Welcome back to The Journey, where we track the development of prospects as they excel in junior, make the NHL, and push towards stardom.

This week, we will continue the Uncertain Futures segment that has so far featured Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (BUF), Dylan Holloway (EDM), and Bobby Brink (PHI). Each instalment will highlight a player with an uncertain NHL projection who was covered by the recent Organizational Rankings project over at Dobber Prospects. Seven members of DP's senior staff, including myself, ranked the top 15 prospects in each team's pipeline and gave them a score from 1 (not fantasy relevant) to 10 (generational).

For reference, here is the team at Dobber Prospects (in order of the scores):

Peter Harling (Managing Editor)

Victor Nuño (Junior Editor)

Curtis Rines (Associate Editor)

Pat Quinn (Associate Editor)

Aaron Itovitch (Junior Editor)

Sebastian High (Director of Scouting)

Ben Gehrels (Associate Editor)

As before, we will focus on players who prompted a variation of at least three points between the editors. Player X would qualify, for instance, if he received a score of 5 from one person and a score of 8 from at least one other. A spread that dramatic indicates a player's NHL projection is currently quite cloudy, and uncertainty is always interesting in fantasy. Should you sell high while they still have name value? Or is it a great time to hold or buy low? There are a number of factors to consider when ranking a player's future upside, including team context, deployment, skill-sets, trajectory, and past performance.

Let's dig a bit further into the some more intriguing players that threw the Dobber Prospects team for a loop.

Fyodor Svechkov, NAS

Scores: 5, 4, 6, 7, 5, 6, 7

Svechkov (19th overall, 2021) is one of the best two-way forward talents to come through the draft in recent years. His game is highlighted by high-end passing, puckhandling, and hockey sense, which he consistently leverages to help his team drive play in all three zones, but he has no real holes anywhere else either. Although he is known for his responsible play, he has also shown a penchant for solid production at the professional level as recently as last year, when he scored 31 points in only 30 VHL games in Russia's second tier.

Terrific pick for Nashville. Svechkov should've gone much sooner pic.twitter.com/RLKI3scBbS

— /Cam Robinson/ (@Hockey_Robinson) July 24, 2021

So why did a player like that receive a four and two fives from the DP Editors?

My guess is that their concerns lie with his ultimate NHL upside. The biggest red flag in his profile, aside from his nationality in the current geopolitical climate, is his notable step back in VHL production: over a smaller sample size, Svechkov's scoring rate fell 50% (seven in 14). He also dominated a handful of junior games (eight points in five games), which is not surprising, but his main focus this year was the KHL, where he put up four points in 27 games.

The low KHL scoring is no surprise, of course, as we have come to expect that from young players at Russia's highest level. Unlike the majority of his peers, however, he was not overly restricted by low, inconsistent minutes at the top level. He played his way out of single-digit ice time as the year went on, averaging over 14 minutes a game over his final 10 KHL games. Compare that to top 2022 prospect Danila Yurov's six minutes per game over his final ten, for instance. Given Svechkov's balanced, responsible game, it is not overly surprising that he earned an expanded role in the world's second-best league as a 20-year-old prospect as the year went on.

Is his decrease in VHL production cause for concern? I don't think so. His team, Khimik, which also boasted NHL prospects Nikita Chibrikov (WPG) and Danila Orlov (NJD), steamrolled their way through the playoffs, eventually earning the league championship with a 7-3 victory over Sokol. Leading the charge was Svechkov, who put up seven points in nine games, took almost 3.5 shots per game, and averaged over 17 minutes a game. He was clearly one of Khimik's main go-to players and did what he needed to do to push his team over the top.

Other helpful context: he missed most of November and February, presumably due to injury, though I cannot find any information on those absences. Between missing some time, bouncing between leagues, and adjusting to the pace and intensity at Russia's highest level, it is understandable that his scoring had some hiccups.

Marat Khusnutdinov #mnwild with a nice pass to Svechkov #Preds who feeds Chibrikov #gojetsgo to finish off a tic-tac-toe play in the Sochi Open. What a fun/dangerous line this is for Russia 🇷🇺 #HockeyTwitter pic.twitter.com/m7X1rXbxQt

— Douglas Larson (@DL_Scouting) August 6, 2021

Just remember that this is a guy who was billed as Matty Beniers lite in his draft year. Beniers (SEA) has now put up 66 points over his first 90 NHL games and emerged as a solid number-one center for the Kraken at age 20. Even if Svechkov's ceiling ends up being in the middle six, he still seems on track to develop into a strong number two or three center for the Preds.

Here is how Svechkov compares to Beniers in the Hockey Prospecting model. Remember to take those D+2 numbers with the handful of salt outlined above:

Those look like fairy similar trajectories up until 2022-23 when Beniers took a dominant step forward and Svechkov appeared to falter. Keep in mind that the HP model prioritizes production, so all that context we waded through here is not taken into account. Those Barret Hayton, Eeli Tolvanen, and Jordan Staal comparables seem both apt and promising.

