clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Raw Charge’s 2022 Top 25 Under 25 Kickoff

There are going to be a ton of change on this year’s list.

By JustinG.
2022 Stanley Cup Final Media Day Photo by Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images

It’s that time of year where we here at Raw Charge ask you, the reader, to help us out a bit. The 2022 Top 25 Under 25 ranking season is upon us! Time to figure out who are the best young players in the Tampa Bay Lightning system.

If you’re not familiar with this process, it’s something that most of the SBNation sites do for their teams and it gives a really good overlook at the young talent in the organization. In order to qualify, the player has to be under the age of 25 on October 1st, 2022 and has to be on the reserve list, or under contract, of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Players that are signed to AHL or ECHL-only deals do not qualify. I believe that the only player that really affects is newly signed netminder Jack LaFontaine. The names were drawn based on information from Elite Prospects and Cap Friendly.

Based on the events of the last year, there is going to be quite the upheaval in the rankings. This is how things played out last year:

  1. Mikhail Sergachev
  2. Anthony Cirelli - aged out
  3. Erik Cernak - aged out
  4. Ross Colton - aged out
  5. Mathieu Joseph - traded
  6. Cal Foote
  7. Alex Barre-Boulet - aged out
  8. Boris Katchouk - traded
  9. Taylor Raddysh - traded
  10. Hugo Alnefelt
  11. Gabriel Fortier
  12. Cole Koepke
  13. Gage Goncalves
  14. Samuel Walker - Lightning are not signing, will be a free agent
  15. Max Groshev
  16. Max Cajkovic
  17. Eamon Powell
  18. Amir Miftakhov - no longer in organization
  19. Otto Somppi - no longer in organization
  20. Jack Finley
  21. Simon Ryfors - aged out
  22. Declan McDonnell - no longer in organization
  23. Dylan Duke
  24. Jack Thompson
  25. Nicklaus Perbix

That is 12 out of 25 players that aren’t eligible for this years list. As far as I can tell, that’s the biggest change in the history of us putting out these rankings. It seems the organization has made a few decisions on some of their prospects and decided it’s time to cut bait.

Luckily, threw a couple of trades the Lightning have added some young players (Brandon Hagel and Grant Mishmash) and it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see some players from the most recent draft class to debut fairly high on this list.

I’m also intrigued to see which players will sky rocket up the list and which ones will drop. Will any of the eligible players drop off? Will Sergachev maintain his spot atop the list? Help us answer these questions by participating.

Below is the list of 39 eligible players. Go ahead and rank them from 1-39 (with 1 being the best). As a staff, we will also be ranking the players. We will then combine the two rankings to see how the players stack up this year. I heard the complaints about the format we used last year so we’ve changed it up a bit and this should be a little easier to fill out.

The rankings will be open from today until next Friday, August 19th. We’ll take a few days to tabulate the scores and start writing the posts. On Monday the 29th we’ll begin revealing the Top 25 Under 25 one player a day, starting with number 25.

So please vote, the more input we get from the readers, the more fun the list becomes. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

More From Raw Charge