The NHL Draft is less than a week away and free agency starts a few days after that. Before we get too far ahead, I want to talk about the Draft.

As I often say, and repeat at this time of year, I am not a scout. I don't evaluate prospects in any official capacity, here or elsewhere, and I don't spend several hundred hours every winter watching games from the WHL or the second-tier Swedish men's league. I watch events like the World Juniors or the Memorial Cup to get a feel for some of the high-end guys, but it's not extensive viewing. It is a full-time job just keeping up with the NHL and all that entails.

For that reason, I rely on several resources for prospect evaluation. Of course, I will link our 2023 Dobber Hockey Prospects Report here. It was released earlier this month, and I've been digging thought it slowly since then. There is everything fantasy owners need to know about several current prospects from each team as well as a dive into the incoming group. Our Prospects team has worked really hard over the last year to get to this point so help support them and us by grabbing your copy.

Elsewhere, Corey Pronman at The Athletic is one writer I read a lot; the prospect model built by Byron Bader is something I refer to as well. Also, a shout out to Tony Ferrari of Dobber Prospects fame who also has his rankings up at The Hockey News. I will read others as well, and will mention them if there's something I reference from them, but the Prospects Report, The Athletic, The Hockey News, and the draft model are my main prospect sources.

With the Draft coming soon, let's take a Ramblings to talk about a few prospects that have stuck out to me, goalies excluded. We won't need to dive into the likes of Connor Bedard, Adam Fantilli, or Matvei Michkov because there is plenty out there on them as it is.

Outside of the high-end names, players will stick out to me for a few different reasons:

• Whenever I see "but there are questions/concerns about his size," that is a player I circle. I really don't know how much more evidence general managers need to just draft the best hockey players they can, whether they're 5'10 or 6'2. The guy that tied for the 2023 playoff lead in goals, and is now a Conn Smythe winner, is 5'9. It isn't to say size can't be very helpful – of course it can – but GMs continue to underrate smaller players. They've gotten better at fixing that bias, but we're not all the way there yet.
• Whenever I see "but there are questions about his motivation/motor/desire," that is also a player I circle. Not to say there aren't players that don't care to the level they need to and rely on their natural talent, but it's not hard to see athletes being motivated by the idea of playing for multiple contracts with values in the tens of millions of dollars each rather than skating with a junior team for grocery money.
• Outside of those two flags, players with wide-ranging forecasts are also interesting. Sometimes a skater will be inside the top-12 on one list and in the second round on another. Those guys are always of interest; the less interesting guys are the ones with a consensus.
• The last thing that catches my eye is when a player succeeds in a wide range of areas but has one specific skill, usually skating, which is lacking. To that I say: this is why skills/skating coaches exist.

With that long-winded intro out of the way, let's talk about some players that interest me for the 2023 Draft class, in no particular order.

Zach Benson (LW)

We will start with one of the more obvious ones. Benson is ranked fifth in our Prospects Report, sixth by the prospect model, but much later by Pronman. Many of the scouts (and the model) all agree that he has a lot of high-end skill, and is responsible defensively, a combination that should have him as a slam-dunk top-5 pick. Pronman has concerns about his skating, and that's a fair concern given what others have said about his game. What I'll say is that the NHL is littered with high-end players that had skating concerns whether they were high picks (John Tavares) or not (Jamie Benn). His small stature is a difference from those other forwards, but it's not something I'm hung up about as a forward. Skating is a skill players can improve, and it doesn't take as long as we might think. If a guy has tremendous skills at both ends but the thing holding him back from being a high draft pick in a loaded draft class is just his skating, well, I'd be perking my ears up a bit if my favourite team had a first-round pick somewhere between 6-10.

Andrew Cristall (LW)

This is honestly one of my favourite prospects of the entire class just because of the wide range of opinions on him. Here is how he grades out across various publications:

• Dobber Prospects: 14^th
• Corey Pronman: 68^th
• Tony Ferrari (Hockey News): 18^th
• Scott Wheeler (The Athletic): 13^th
• Hockey Prospecting Model: 6^th by Star potential
• TSN Midseason Ranking: 18^th
• Elite Prospects: 19^th

Seven different sources, five in the teens, one in the top-6, and one in the third round. I would suspect that if we removed the two extremes, the truth lay somewhere in the mid-to-late first round but it makes him a guy to watch on the day of the Draft. It wouldn't be a shock to see him go, say, 13^th to Buffalo, and it wouldn't be a shock to see him go, say, 24th to Nashville. Cristall finished his WHL season with as many points (95) as Buffalo's ninth overall pick from 2022 in Matthew Savoie, despite eight fewer games played on a Kelowna roster that scored 115 (!) fewer goals than Savoie's Winnipeg team. My bet is he's really, really good, skating be damned, and an NHL team will get an excellent player if (when) he falls outside the top-12.

