NHL Draft Software: Final Rankings | Top200

Final Rankings:








Text version:

I named those my final rankings but I might make slight alterations until draft.

Remarks:
- Dahlin is decidedly ranked at #1, while Svechnikov is decidedly ranked at #2 with Svechnikov being a lot closer to 1 than 3.
- 3rd overall is a toss up for me, with the top11 all being very close. Small alterations in the algorithm or data entered (approximate playing time/quality of linemates) or scouting evaluations could have potentially placed either Wahlstrom, Zadina or Dobson instead of Kotkaniemi at #3 since they are all very close.

Data taken into account:
- Age, height, weight.
- Scouting evaluation; Skating speed, edge work, shooting, puck control, offensive IQ, competitiveness, physical play, defensive play. (Those evaluations are impacting the statistical evaluation, both sources of data are tested again each other in different ways.)
- Last 3 seasons stats in all leagues played; League difficulty, ice time, quality of teammates, organizational depth, (regular+playoff) GP, G, A, PTS and if available A1, A2, Sh%, relative +/-. Tournament play: WJC18, WJC20, Hlinka.
(The statistics are used as an indicator of performance, but where the player stands in terms of organizational depth is also weighted, those two are weighted differently according to the algorithm depending on the context of each player, for example, independently of statistics being 2nd line SHL on draft eligible year mean something and can be measured as a value.)
* On rare occasions some players are given positive or negative bonuses if something of relevancy hasn't been taken into account by the software, example; injury prone, attitude issue, extra international play.

Last year (comparison with this year rankings is imperfect; algorithm revamped):
Software evaluating draft eligible player

Previous drafting results (drafting as MTL for the last 5 years):
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/threa...-can-now-start-comparing-the-results.2430975/

Previous 2018 draft rankings:
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/threa...0-end-of-the-regular-season-rankings.2471469/
If you have questions about the functionality of the software (such as why I use scouting evaluations (post #51 in that thread)) it probably has been answered in that thread.

Why use software to evaluate prospects?

ProspectsFanatic said:

"I firmly believe that this software can be a useful tool to support the evaluation of prospects, in fact, I would even go as far as to say that it has the potential to give better results than the standard way of evaluating players. When I started doing the exercise of creating my own rankings of draft eligible players I quickly realize how complex of a mental process it is considering all the variables of evaluation that have to be taken into account when evaluating a player (speed, skill, shot, defensive game, compete level, age, offensive production, quality of teammates, league difficulty, ice time, height, weight, tournament play, etc, etc, while assessing to each criteria their degree of importance), inevitably some criteria of evaluation become overvalued or undervalued. Once you start comparing two players the mental process increase in complexity, recalling every relevant information about each player, gaging each gap between the players and assessing which accumulation of gaps outweigh the other, the increase in complexity inevitably creates more room for misjudgment. At that point, if two scouts are arguing about two prospects a fight of will must take over to a certain extent since the analysis of the objective subtleties that differentiate the players can't be addressed in his totality. As a matter of fact, we face ourselves against the limitation of our brain even when isolating simple variables easy to grasp, even the ones who are already objectively defined for us can lead to misevaluation, let’s take the age of player for example, the brain can't associate a precise value for each day of the year, instead, for the sake of simplification, the brain will tend to reduce the number of values by regrouping to a single value weeks or entire month or possibly closer months with one another. This can be seen as a marginal difference that might not have a considerable impact, but those marginal differences can be found everywhere, they add up and their sum can make noticeable differences, even more so if you have a bias towards a specific player your brain will unconsciously selectively favored the regrouping of values in a manner that will confirm your bias opinion. But most importantly, this software eases the process of evaluation by isolating each variable of evaluation in order to come to a final value, the brain performs much better at assessing the most precise value possible to one single variable at the time than taking everything into account at once in order to come to a final value. For those reasons, I firmly believe that if the exercise of assessing the most exact value possible to each isolated variable is done properly with the help of a software it will undeniably give results of greater accuracy."

"The human brain has limitation in regards to his precision (exact value attributed to a prospect playing in a certain league at a certain point in time considering his specific date of birth), consistency in evaluation (I give the exact same value to that player as for each other player in that same context, if it is a slightly different context the value is slightly altered proportionally) and processing power (quantity of variables factored in to precision at the same time, looking at all that data at once), those are three major limitations which software does not have, I believe that there is potential there to be exploited in the scouting hockey world."

Click to expand...

Forwards entered in the software (scoring higher than 43):
DY: Draft year. DY-1: 1 year before draft. DY-2: 2 years before draft.
The first section (with DY, DY-1, DY-2) are the evaluations of each prospect season performance calculated by the software based on the data entered.
The second section shows the percentage taken into account in the final score, it varies depending on the games/tournaments played for each season.
The third section shows the player's style of play which is automatically generated based on the scouting evaluation I entered for the player.





Defensemen entered in the software (scoring higher than 43):
DY: Draft year. DY-1: 1 year before draft. DY-2: 2 years before draft.
The first section (with DY, DY-1, DY-2) are the evaluations of each prospect season performance calculated by the software based on the data entered.
The second section shows the percentage taken into account in the final score, it varies depending on the games/tournaments played for each season.



