There are 244 pages of content in the report this year and yes they charge for it. I am not shilling for Hockey Prospects but I have yet to talk to anyone who has purchased their annual reports that doesn’t feel their team puts in the work even if they don’t agree with every ranking.
Honestly not everyone geeks out over studying the drafts and researching the prospects so paid content isn’t for everyone but if you are then this report has lots of detail.
Totally agree. I was a bit worried when seeing the volatility in ranking (Bjorck from 12 to 1 and Malhotra from 13 to 2) but decided to buy the report anyway. As it turns out, the write-up's and analysis are as detailed and thoughtful as I could've hoped for. Thanks for the great work!
Even though I can't see any team picking Bjorck #1, it is not difficult to understand their rationale. It's no secret that Bjorck plays great and if he's 6-1 he could be a consensus #1. So if you believe that his size is not going to matter, then he may indeed be the best pick in this year's draft. It is a gutsy call (others would be cautious and just put him in the top 3), but if we look back at the past, teams would've loved to make the gutsy call to pick Makar or Quinn Hughes.
(btw, it has been reported that Sundin is close to Bjorck's family, not Stenberg's, during the world championship. Though it doesn't appear that's the direction the Leafs are going into).
The report has also provided a lot of deep insights on McKenna, Stenberg, and Reid: the dilemma of McKenna ("the most remarkable passer we have ever scouted" or "Almost every scout I asked after February had McKenna number one but a lot of them said that they don’t have to actually select him either” vs all the well-publicized warts), the concern of "what you see is what you get" in Stenberg, and the defensive lapses of Reid. Best of all are the quotes from NHL scouts, which I can pit against those quotes from the elite prospect report.
An opinion by definition is biased. The cliche is correct, scouting is an art not a science. Therefore anyone who watches a player forms an opinion based on his biases.
The analytic crowd comes closer to non-biased opinions by using some objective measures/statistical comparisons. But even those can be biased by the situation/quality of opposition/quality of teammates.
Consensus rankings are as close to "non-biased" as you are going to find in any scoutning community because the biases should balance out with a large enough pool of opinions.
This really hits the nail on the head. At the end of the end of the day, it is subjective in a scout's belief whether the weaknesses can be overcome in the NHL (or in the NHL playoffs). For Bjorck, it is his size and lack of dynamic skating; for McKenna, it is his physical engagement/compete, for Reid it is his defence. We often hear how scouts belonging to an NHL team arguing over one another (e.g., Stenberg vs Malhotra in Vancouver). But what is most valuable is not really the respective rankings, but the analyses behind the differences in opinions even when you don't agree with the ranking.
