I begrudgingly went with Knies here - he's a ready made top six forward with super translatable skills. A bit of Kreider in his game. We know he'll be good.
I still have a lot of guys I'd take over Eklund or Hutson here. But I'm not sure how to approach ranking those guys.
Ryker Evans looked incredible to me in the AHL playoffs, it's hard to get a read on how NHL ready he is though. It's not like I have a lot of other folks who watched Firebirds games I can ask what they thought about it.
Matthew Wood looks like the closest thing to 2014 Leon Draisaitl. Big upside there, big scoring resume.
Evangelista already has several multi-point games in the NHL. We should be talking about him. Close to the same age as Eklund.
Kasper and Savoie didn't have great D+1s but they have a lot more time to take off than Eklund does - he's about to turn 21.
Stan Svozil just had a season full of great showings at every level. You can argue that he should have won the WJC D MVP award, he also had 13 points in 7 WHL playoff games and 3 points in 3 pro games at the end of the year. I'm more confident in Svozil than Hutson.