There is a small difference between Latvian and Slovakian in terms of how the scouts look at them, since, well, both countries simply suck at the NHL level currently. This is why just by the logic of probability, a NHL team will draft a no-name Swede (~70 NHLers) out of the swedish u18 league, but not the Latvian who might objectively be the better player.
A country has more NHLers - > the junior gets a slight edge. I also remember how TSN undervalued slovak teams on WJC, but things changed after the famous drafts, beating USA and playing close games with Canada.
Claiming that if Osmanis was slovak would dramatically help his draft stock is extremely unfortunate and funny at the same time. Out of all, you pricked the country that has the exact same problem as you thing Latvia is having. We ALWAYS get less drafted players that we expect (no, it is not homer-ism), because NHL teams just do not like drafting them. That is the truth. Instead of a player that should get drafted, we see waves of random Swedes and Czechs. in the late round of course. So in case of this problem, I would merge Latvia and Slovakia into the same category. Even the ranking that you were basing on has our best prospect in 4th-5th round.
Osmanis's problem is that he plays on a weak team, so it is harder to get noticead and also has not done anything that special yet apart from the respectable Allsvenskan production. If he manages to keep up with this production and has a good WJC, he will get ranked higher. For now though I'd rank him at least a 4-5th round prospect