More good news: Svechkov is set to make his debut with Milwaukee (AHL) in 2023-24 just as the Predators opened things up down the middle of their depth chart by trading Ryan Johansen to the Avalanche.

#preds have traded Ryan Johansen to #Avs and retained 50 percent of his salary in exchange for rights to Alex Galchenyuk.

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) June 24, 2023

He joins what has become an intriguing youth movement in Nashville alongside fellow youngsters Cody Glass, Tommy Novak, Juuso Parssinen, Philip Tomasino, Joakim Kemell, Zach L'Heureux, and Luke Evangelista. We do not have publicly available data on his face-off prowess, so that will be an interesting situation to monitor in 2023-24.

The Preds are quite strong down the middle, though they just lost their top face-off man in Johansen (59.2%, 502 wins). Other strong pivots like Michael McCarron (59.4%, 63 wins), Mark Jankowski (55.7%, 191 wins), and Colton Sissons (53.4%, 592 wins) are bottom-six players, and other contributors like Matt Duchene (52.9%, 137 wins) and Juuso Parssinen (49.8%, 155 wins) seem more like wingers who can help out when needed. That leaves Cody Glass (49.8%, 362 wins) as Nashville's main top-six pivot heading into next year. If Svechkov can hold his own at the dot in the AHL, there could be a second-line center role in the NHL for him in the near future.

Ethan Del Mastro, CHI

Scores: 6, 6, 6.5, 5, 4, 4, 3

I was the main dissenting voice (3 score) on Del Mastro when we put out the Organizational Rankings at Dobber Prospects back in April, though Aaron and Sebastien also gave him 4s. But I have to confess that I did not know him very well as a player at that time. I read his DP profile description—"Del Mastro is a big-bodied, stay-at-home defensemen who can eat up a lot of minutes"—and figured there was not a lot of offensive potential here for fantasy purposes.

I chose to highlight him here today because I get the sense that many other poolies are also sleeping on this guy. Even with his excellent play for Team Canada as their Assistant Captain at the World Juniors and all of Chicago's prospects getting a significant boost from their imminent drafting of Connor Bedard, Del Mastro still seems to be flying under the radar. Those scores of 6+ from Peter, Victor, and Curtis are likely more representative of Del Mastro's value moving forward.

BEDARD puts Canada within one, what a pass from Del Mastro!! 🇨🇦🚨pic.twitter.com/wnC99CLpfv

— The Ray & Dregs Hockey Podcast (@rayanddregs) January 5, 2023

Part of what has made Del Mastro a tricky read in fantasy is that he did not have the opportunity to play for his entire draft season due to the pandemic's impact on the OHL in 2020-21. When play resumed in Ontario, he put up a cool 48 points in 68 games for the Steelheads. As with other OHL prospects, the question is do we treat that production as his draft year or D+1? He had a year of training and practice to get stronger and smarter but the total lack of game action clouds the picture quite a lot.

If we do shift his assessment forward, so to speak, then 2022-23 was effectively his D+1, and putting up 59 points in 51 games at that age does not sound like a stay-at-home defenceman to me. A mid-season trade to star-studded Sarnia helped boost his scoring from one point per game to an assist-heavy 1.26. On a team whose blueline already boasted Christian Kyrou (DAL), Ryan Mast (BOS), and Ethan Ritchie, Del Mastro came in and led the Sting in scoring over both the final 30 games of the regular season and the 16 games in the playoffs.

He has no comparables and an extremely low star probability (1%) on Hockey Prospecting but missing your entire draft year will do that. His trajectory in terms of NHL equivalency (17 → 28) is headed in the right direction, however, and while he likely has a ceiling of a second-pair defenceman at the NHL level, this is a relatively unknown prospect with a relatively short timeline who does not have a ton of competition amongst left-handed defenders in Chicago's pipeline.

Assuming the Blackhawks have Seth Jones (RHD) and Kevin Korchinski (LHD) holding down the top spots on the back end, there are almost no names of note who represent serious competition for those bottom-four slots. On the left side, Del Mastro will have to contend with Caleb Jones, Wyatt Kaiser, Jarred Tinordi, Andreus Englund, Alex Vlasic, Filip Roos, and Isaak Phillips. Del Mastro will likely need a year or two of AHL seasoning before making the jump for good. Aside from S. Jones and Connor Murphy, no other Chicago defender is signed past 2024.

That means things are wide open on Chicago's blueline behind Connor Bedard, and even if Korchinski and Jones suck up all the power play time and prime offensive minutes, Del Mastro looks to have the best opportunity in the organization to play big minutes behind them.

Here he is getting a shoutout from GM Kyle Davidson after last year's prospect camp:

Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson singled out Kevin Korchinski, Nolan Allan, Ethan Del Mastro, Paul Ludwinski and Samuel Savoie among those who stood out during prospect camp. pic.twitter.com/rD9X52hLNt

— Phillip Thompson (@_phil_thompson) September 21, 2022

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter @beegare for more prospect content and fantasy hockey analysis.