There is a legit argument that Evan Bouchard was the best defenseman in the playoffs, but he didn’t win.
Maybe the Cats didn’t get praised because they just bullied their way to the cup.
Silayev is a great defender now, but he could be a monster if his offense/transition game improves.
1 last nugget. Sennecke rose in the draft because of his second half performance. Silayev goes from relatively unknown into a top 5 ranking. Why! His improvement from last year to this year was remarkable.
Sept 23 TSN:
“Perhaps the most flat-out intriguing prospect on TSN’s pre-season list is 6-foot-6, 203-pound Russian left-shot defenceman Anton Silayev. When TSN made its initial inquiries of the scouts on the Class of 2024, Silayev was nowhere to be found. But once the KHL started playing games in the last couple of weeks, scouts were scrambling to get a handle on the Russian behemoth who seemingly came out of nowhere to create seismic shock waves in the scouting community.”
Nine out of 10 NHL scouts surveyed to determine TSN’s Pre-Season Top 16 Rankings slotted the 17-year-old Boston University freshman from Vancouver at the top of their respective lists.
www.tsn.ca
Oct 23 THW:
“Anton Silayev has been the story of the 2024 Draft class early on this season, going from an unknown defender in Russia’s junior system last year to a potentially elite prospect who is tearing up the KHL. He’s a difficult player to rank because the sample size of his great play is still so small, but his potential is as high as any so I couldn’t justify putting him any lower than this.”
The 2024 NHL Draft year has officially started so let's take a look at my top 32 prospects as of October 2023!
thehockeywriters.com
There is no reason to believe he won’t improve both offensively and defensively. The war has skyrocketed concerns over the “Russian Factor”. There could be an argument Demidov has the highest upside in the draft and he fell to 5th.