F Porter Martone - Mississauga Steelheads, OHL (2025 Draft)

[Corso]

I think Martone is almost certain to take an NCAA year, which will help him. Harder to hide effort levels/poor off-puck habits in a league that only plays like 2 games a week. He'll also be playing next to other top recruits which might help keep him accountable.

He is certainly not ready for the NHL or even AHL.

 

[jtechkid]

It will be interesting where he slides in the draft . The only reason he is 4-5 th is because it’s not a great draft year and who do you take in front of him .

 

[Anardil]

I'll admit that I have not seen any of his OHL games, but whenever I have seen him in a Canadian jersey, he impressed me. (I will not hold the recent WJHC against him, as Canada traditionally doesn't play underagers in optimal positions unless they are special).

If the Habs pick ends up at #4, I would not dislike this pick. He would add much needed size and skill in the Habs top 2 lines.

My only criticism I have is that I would hope that he improves his skating.

 

[Briser la glace]

I’m curious… If he hadn’t been compared to Tkachuk and Perry earlier this season, would he still be getting all this criticism?

I get that he’s not living up to those expectations of being the next pesky power forward, but he’s still one of the best CHL players this season, and he's still getting into more post-whistle scrums than 99% of draft-eligible prospects. I also believe he's made real progress compared to last year, his playmaking has improved a lot in my opinion.

His habit of slowing the tempo in transition seems to be often mistaken for a lack of pace just because of his size. I'm not saying it's a good habit, but I feel we’d be praising his vision and IQ if he was a few inches shorter.

 

[NikF]

I think his playmaking is very good in OZ, the set-ups he does are clearly scoring line quality in NHL. Will he be first on pucks as often, will he have so many broken plays and coverages to exploit in the NHL as he does in juniors? Can he get into and bully his way into thoss prime spots in the NHL as often as now? How is his patience with the puck, possession game? Can he see something is not available, circle the offensive zone or make a play back to the point? Are those passing lanes in OZ he's so adept at exploiting available in the NHL at the same rate? What percentage of those plays are him being a big body that can quickly exploit junior-level breakdowns in defense? Those are my OZ questions. But he's clearly a very high pick based on OZ play.

Then I think an experiment to make would be to place a blanket over the OZ, so every time you see him pass into OZ stop watching. Watch only defensive zone and neutral zone, how many top 5, top 10 plays does he make there? How many will he need to make in the NHL before his OZ game becomes effective?

I'm not saying this as either a negative or positive remark. It's what I've been asking myself when trying to project his game and I think you're going to get a sliding scale of opinions on these questions.