Best re-eligible players/overagers:

1. (F) Adam Mascherin, OHL +2
2. (D) Sean Durzi, OHL +1
3. (F) Logan Hutsko, NCAA +1
4. (D) Scott Perunovich, NCAA +2
5. (F) Patrick Khodorenko, NCAA +1
6. (F) Justin Brazeau, OHL +2
7. (F) Shawn Boudrias, QMJHL +1
8. (F) Severi Lahtinen, Mestis +1
9. (F) Linus Nyman, OHL +1
10. (D) Vladislav Yeryomenko, WHL +1
11. (D) Joey Keane, OHL +1
12. (G) Veini Vehvilainen, SM-Liiga +3
13. (F) Jerry Turkulainen, SM-Liiga +1
14. (F) Einar Emanuelsson, SHL +3
15. (F) Justin Almeida, WHL +1
16. (F) Pavel Shen, KHL +1
17. (D) Simon Johansson, SuperElit +1
18. (F) Mikhail Shalagin, MHL +1

Best draft eligible goaltenders:

1. (G) Olivier Rodrigue, QMJHL
2. (G) Lukas Dostal, Czech2
3. (G) Jakub Skarek, Czech2
4. (G) Alexis Gravel, QMJHL
5. (G) Amir Miftakhov, MHL
6. (G) Jacob Ingham, OHL
7. (G) Justus Annunen, Jr.A Liiga
8. (G) Kevin Mandolese, QJMHL
9. (G) Jordan Koy, OHL
10. (G) Veini Vehviläinen, Liiga +3
11. (G) Olof Lindbom, SuperElit
12. (G) Joel Hofer, WHL
13. (G) David Tendeck, WHL
14. (G) Zachary Bouthillier, QMJHL
15. (G) Akira Schmid, Elite Jr. A

Other notable prospects (excluding goaltender):
(D) Nico Gross, OHL
(F) David Lilja, Allsvenskan
(D) Sean Comrie, AJHL
(F) Carl Berglund, SuperElit
(F) Jackson Leppard, WHL
(D) Dawson Barteaux, WHL
(F) Max Golod, OHL
(D) Mac Hollowell, OHL +1
(D) Ondrej Buchtela, Czech2
(D) Dennis Busby, OHL
(F) Krisitan Reichel, WHL +1
(D) Marc Del Gaizo, USHL
(D) Thomas Gregoire, QMJHL +2
(F) Damien Giroux, OHL
(F) Jake Goldowski, OHL
(D) Jack St. Ivany, USHL +1
(D) Christian Lindberg, Allsvenkan
(F) Angus Crookshank, BCHL
(F) Ryan Roth, OHL
(F) Yegor Sharangovich, KHL +2
(F) Ivan Muranov, MHL
(D) Tyler Tucker, OHL
(F) David Levin, OHL
(F) Alexei Polodyan, VHL +2
(F) Kristian Tanus, JrA-Liiga
(F) Samuel Bucek, USHL +1
(F) German Grachyov, MHL
(F) Trey Fix-Wolansky, WHL +1
(F) Alex Gritz, OHL
(F) Adam Liska, OHL
(F) Luke Burghardt, OHL +2
(D) Zack Malik, OHL
(D) Adam Thilander, OHL +1
(D) Peter Stratis, OHL
(D) Jacob Semik, USHL
(F) Zach Solow, NCAA +1
(D) Artyom Minulin, WHL +1
(F) Aleksi Halme, Mestis
(D) Owen Lalonde, OHL
(F) Maxime Grondin, OHL
(F) Adam Gajarsky, Czech2
(F) Razat Timirov, MHL +1
(F) Oliver Okuliar, Slovakia
(F) Demetrios Koumontzis, USHS
(F) Mitchell Hoelscher, OHL
(F) Connor Dewar, WHL +1
(D) Christian Krygier, USHL
(F) Jeremy Mckenna, QMJHL +1
(F) Albert Michnac, OHL +1
(F) Tristen Nielsen, WHL
(F) Brandon Saigeon, OHL +2
(D) Dillon Plouffe, WHL +1
(F) William Moskal, OHL
(D) Dennis Busby, OHL
(D) Cole Krygier, USHL
(F) Joel Teasdale, QJMHL +1
(F) Hunter Holmes, OHL
(D) Radim Salda, QMJHL +1
(F) Carson Focht, WHL
(F) Cole Reinhardt, WHL
(F) Eli Zummack, WHL
(F) Thomas Ethier, QMJHL
(D) Spencer Meier, USHL +1
(D) Alex Kannok-Leipert, WHL
(D) Tommy Miller, NCAA +1
(F) Carl Jakobsson, SuperElit
(D) Benjamin Gleason, OHL +2
(D) William Worge Kreu, SuperElit
(F) Yegor Zudilov, WHL
(F) Samuel Bitten, OHL
(F) Ryan Savage, USHL
(F) Conner Bruggen-Cate, WHL
(F) Kevin Hancock, OHL +2
(F) Tyler Popowich, WHL
(F) Ivan Kosorenkov, QMJHL +2
(D) Martin Bodak, WHL +1
(F) Colin Schmidt, USHS
(F) Alexander Zhabreyev, MHL
(F) Leif Mattson, WHL +1
(D) Peetro Seppala, JrA-Liiga
(F) Jan Kalus, Czech2
(D) Quinn Yule, OHL
(F) Riley Hughes, USHS