Coaches Coroner
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D Haoxi (Simon) Wang - Oshawa Generals, OHL (2025 Draft)
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Coaches Coroner
Member
- Mar 12, 2009
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It's kind of ironic that the people complaining about him being rated highly 'because of his name', admit they haven't seen him play, and are giving him extra negative attention because of that very thing. Seems like projection.
Sure he wouldn't. But not because people hate Chinese. Because this is some half-assed marketing campaign by the NHL in an attempt to attract Chinese audience and break into Chinese market. He wont be the next Yao Ming and China does not care about hockey, yet someone will waste a high pick on a player who will probably not end up even playing pro hockey.
I wouldn't take him #31 to be sure, but taking an Ozzy Wiesblatt or Ryan Johnson or Alexander Alexeyev instead hardly makes a difference in terms of wasting a pick. There hasn't been a very good 31st overall pick since Jacob Markström back in 2008, and even his value to the team that drafted him was mainly getting traded for Roberto Luongo.
Three guys who all have NHL games under them by the time they were 22 years old.
Wang will likely age out of Jrs and go to college at 21, and be nowhere near professional hockey by the time he is 22. He is so far behind everyone else at this point he would need to see exponential growth to even become an ECHL player.
I fail to see why your plug would need to be 22. Your AHL team will want enough players that are in development or veteran exempt (under 25 yo & 320 pro games), but that's pretty much all value there's to it.
MeHateHe
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- Dec 24, 2006
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Some of you guys act like you’ve never heard the term “project.” Big kids with decent skating get drafted higher. Hell, Zdeno Chara couldn’t skate and he got drafted in the third round. Sounds like this kid has good drive, so some scouts think they could turn him into something. Maybe he becomes a pro player, or maybe not, but that’s what projects are.
Briser la glace
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- Aug 28, 2024
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Does he deserve to be drafted in the first round?
Probably not, unless he shows tremendous improvement until Draft day. He's a high-risk prospect and a long-term project, we all agree on that.
Will he be drafted in the first round?
Maybe. I actually think chances are pretty good, and it's not a question of nationality.
We saw how early guys like Létourneau and Eliasson got drafted last year. It's the same every year. Many NHL teams want their unicorn. Wang is even more raw than these guys, but this seems to be a weaker draft class after the top ~20, let's not forget it. And I personnally believe the upside is much more interesting with Wang than it was with Létourneau and Eliasson.
Wang's polarizing, but you only need ONE team that really likes him and he gets drafted early. He's 31st on McKenzie's list, with the quote : "He (Wang) checks in at No. 31, with one scout ranking him as high as No. 18 and one not ranking him at all in the top 64". So some NHL scouts do really like him, wether we like it or not. And others don't, which is totally fair.
I could see a non-rebuilding team with a fairly weak prospect pool take a swing on Wang at 29-32 instead of drafting a low-ceiling bottom-6 forward at the end of the first round (although teams like VGK and FLA don't have their 1st round pick anymore). Some teams won't care that it might take 5-6 years before he MAYBE takes a first step on an NHL ice; he has tools that are very hard to find.
It's also a possibility that the teams that like him won't even be drafting in that range and he ends up in the 3rd round.
Probably not, unless he shows tremendous improvement until Draft day. He's a high-risk prospect and a long-term project, we all agree on that.
Will he be drafted in the first round?
Maybe. I actually think chances are pretty good, and it's not a question of nationality.
We saw how early guys like Létourneau and Eliasson got drafted last year. It's the same every year. Many NHL teams want their unicorn. Wang is even more raw than these guys, but this seems to be a weaker draft class after the top ~20, let's not forget it. And I personnally believe the upside is much more interesting with Wang than it was with Létourneau and Eliasson.
Wang's polarizing, but you only need ONE team that really likes him and he gets drafted early. He's 31st on McKenzie's list, with the quote : "He (Wang) checks in at No. 31, with one scout ranking him as high as No. 18 and one not ranking him at all in the top 64". So some NHL scouts do really like him, wether we like it or not. And others don't, which is totally fair.
I could see a non-rebuilding team with a fairly weak prospect pool take a swing on Wang at 29-32 instead of drafting a low-ceiling bottom-6 forward at the end of the first round (although teams like VGK and FLA don't have their 1st round pick anymore). Some teams won't care that it might take 5-6 years before he MAYBE takes a first step on an NHL ice; he has tools that are very hard to find.
It's also a possibility that the teams that like him won't even be drafting in that range and he ends up in the 3rd round.
BKarchitect
Registered User
Bender Duster
Registered User
Checks thread for the first time to see why it is getting so much activity over the past couple of days...
Reads the past couple of pages...yikes!
Reads the past couple of pages...yikes!
- Sep 29, 2016
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I don't disagree with any of this. I'm just not sure if a project unable to hold his own in the OHL is necessarily a 1st or 2nd round pick. How many fringe CHLers went top64 in an NHL draft? I don't think it ever happened. If you're a fringe CHLer during your draft season you can totally still make it to the NHL. I'm not sure you can still become a top4 defenseman or a top6 forward though...especially if you're lacking elite skill the way Wang does. I think in the first two rounds teams are mainly looking for elite talent. Players with top4/top6 upside. Of course the further down the draft the less likely you're to actually hit but teams are looking for elite skill first. At the moment, skillwise, Wang is far behind everybody else and I don't think you should just assume that he's not only gonna catch up but also overtake most of the other kids.
So yeah. I agree he's an interesting project but he's clearly way too green to go early in the draft. Some team might do it as a PR stunt for business reasons but it would most certainly be a bad pick from a hockey point of view.
