enough, so here are the preseason rankings! Feel free to debate my choices in the comments and we’ll see how much this changes throughout the year!

Preseason Rankings (September 12, 2019)