Why is Felix Unger ranked significantly higher everywhere over a guy like Hannes Hellberg?
Who?
Well, that's actually a pretty fair question.
He got skipped over in his first year of eligibility and he's had fairly little international action for Sweden (which finally included him in some U19 events this year). And despite his strong offensive production in the U18 and U20 circuits the past two years, his SHL club has viewed him a grand total of one time.
That has a bit of weight. If a kid is thought to have the kind of skill that would warrant NHL interest, he's usually getting multiple views by the time he's 17. Not always, but usually.
So, this can mean a number of things, perhaps indicating other problems.
Hellberg's also coming from the esteemed Täby program, which has developed an absolutely insane amount of players who go on to play in one of the nation's top 3-4 pro leagues.
But in general, the U20 circuit's list of top 20 some scorers includes a lot of undrafted overagers and only one player who is a first eligible for next summer's draft. In fact, Boston's Dans Locmelis is the only draftee among the league's top 52(!) scorers, and he'd clearly have been on a pro team there if he weren't committed to UMASS next fall.
What would be an even better question is why not a soul talks about overager Theo Keilin. He had the best PPG rate in the U20 circuit for any player who played at least 18 games, putting up 48 points in 29 games. He also suited up for Skelleftea's SHL team 33 times. He was one of only 4 30-goal scorers there in his actual draft year. He's not even allll that small at 5'11", 182 lbs.
We can only assume that certain kids have certain fallacies that keep NHL teams from seeing any NHL possibilities at this phase in their careers.
Or one can purchase a subscription to InStat and look at as much footage as possible to see if you can tell why these kids aren't getting the type draft-talk love their overlying stats would indicate they should be.
