EOTP’s Consensus NHL Draft Rankings

The NHL Entry Draft is on Friday, and EOTP has been keeping track of most of the rankings to come out ahead of the draft.

Some rankings have more correlation to how the draft will unfold than others, and no rankings are perfect so we combined 10 of the most respected draft rankings and used the average of them to get our own rankings.

The sources used:
Bob McKenzie (TSN, ranked 100)
Craig Button (TSN, ranked 105)
HockeyProspect.com (ranked 217)
Jeff Marek (Sportsnet, ranked 100)
Corey Pronman (ESPN.com, ranked 100 skaters)
ISSHockey.com (ranked 180 skaters)
FutureConsiderations.ca (ranked 250)
DraftBuzzHockey.com (ranked 248 [as of June 23])
McKeensHockey.com (ranked 125)
The Hockey News (ranked 100)

All of these rankings did not rank the same number of players. And not every player was ranked by each source. This offered a challenge to normalize the rankings.

To make things equal, players who were not ranked by a system were given the last ranking of the source+1. This ensured that a player not ranked did not benefit more than a player ranked low.

As an example, Bob McKenzie ranked 93 players plus seven honourable mentions. Those were not ranked by McKenzie received a ranking of 101. HockeyProspect ranked 217 players. Those not ranked, were given 218, and so on.

The exception is Future Considerations. Because they ranked so many more players, it skewed the rankings too much for players they did and didn’t rank. Therefore, players ranked between 217-250 were given 217 as their score, while players not ranked were given 220.

Two sources (Corey Pronman and ISS) ranked goaltenders separately. Those separate rankings were not used in the average. Goaltenders had their averages based on eight sources rather than 10.

The “Drop Off” column shows the difference in average between the person immediately above them in the rankings. This is useful to create groups of similarly ranked players. The “Variance” column shows the difference between the player’s highest ranking and their lowest one. As an example, Nico Hischier and Nolan Patrick received 1s and 2s across the board, so the variance would be 1.

You will see the averages get close together as you approach the bottom. That is because many of those players were not ranked by several sources, meaning the scores tended to be more equal.

There was a tie for top spot in the rankings with both Nico Hischier and Nolan Patrick receiving five #1 rankings and five #2 rankings.

As you get to the middle of the first round, the variances really tend to jump around. There are some top-30 players with first round grades and third round grades, and vice versa. It goes to show while this draft doesn’t have elite top end talent, the depth of the pool goes into the third round and you should be able to get intriguing players throughout the draft.

Below are the Top 150 ranked players (there was, of course, a tie for 150th spot.) The Montreal Canadiens have, for the moment, picks 25, 56, 58, 68, 87, and 149.

For more information on prospects, be sure to check out our prospect profiles here.

(these rankings have been updated June 23)

EOTP Draft Rankings