Hockey Prophets

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Henrik RybinskiSeattle vs Tri-City (WHL)10/22/2021Rybinski's experience shines when he has the puck, making small, patient, knowledgeable plays.

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Number of Notes

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1,536 9,930 359
Featured
Brian Fogarty Recent Analysis

Top Prospects: The Defensemen

Fall 2025

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The 2025-2026 season should see an outstanding class of rookie NHL defensemen, with all of the top five in this iteration of the Hockey Prophets' top defensemen prospects likely to see full-time NHL action. The league's top 2025 draft pick Matthew Schaefer will almost certainly get a chance to crack the New York Islanders roster coming out of camp, and the next three--Levshunov, Parekh and Zeev Buium--all had seen ice time at the end of last season. Throw in San Jose's Sam Dickinson and Montreal's David Reinbacher, and the influx of top-tiered blueliner talent is obvious.

 

See Also Top Prospects: The Forwards

 

Top 50 Defensemen Prospects
RankNamePositionAgeHeightWeightDraft SelectionPre-Draft RankingA/P ScoreComment
1Schaefer, MatthewDefenseman186'218611-4.24
2Levshunov, ArtyomDefenseman206'120526-2.84
3Parekh, ZayneDefenseman206'017094-4.29
4Buium, ZeevDefenseman206'0186125-4.30
5Dickinson, SamDefenseman196'2203119-2.76
6Yakemchuk, CarterDefenseman206'3202717-2.50
7Silayev, AntonDefenseman196'72071010-0.52
8Reinbacher, DavidDefenseman216'2194511-0.90
9Smith, JacksonDefenseman186'4199149-1.75
10Sandin Pellikka, AxelDefenseman215'111851714-2.03
11Aitcheson, KashawnDefenseman196'11991715-1.86
12Mrtka, RadimDefenseman186'5218917-1.88
13Hutson, ColeDefenseman195'101594329-2.35
14Hensler, LoganDefenseman196'21982332-0.06
15Reid, CameronDefenseman196'01832119-1.74
16Simashev, DmitriDefenseman216'52036310.47
17Mews, HenryDefenseman206'01897428-2.23
18Willander, TomDefenseman216'11801133-0.35
19Boumedienne, SaschaDefenseman196'11842835-0.05
20Dragicevic, LukasDefenseman206'21965718-2.98
21Bonk, OliverDefenseman216'21792236-0.73
22Marrelli, LucaDefenseman206'11858627-1.59
23Brzustewicz, HenryDefenseman196'21943122-0.91
24Fiddler, BlakeDefenseman186'42203624-0.72
25Rombach, JacobDefenseman196'620935400.29
26Gill, SpencerDefenseman196'31865932-1.57
27Molendyk, TannerDefenseman216'01812441-0.64
28Solberg, StianDefenseman206'120523550.05
29Morin, EtienneDefenseman216'01804833-2.78
30Freij, AlfonsDefenseman206'01973730-0.93
31Amico, CarterDefenseman196'523238590.73
32Gulyayev, MikhailDefenseman205'111833123-2.21
33Rinzel, SamDefenseman216'41902559-0.11
34Kettles, PeytonDefenseman186'519539540.22
35Wang, HaoxiDefenseman186'522233851.10
36Pickford, BryceDefenseman206'01838150-1.79
37Psenicka, MaxDefenseman196'518546460.39
38Mailloux, LoganDefenseman226'321431780.10
39Lamoureux, MavericDefenseman226'72142953-0.11
40Smith, TarinDefenseman206'11877951-1.10
41Bertucci, TristanDefenseman206'21796137-1.86
42Duda, ArtyomDefenseman226'11873643-1.04
43Pickering, OwenDefenseman226'51852124-0.50
44Morrow, ScottDefenseman236'219040770.16
45Sahlin Wallenius, LeoDefenseman206'01805346-1.51
46Danford, BenDefenseman206'11913175-0.45
47Jiricek, AdamDefenseman196'217616580.80
48Akey, BeauDefenseman216'01755632-1.26
49Brzustewicz, HunterDefenseman216'01907539-1.64
50Limatov, KurbanDefenseman196'31986731-0.06
 

 

Featured
Brian Fogarty Recent Analysis

Top Prospects: The Forwards

Fall 2025

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The draft class of 2025 has been folded into the top prospect rankings, while multiple players from the spring list have graduated or aged out of the rankings, meaning that the fall list is a totally revamped ranking of the world's top forward prospects. 

For the second year in a row, the San Jose Sharks have the number one forward prospect, despite having graduated last year's top forward Macklin Celebrini. The Sharks drafted the supremely talented center Michael Misa second overall in the 2025 NHL draft, and just signed him to an entry-level contract. Misa could make the jump to the NHL this season. 