I'm also not sure you're necessarily helping this kid by drafting him this early in an NHL draft. That would put a ton of pressure on a kid struggling in the OHL. 1st/2nd rounders are expected to dominate their D+1 season in major juniors. As a top prospect, if you don't perform in your D+1 season you're gonna get a ton of heat, especially if you got drafted into certain markets.
WarriorofTime
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Devon Toews? By age, he's only a month younger than Griffin Reinhart, another WHL region Canadian Defenseman, the 4th overall pick in the 2012 Draft. Meaning D. Toews was eligible and passed over in both the 2012 and 2013 Drafts. He wasn't selected in the WHL Bantam Draft a few years prior to that.
Complicated to say since up until this season, a player had to consciously choose a "path", so an undrafted kid in a major junior league would often retain their NCAA eligibility and not try and chase a fringe roster spot on a CHL team. D. Toews was a BCHL All-Rookie Team in 2011-12. A few BCHL players were picked in the NHL Draft that year (highest going first pick in the 3rd round - Jujar Khaira). Would D. Toews have been good enough to stick in a WHL lineup that particular year? Who knows.
Less notable, Matt Roy, a 7th round pick in his third go-around after an NCAA freshman season, would have been first time draft eligible by age a year after D. Toews in 2013. Looks like he was playing U18 AAA in Michigan that season, and then supplemented it with 10 USHL games at the end of the year. Was he good enough to stick in an OHL lineup at that point? Dunno.
But anyways, NHL history is filled with a lot of good top 4 defensemen that wouldn't have been particularly well regarded in their age 17 season and considered longshots to make the NHL strictly at that point. DMen have a long development curve in general
- Sep 29, 2016
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The thing is...Wang has a low ceiling himself. Skill is the most crucial factor when it comes to ceiling. Wang is big and can skate like the wind but that alone doesn't make him a high ceiling prospect. If you wanna play big minutes in the NHL, skill is the one thing you gotta have. You don't necessarily need to have elite vision or be an elite skater. But if you wanna play top4/top6 on a consistent basis then you need skill. You need to be able to handle the puck, make plays. Whether you're a forward or a defenseman, you gotta be able to play with the puck. If plays are dying on your stick, if you keep on throwing pucks away then you're not a top4/top6 player. Skill is the area where Wang is far behind everybody else and I don't know why we're just assuming that he's gonna overtake everybody. I think at this point you'd be crazy to assume that his ceiling is high. Can he make it to the NHL? Not likely but he absolutely can. If he does, is he gonna play heavy minutes? I have zero reason to believe so.
I'm also not sure the draft is necessarily gonna be a weak one. For example, MacKenzie has Bill Zonnon listed in the 2nd round. Incredibly green and one heck of a project as well but despite that sitting 3rd in QMJHL scoring. Big, physical two way Center loaded with skill. That's what a high ceiling project looks like.
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MeHateHe
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Dean Letourneau went #25 last year. In his D+1 year, he's not exactly setting the world on fire at BU. It's not a good comparable, but this draft year is probably weaker than last. Projects get drafted, some higher than others.
the basement scouts can't comprehend this - just let them keep chasing their tail and LARP as scouts
MeHateHe
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Meh. People can have their opinions, and I wouldn't want my team to draft him because I'm not a fan of projects in general. But projects exist and so big dumb kids get drafted high from time to time.
Bjorn Le
Hobocop
But that isn't really true, not every star defencemen needs to be a wizard with the puck on their stick. Someone like Chara was never more than just OK with the puck on his stick but with time, experience, and his physical tools, he became a number 1 defencemen. Wang does not and will never play like Chara but he's comparable in the sense that he very underdeveloped from a hockey skills perspective as a teenager but has very strong physical tools.
Wang, like Chara, lacks innate hockey talent but if he even just became serviceable with the puck and responsible in his own end, that's a top 4 defensemen in the NHL with his skating, athleticism, and size. Both those skills are very teachable, especially now that he is in a good OHL organization with a strong development track record. Hopefully he'll get drafted by a similarly good NHL organization as well. Whether he can improve his skills remains to be seen but players with his physical tools are quite uncommon.
Pavel Buchnevich
"Pavel Buchnevich The Fake"
And you shouldn’t leave out that many of his proponents wouldn’t care at all about him if he wasn’t Chinese. He’s a nice novelty story. If he was another race, he’d be yet another bad hockey player that NHL scouts overrate because he’s moderately more athletic than others.
WarriorofTime
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So the draft is good because a particular guy you like you think is rated too low? Not sure I'm following. I'm hearing that a lot of late 1sts this year would be 2nds in other years and that a lot of 2nds would be 3rds... just based on scouting grades.
Pavel Buchnevich
"Pavel Buchnevich The Fake"
It also isn’t remotely a good comparison.
Wang is bad at hockey. Letourneau is okay at hockey. He has the type of puck skills that if Wang had would evidently have him a top 10 pick.
Letourneau is a first round project. He was a standout at SAC and decent in the few USHL games he played.
I'm not sure I am understanding the point you are trying to make. Are you alluding that Alexeyev, Johnson, and Wiesblatt were nothing picks? They are all on track to become full time NHLers.
- Sep 29, 2016
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Again, Chara played mostly vs men in his draft year. He was miles ahead of where Wang is now. Wang would get eaten alive playing vs men. Also in terms of skill. Also, Chara is a three times 50 point and six times 40 point scorer in the NHL. Your description of him is, quite frankly, an insult. I'd bet any amount of money Wang is never gonna be a 40 point scorer in the NHL. Not a chance. You'd be nuts to believe he has that kind of offensive upside.
