*** We finally have the official draft order for the first half of the 2018 NHL Entry Draft. Playoffs will decide the rest, but we know who's in the running for the biggest names on the board. Also this week, we were all lucky enough to gain access to Cam Robinson's Top 115 Prospects [...]
*** We are 10 days into the NHL playoffs, 3 days into AHL playoffs, amid the semifinals of OHL, WHL, and QMJHL playoffs, and a month and a half of SHL playoffs just wrapped up. My point here is that there's been so much imortant hockey being played, you would be totally forgiven for getting [...]
*** The AHL season wraps up today and the Calder Cup Playoffs will begin in short notice. This is an excellent time of year to be on the hunt for good names to draft next season - because a big playoff run can often tell you so much more than a regular-season stat line can. [...]
*** Well there we have it. The 2017-18 is nearly in the rearview mirror (an inconsequential BOS/FLA makeup game awaits tonight), and it was an absolutely fantastic year for rookies. Barzal hit 85 points, blowing everyone's expectations away, and Vancouver has a new local legend in Brock Boeser (seriously, he's everywhere here now). But now [...]
*** There's been some good Canadian Junior Hockey playoff content lately, and there will be much more to come as playoffs in all three leagues are underway, with the first rounds nearly wrapped up. Here's a quick debrief of the OHL bracket for those of us lacking the free time to catch all the action: [...]
*** Before I get into prospects signing ELCs, I want to highly encourage readers to check out the most recent Finnish Liiga Update by Jokke Nevalainen. Since taking over our SHL and Liiga reports, Jokke has turned them into monster articles - I'm not sure there's more tuned-in scandinavian-focused content out there (in English anyways). Check it [...]
*** This was an excellent week for player evaluation content. First and foremost - our very own Cam Robinson put out his Top 100 Draft rankings. This is a must-read for prospect junkies, check it out here: https://dobberprospects.com/cam-robinsons-2018-nhl-draft-rankings-top-100-march-2018/ The second exciting release this week was the OHL Coaches Poll results. Pretty self explanatory - [...]
*** I'm upset with myself. One of my favorite things to talk about in my weekly Ramblings is any first NHL goals scored by kids the previous week. I try to stay up to date, leading to and end-of-the-year Top Ten goals list (here's my 2016-17 compilation if interested). But while I've been using my [...]
*** Trade activity has already started this weekend, with Nash and Brassard deals shipping picks and prospects across the league and even more to come. The obvious fallout of this is the big name added to one roster, with prospects or picks being added to the other organization. But if this prospect isn't NHL-ready, the [...]
*** One of the most fun (but often depressing) things to do is to look back at draft days from years past, and see the inevitable big misses. NHL teams' scouting departments aren't perfect and never will be, but with the amount of travel and video accessible to scouts these days, I would assume that, [...]