German Prospects for the NHL Draft

[Bombay66]

it is a bit off-content, but what speaks against the same youth system which is used by the US Youth Hockey Program and also used now by the Slovak federation with an impressive impact on the draft picks, i am talking about a national U17 and U18 team which is participating every week for example at the DNL or maybe even an Oberliga-Team...there should be some monetary compensation of course for the youth clubs maybe even a premium to set some goal for these clubs to get their players in the national elite teams U17 and U18

Of couse the national training locations in Füssen had to be modernsied and combined with a youth academy for school but this is the way to go in my perspective, if you look at the u17 div leagues and even the dnl the level of opponents is too shaky to get some proper competition for the elite players and the direct way to an DEL or DEL2 team is too difficult because of so many foreign players at these leagues

maybe a u16 Team for the DNL and an U18 Team for the Oberliga with 2-3 overaged players, the oberliga has some proper professional competition level, and this league is heavily looking for new teams to join, I would rather watch a DEB U18 Elite Team than some Dutch teams to be honest

those players should of course stay for example an official Mannheim youth player and be optional to get a call up for the DEL Team every week

 

[pgfan66]

it is a bit off-content, but what speaks against the same youth system which is used by the US Youth Hockey Program and also used now by the Slovak federation with an impressive impact on the draft picks, i am talking about a national U17 and U18 team which is participating every week for example at the DNL or maybe even an Oberliga-Team...there should be some monetary compensation of course for the youth clubs maybe even a premium to set some goal for these clubs to get their players in the national elite teams U17 and U18

Of couse the national training locations in Füssen had to be modernsied and combined with a youth academy for school but this is the way to go in my perspective, if you look at the u17 div leagues and even the dnl the level of opponents is too shaky to get some proper competition for the elite players and the direct way to an DEL or DEL2 team is too difficult because of so many foreign players at these leagues

maybe a u16 Team for the DNL and an U18 Team for the Oberliga with 2-3 overaged players, the oberliga has some proper professional competition level, and this league is heavily looking for new teams to join, I would rather watch a DEB U18 Elite Team than some Dutch teams to be honest

those players should of course stay for example an official Mannheim youth player and be optional to get a call up for the DEL Team every week

Been saying this for a long time. The US model won't work because the U17 wouldn't be good enough but the Slovak model should work. Keep players' rights with their club teams and allow players to move between their club and the national development program. Have the U18 (or even U19) development program play an exhibition schedule vs. DNL, Oberliga, some junior teams in other countries and if it's going well maybe one day DEL2. Perhaps leave Füssen and go use Red Bull's facilities in Munich instead or build a German version of the RB academy in Salzburg. It was touched on in the Bissl Hockey podcast's WJC preview episode too (in case you are or understand German).

 

[Maverick41]

I was going through a lot of stats, videos and notes recently for the next update of my rankings and with the recent World Juniors in mind, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the next few years (2007 to 2012). Obviously that latter ones aren't entirely serious anything beyond 2009 is almost entirely based on stat comparisons, which are highly unreliable.

2007:
Still looks like a good year for German hockey. Sure, some prospects I had higher hopes for did not develop that well, but Lewandowski and Händel are still a couple of legit prospects for the draft, and I can see about a dozen others have decent pro careers at home or maybe even in one of the better European leagues. Defense is thin after Händel, but there is still pretty good depth at forward and even a couple of goalies that have DEL upside at least.

2008:
There is some talent at the top, but at least as of now not at the level of 2007, and the depth is actually not looking great. On defense things look sort of alright, and I wouldn't be shocked if they came close to the 07 group in that area, but the forwards offer little beyond Krestan and I am not really sold on any of the goalies either.

2009:
This group could come close to or possibly even eclipse the 07s, both in terms of top end talent and depth, although the latter seems unlikely. At the same point in time the group of 07s I was really excited about was quite a bit bigger than it is for the 09s, but if their development goes better they could catch up eventually. I like that this group appears to be more balanced with the depth. The top-end talent is almost all forwards, but there are a lot of interesting defensemen in this group. Can't really speak to the goalies, no idea where I would rank them.


From here on out it gets a little silly, but I thought I'd give it a try. We'll see how my assessments hold up (probably not well).

2010:
There are few kids I like in this group, but it feels a little more like 2008 in terms of overall depth, but more skewed towards forwards. I haven't found any defensemen I am really intrigued by, but who knows what happens in the next couple of years.

2011:
It seems like the uneven years tend to look better than the even ones. There's not really any standout talent as far as I can tell from limited viewings, but a lot of kids at both forward and defense that look good. For now I would expect this to be a deep group that lacks high-end talent.

2012:
This one is only based on numbers, no viewings at all (I had seen a bit of the 2010s and 2011s). So, the only thing I'll say is that Henry Szymanski, Danny Penkin and Toni Martinovic have put up some interesting numbers over the last couple of years.