Featured
Brian Fogarty Recent Analysis

Hockey Prophets Top 32 Prospects For The 2025 NHL Draft

 

The 2025 NHL draft prospect pool has been interesting to monitor for the past couple of years. Early favorite James Hagens, who dazzled at last year's Under-18 World Championship tournament and looked to have locked down the top spot, struggled (relatively) at Boston College this season. As such, some of his prospect shine has dulled a bit. Matthew Schaefer, the big, smart and excellent defenseman broke his collarbone early in the World Junior Championship tournament, and the required surgery and recovery period forced him out of the remainder of the hockey season. A pair of teammates on Sweden’s Allsvenskan league team Djurgardens each forced their way into top five consideration by throwing down seasons reminiscent of the best that league has ever seen. Finally, Michael Misa—a former OHL “exceptional status” player and captain of the Saginaw Spirit—played his way into consideration for the top overall draft spot with an tremendous season that included not only player of the year but also the scholastic player of the year awards. 

The 2025 NHL draft is also marked by a large tier of similarly valuable players starting around the tenth overall spot and extending throughout the remainder of the first round and beyond. What that means is that once the actual draft gets past the more obvious first few picks, the field will open up quickly and there is a high probability that players ranked in the thirties or forties will be selected in the teens and vice versa. 

The Hockey Prophets rankings are, as always, our view of how the ultimate hockey careers of this draft class will resolve themselves over time. It is not a reflection of where we believe the players will be selected, but rather where we would expect them to be if we held a redraft twenty years from now and looked back on their contributions. We do not try to insert players for high-risk/high-reward value to later flaunt our predictive powers if an NHL team selects that player in the top twenty, for example. However, if a player is ranked tenth, it is because we think that when their careers are over, that player will be thought of as the tenth-best player to have come out of the draft class.

A note before the rankings: Matthew Schaefer and Michael Misa are locked into a virtual tie in the Hockey Prophets rankings. Both are elite, standout prospects and both will almost certainly become NHL All-Stars. Normally in a tied situation between and forward and a defenseman, the balance would tip towards the forward. However, because Schaefer has the ability to control a game in all three zones and generate offense, he gets the incredibly slight edge over Misa in the Hockey Prophets rankings. The two players could be considered as 1A and 1A-minus, but are listed here as 1 and 2. 

 

1)

Matthew Schaefer

D

OHL

Erie Otters

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Height: 6'2 (188 cm)

Weight: 183 (83 kg)

Age At Draft: 17.8

Points per Game (normalized): 1.29

A/P Score: -3.98 (6th)

Key Strength: Tremendous hockey intelligence, game awareness and skating ability

Key Question: How long will it take him to win his first Norris Trophy as the NHL's top defenseman?

 

One of the greatest travesties of the 2024-2025 draft prospect season was seeing Matthew Schaefer leave Team Canada at the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championships with a broken collarbone. Not only did Canada lose its best player and a likely chance at a gold medal, but everyone missed out on watching months of play from the most gifted defender (and probably most gifted player overall) in the draft class. Schaefer is also one of the youngest players in the class, with his September 5th birthday beating the cutoff by only nine days. Schaefer plays masterful hockey, the kind that catches the eye of everyone in the rink with the fluidity of his skating, the calm puck management and passing, and the loaded potential energy that can be released at any moment either as an end-to-end rush, a perfect long pass or a crashing slapshot. 

Schaefer uses elite four-way agility and smooth skating to cover a lot of ice in just two or three steps, giving him great positional advantages in his own end. With his size and lateral movement, he can strip away space from attacking forwards, preventing them from turning him or beating him to the net front. He keeps the play outside and forces puck carriers to make non-aggressive choices or suffer the consequences, and the consequences of turning the puck over to Schaefer can be harsh.

With his head up and eyes active all the time, Schaefer becomes a truly dominant player when he has the puck in his own end. He has so many ways to break down his opponents and get the puck up ice and into the offensive zone. He looks happy skating the puck out of his own end, and has the stickwork and puckhandling ability of a playmaking forward who can dip and duck and dive his way through traffic and easily win a zone entry. If the forecheckers attack him with aggression and prevent the skating transition, he will draw them in with easy backward skating, then snap a 100-foot pass to an open, streaking forward and then follow his pass up ice. If the breakout needs to be more methodical, he has the patience to slow the tempo, work the puck to his defensive partner and wait for the play to develop.

His vision and awareness are just as remarkable in the offensive zone. At the blue line, with or without the puck, Schaefer can be seen processing the play, making perfect choices on when and where to pass, when to drive down to the net, when to move the puck laterally or rip a shot on net. His offensive skills can be seen in his Age/Production Score which puts him among the best offensive blueliners of the last two decades (nestled in with NHL stars like Evan Bouchard, Victor Hedman and Bowen Byram).

Schaefer is a future Norris Trophy winner and cornerstone foundational blueliner with all of the tools and the hockey intelligence to be a superstar defenseman for the next fifteen years.

 

Brian’s Favorite In-Game Note: “Absurdly talented. He just carried 200 feet, beat two US players clean, drove the net, scored low along the ice.”

