I barely do these because they stress me out choosing between so many prospects and narrowing it down to 31. My top 50 prospects for the Dobber Prospects reports usually takes me a week to narrow it all down from around 120. This season I will try to post these more, but do not hold me to that… wait actually do hold me to that and tweet at me to do so, I am bad at social media-ing even though I am on twitter so often. I definitely need to tweet more.In my ramblings and work at Dobber Prospects I try to focus more on “the more fantasy relevant a prospect can be” over how good of a prospect they could become for an NHL team, so it is much easier for me to do these when the players are drafted.
These rankings will be just my opinion, from what I have watched and read, of the top 31 prospects for the 2020 NHL draft
And I must include my #GoodTweet of the week:
{source} <blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Imagine if his first goal was what he needed to become that top 6 power winger we all hoped he would become <a href=”https://t.co/6WlwmuQJEu”>https://t.co/6WlwmuQJEu</a></p>— Pat Quinn (not that one) (@FHPQuinn) <a href=”https://twitter.com/FHPQuinn/status/1200547982996717568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>November 29, 2019</a></blockquote>{/source}
Without further ado here is my top 31 ranking (with tiers):
Tier 1
- Alexis Lafreniere, LW
Tier 2
- Quinton Byfield, C
Tier 3
- Lucas Raymond, RW/LW
- Cole Perfetti, C/LW
- Alexander Holtz, RW/LW
- Anton Lundell, C/LW
Tier 4
- Marco Rossi, C
- Tim Stutzle, C/W
- Rodion Amirov, LW
- Jamie Drysdale, D
Tier 5
- Dylan Holloway, C
- Noel Gunler, RW/LW
- Jan Mysak, LW
- Hendrix Lapierre, C
- Connor Zary, C
- Jeremie Poirier, D
- Dawson Mercer, RW
Tier 6
- Mavrik Bourque, C
- Jake Sanderson, D
- Justin Barron, D
- Yaroslav Askarov, G
Tier 7
- Jean-Luc Foudy, C
- Justin Sourdif, RW
- Braden Schneider, D
- Jacob Perreault, C
- Zion Nybeck, RW
- Antonio Stranges, C/LW
- Kaiden Guhle, D
- Jack Quinn, RW
- Ty Smilanic, C/W
- Shakir Mukhamadullin, D
You know what, let us go to 50 because I feel like being nice to you all, plus they can be all Tier 8
- William Wallinder, D
- Jaromir Pytlik, C
- Roni Hirvonen, C
- Emil Andrae, D
- Kasper Simontaival, RW
- Eemil Viro, D
- Daniil Gushchin, RW
- Thomas Bordeleau, C
- Vasili Ponomaryov, C
- Ryan O’Rourke, D
- Jake Neighbours, LW
- Lukas Cormier, D
- Theodor Niederbach, C
- Topi Niemela, D
- Alexander Pashin, RW
- Lukas Reichel, LW
- John-Jason Peterka, RW
- Carter Savoie, LW
- Jack Thompson, D
By now a lot of people reading this have heard about all of these players and the skill they bring, so I do not know if I need to go over them. If you readers want me to let me know on twitter. But a few things to highlight:
- Alexis Lafreniere is the clear cut #1 even though Byfield is awesome
- The most glaring note is me having Yaroslav Askarov at #21 and not in the top 10. It is because I refuse to rank goalies so high because they can be incredibly volatile once draft. Will he be a true #1 goalie? Likely he will be but there is just something in the back of my head telling me to never rank them so high. It does take them more time to reach the NHL than forward and defense prospects as well. Additionally the goalie market is oversaturated so it would take him longer to become a starter.
- I also slide defensemen down by board lower than most because the defense position is much tougher to learn than forward, which causes many defensemen to bust
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Thanks for reading, hopefully my Dobber Prospects brethren remember me next time!
Follow my twitter: @FHPQuinn