You guys are smoking something nice. The kid is rising to the sky. Amazing shot, super young, and rounding out his game. He’s going to be a player! Don’t be haters!
To be fair, it's also easy to be a negative Nancy, since you're covered either way.
Future predictions are always difficult. But I imagine that two years from now (the 2026 offseason) the top 6 will be (penned in) Celebrini, Smith, Eklund, and Toffoli. You can have maybe one more young'un in there, and there's going to be heavy competition between Musty, Halttunen, Chernyshov, and whoever they draft in 2025 (if not also 2026)...not to mention players like Graf, Bystedt, Gushchin, Edstrom, and Lund who
could potentially threaten.
As opposed to the defense, where there's not a single player I'd be comfortable writing into the top-4 with ink. It's just easy to imagine a situation where a year, or even two years from now Halttunen is still dominating the OHL or putting up good numbers in the AHL, and Grier decides to sell high on him.