Mikhail Gulyayev (LD)

And now we get to Mikhail Gulyayev, a guy that interests me for a lot of the same reasons as Cristall: the wide-ranging opinions. The Prospects Report has the 5'10 defenceman just inside the first round at 30^th overall, the same spot as Pronman and Elite Prospects. Meanwhile, Bob McKenzie had him in the mid-20s in January, Scott Wheeler has him in the early 20s, THN’s Ryan Kennedy has him in the late 20s, and the prospect model has him third (!!!) by Star probability, behind only Michkov and Bedard:

The crux, as it is with many Russian prospects, is when they'll be able to get out of their KHL contracts. For Gulyayev, he's signed for two more years, meaning he likely won't get to the NHL until he's 20 years old, at the earliest. He should be a target for teams that have multiple first-round picks like Chicago and Philadelphia.

Dalibor Dvorsky (C)

Wide-ranging opinions on Dvorsky exist, just not to the level of Cristall or Gulyayev. Of the several sources considered, he was never higher than 8^th overall, but never lower than 21^st. That doesn't seem too extreme as he's not considered in the tier below Bedard, but also not a late-round dart.

The big knock on Dvorsky, like Benson, is his skating. Scouts seem to agree that he has a wealth of offensive skill, but the lack of speed makes his deception and quick-strike abilities a concern. Again, I will just reiterate that skating is important, but it is a skill that can be developed. I have noticed, anecdotally, some chatter picking up on him among prospect people I follow. It seems he's getting a bit more love of late, though we'll see what happens on draft day.

As a parting note, the prospect model has him as the fourth-most probable NHLer in the draft, behind Michkov, Bedard, and Gulyayev. Maybe he just turns into a guy a team like Detroit, St. Louis, or Vancouver takes a chance on, hoping to develop his skating quickly to turn him into a roster player for their respective cores ASAP.

Colby Barlow (F)

How you want to slot Barlow, well, a few spots have him as a left winger, a few as a centre, and one as a right winger. So, we'll just call him a forward for now.

The only OHL players to crack the 20-goal mark and out-score Barlow on a per-game basis were three players in their twenties. He finished the season with five more goals than Anaheim prospect Sasha Pastujov in one fewer game played despite Pastujov being two years older. Given he has 76 goals but just 50 assists in his OHL career, it's fair to wonder what kind of playmaking skills he has. I did notice he had a higher goals/game mark for his OHL career (0.644) than Cole Perfetti (0.597) did in his two OHL seasons at the same age.

All the sources I checked have Barlow as a first-round pick, but anywhere from 8^th to 31^st. He looks like a high-end goal scorer in the making, even if his other offensive skills need work. I would never argue with drafting a high-end goal scorer outside the top-10, even if they need a lot more development offensively.

Gavin Brindley (RW)

Moving to another Small Boy, Gavin Brindley stands 5'9 and weighs under 170 lbs. It's not hard to see why some scouts aren't that high on him. Despite his size, our Prospects Report says his ethic and pace is very high, pushing the opposition to constantly make mistakes. There are ways to turn over a puck besides running a player.

Brindley was a part of the famed Michigan squad this season, the one with Adam Fantilli, Luke Hughes, Rutger McGroarty, and others. He still finished third on the team in assists, behind Fantilli and Hughes, showing off the playmaking he's known for. That playmaking, combined with good skating and his tenacity, helped elevate players around him, it appears, so he's not just a product of a good team.

Some spots have Brindley in the teens, but it looks like he'll fall to the bottom-third of the first round. Maybe he plays another year or two with Michigan, but teams with a late pick that need years for a turnaround like Montreal and San Jose should take a long look at the crafty winger.

Lukas Dragicevic (RHD)

The last guy we'll discuss is a defenceman from the WHL. Dragicevic finished fourth in scoring among blue liners, trailing Ben Zloty (a 21-year-old playing for the best offensive team in his Conference by a wide, wide margin), Olen Zellweger (a top-3 defenceman not in the NHL right now), and Stanislav Svozil, a 2021 draft pick playing for the fifth-best offensive team. In other words, Dragicevic showed extremely well offensively in 2022-23.

Perhaps that is why despite his rank being 27^th from Bob McKenzie, in the 30s from both Athletic writers, and a second-rounder by both our Prospects Report and The Hockey News, the prospect model has him ninth (!) by Star probability. The only 2023 Draft skaters with a higher chance of becoming an NHL star, per the Hockey Prospecting model, are Bedard, Michkov, Gulyayev, Fantilli, Will Smith, Benson, Cristall, and Dvorsky. Players that are often ranked inside the top-15 like Oliver Moore, Ryan Leonard, and David Reinbacher are all rated with a lower Star probability. He is also 8^th by this model for just ending up a regular NHLer, higher than all the names mentioned, and on top of guys we listed earlier like Cristall and Benson.

The knocks on him are skating and work ethic. Again, skating can be fixed, and I don't have a lot of concern about players being motivated to earn tens of millions of dollars. Sometimes, these players don't pan out; Ryan Merkley and Ty Smith come to mind. Sometimes, though, these players do pan out; Sam Girard and Oliver Kylington also come to mind. That kind of boom-bust is the exact reason to take a player like this at the end of the first round or in the second. Most players drafted in that range don't end up NHL regulars anyway, so it's worthwhile to swing for the fences and hoping Dragicevic is closer to Kylington than he is to Merkley. If not, it's probably nothing lost. If he is, it can be a foundational pick for the next decade-plus. The juice is worth the squeeze, mes amis.