Josh Davies

July 2024 – 32 NHL teams want somebody like Josh Davies playing in their bottom six. Davies skates fast, plays hard, and brings the intensity up to 11 on every single shift. He lacks discipline but has presumably gotten better with it as he took 40 fewer PIMs in 2023-24 than he did in 2022-23 while also taking on a larger role. He had his most productive season in the WHL on the Portland Winterhawks second line. Playing alongside a pair of 100-point scorers in Gabe Klassen and James Stefan, Davies’ production should be taken with a heavy grain of salt but that does not take away from his skill. Davies will need a bit of time in the minors to further refine his defensive skills which are already a solid part of his game. With his physicality and speed, he looks like he will be a player who spends the majority of his time on a 3rd or 4th line but gets thrown into the top six whenever his team is losing and the coach puts the lines in a blender. Davies will likely need a year to mature in the AHL but it would not be surprising to see him be one of the final cuts from Panthers camp this fall or to see him get a call-up if an injury were to occur. James Connelly

January 2024 – One of the hardest hitters of the 2022 draft, Davies has added a deft offensive touch in his third WHL campaign. After putting up a lacklustre 70 points across his first two WHL seasons, he currently has 51 points in only 34 games for the Portland Winterhawks, where he plays with fellow Panthers prospect Marek Alscher, also drafted in 2022. Because this scoring uptick is happening so late in his junior career, take it with a heavy dose of salt in terms of projecting similar numbers at the next level. He has all the makings of a Cal Clutterbuck-type pest who hits everything that moves and ends up in the penalty box more often than his coach would like. But players like that who can mix snarl and skill don’t come along every day, so he likely will get a chance in the Cat’s bottoms six at some point in the coming years. Ben Gehrels