Featured
Brian Fogarty Recent Analysis

Top Prospects: The NHL System Rankings

 

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One long-standing feature at the Hockey Prophets has been the top prospects by team ranked lists. For the first time, Hockey Prophets is publishing a ranking of the NHL systems. The rankings are based on a few key system attributes such as the highest ranking prospects, the number of prospects high on the rankings, the total depth of the system, and other considerations. Having a single, super-talented prospect will weigh heavily, but so will having several high-quality prospects. When it all gets sorted out, the ranking should give a feeling for the systems that are going in the right direction and those that have a lot of building to do in the years ahead. 

The thirty-two teams in the ranking will be published as they are produced, with discussions of each system and some of the key prospects in the team's pool. Each team will be given a score on a scale of one to five, with one being a shallow pool and five being a sea full of potential stars. 

See Also Top Prospects: The Forwards

See Also Top Prospects: The Defensemen

 

Team Rankings:

#32: Boston Bruins
#31: Florida Panthers
#30: Tampa Bay Lightning
#29: Vancouver Canucks
#28: Toronto Maple Leafs
#27: Vegas Golden Knights
#26: Ottawa Senators
#25: New York Islanders
#24: New York Rangers
#23: Edmonton Oilers
#22: Pittsburgh Penguins
#21: Buffalo Sabres
#20: Colorado Avalanche
#19: New Jersey Devils
#18: Carolina Hurricanes
#17: Dallas Stars
#16: Washington Capitals
#15: Los Angeles Kings
#14: Nashville Predators
#13: Winnipeg Jets
#12: Philadelphia Flyers
#11: St Louis Blues
#10: Minnesota Wild
#9: Columbus Blue Jackets
#8: Chicago Blackhawks
#7: Seattle Kraken
#6: Montreal Canadiens
#5: Utah HC
#4: Anaheim Ducks
#3: Detroit Red Wings
#2: Calgary Flames
#1: San Jose Sharks

Featured
Brian Fogarty Recent Analysis

Top Prospects: The Defensemen

Fall 2024

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The entire top five from the last top Hockey Prophets' top blueliner prospects list graduated last year:

David Jiricek
Simon Nemec
Luke Hughes
Pavel Mintyukov
Kevin Korchinski

In total, eighteen players from the list graduated as NHL players, twelve of whom where in the lists top 100 prospects, while another 85 reached 24 years of age and have been removed. The highest ranking of the players who aged out was Lassi Thompson (ranked 37th), who never made much of an impact in North America and has returned to Sweden for the upcoming 2024-2025 season. 

The new list is topped by the second-overall draft pick from the 2024 NHL draft, followed closely by Montreal's fifth-overall pick from the 2023 draft. Six of the new top ten defenders are 2024 draftees who will bring some tremendous scoring potential from the blue line.

Featured
Brian Fogarty Recent Analysis

Hockey Prophets Top 32 Prospects For The 2023 NHL Draft

 

The 2023 NHL draft will always be known for Conor Bedard first and foremost, but it could also become one of the deepest group of high-scoring, NHL superstars of the last decade. Beyond the generational talents of Conor Bedard, there are two or three others--Fantilli, Carlsson, Michkov--who could easily be considered as first-overall talent in any other draft year, and another ten or so that could be top-five prospects. This is a great class that will likely be talked about for years to come.

 

1)

Conor Bedard

C

WHL

Regina

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Height: 5’10 (177 cm)

Weight: 179 (81 kg)

Age At Draft: 17.95

Points per Game (normalized): 2.51

A/P Score: -5.29 (2nd)

Key Strength: Tremendous scoring ability

Key Question: Can he prove his generational potential?

 

There is so little left to say about Connor Bedard that has not already been published in a hundred different articles everywhere on the web. However, one key point that will not be mentioned anywhere else is Bedard’s Age/Production Score©, which in his case puts him second all-time among forwards, behind only Sidney Crosby and—remarkably—ahead of Conor McDavid. What that means is that of the nearly three thousand forwards in the dataset, only Crosby has a better overall draft-year point production normalized by age. Better than McDavid, better than Patrick Kane, better than Aleksander Barkov, better than Auston Matthews.

Bedard's off-the-charts scoring drive and competitive nature are bested only by his actual scoring ability. His shot comes ripping off the blade of stick with such devastating speed and accuracy that many times goalies are just frozen, seemingly hoping that the puck will just hit them. He can slip through traffic with or without the puck, finds the empty gaps in coverage, and the punishes every small mistake that his opponents make.  

One aspect of Bedard’s game often overshadowed by his raw scoring ability is his physical play. Despite his size, Bedard can often be seen battling against much bigger players at both ends of the ice. He uses his elite balance and strength on his skates to leverage bigger players out of position, and his non-stop effort means that he can often outwork his opponents and again take advantage of the little spaces he creates.

Bedard is a complete hockey player with a generational-level skillset and work ethic, and no amount of description can adequately encompass just how good he is.

 

Brian’s Favorite In-Game Note: “Starts in his own end, hits the blue line with speed, dekes a defender, then snaps a shot from the circle that beats the goaltender over his glove for his first WHL goal.”

 

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