To me, Kournianos and Robinson are the two best draft-rankers in the business right now. I'd go with a list incorporating both of them. Neither Kournianos or Robinson are swayed by trends in the draft-writing world, neither of them are a slave to knee-jerk ranking tools like straight-statistics or tournament play, neither succumb to infantile biases, neither is afraid to stump for a prospect no one else has been talking much about yet.
My personal belief is that prospect writers can be best evaluated when you remove the players they pick in the consensus position, and mostly analyze the players they regard notably higher or lower than the general consensus. This is to say, nobody was "right" in 2015 for having Connor McDavid at #1, and no one was "wrong" in 2015 for not having Troy Terry as a top 50 pick.
We can say something similar about 2019 -- which is to say, no one was "right" about Jack Hughes as #1, but you were sure as hell "wrong" if you had Kappo Kakko at #1. Thinking these two prospects were even close generally showed a level of confusion about scouting and projection. Was Kakko bigger? Sure. But there was no singular tool where he showed elite ability, whereas Hughes had multiple tools which were borderline generational.
So, I'm taking the 2019 draft to use as a bar for Kournianos vs. Robinson, and also throwing in there Scouching for the stat-heads. Fortunately, the Hockey Writers did a consensus top 30 averaging 8 major rankings, which I will use to represent the ever-elusive "consensus". After the consensus ranking, I'll add the individual rankings -- K for Kournianos, R for Robinson, S for Scouching.
Consensus:
1 C Jack Hughes (K1 R1 S1)
2 W Kappo Kakko (K2 R2 S2)
3 D Bowen Byram (K7 R4 S3)
4 C Alex Turcotte (K5 R4 S4)
5 W Vasily Podkolzin (K3 R8 S9)
6 F Trevor Zegras (K4 R5 S8)
7 C Kirby Dach (K10 R10 S5)
8 W Matt Boldy (K6 R11 S12)
9 C Dylan Cozens (K8 R9 S6)
10 F Payton Krebs (K9 R7 S10)
11 W Cole Caufield (K11 R12 S7)
12 D Cam York (K20 R17 S14)
13 F Alex Newhook (K15 R6 S13)
14 D Victor Soderstrom (K13 R14 S26)
15 D Philip Broberg (K26 R19 S20)
16 D Thomas Harley (K36 R16 S28)
17 F Rafael Lavoie (K13 R44 S30)
18 D Moritz Seider (K18 R13 S27)
19 W Bobby Brink (K38 R25 S15)
20 C Ryan Suzuki (K19 R24 S16)
If we then take the three players out of the top 20 each of these analysts were highest on?
Kournianos: Dorofeyev (12), Heinola (16), Hoglander (17)
Robinson: Thomasino (15), Heinola (18), Kaliyev (21)
Scouching: Kaliyev (11), Heinola (17), Tomasino (18)
Best sleeper ranking/ worst sleeper ranking:
Kournianos: Beckman 44/ Honka 30
Robinson: Pinto 47/ Puistola 27
Scouching: Kniazev 33/ Grewe 29
I have to say it's pretty close between Kournianos and Robinson with Robinson, and Scouching wasn't awful but obviously trailed them both a bit. Kournianos nailed it on Zegras, Boldy and Broberg but put too much faith in Podkolzin. Robinson nailed it on Seider and Zegras but put too much faith in Newhook and Krebs, while Scouching nailed Cozens and Caufield but was too high on York, Brink and Suzuki and weighed the stats too much in down-ranking Zegras, who is the likely #2 pick in a 2019 re-draft.
I mean sure this is just one year out of many, but I give a slight win to Kournianos with Robinson just a hair behind. Scouching is pretty clearly third best of the three, but he wasn't godawful like many were in 2019 -- I recall many rankings of Zegras out of the top 10 or of Seider in the 2nd round or of Broberg in the top 5.
Ultimately, my little experiment proves nothing, but it was fun to do.
