EOTP’s 2020 Consensus NHL Draft Rankings

The NHL Entry Draft begins on Tuesday, 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 12 of the most respected draft rankings and used the average of them to get our own rankings.

This is our fourth year doing this. Last year out of the 140 officially ranked, 130 were drafted. The highest ranked players not drafted were Daniil Gutik (88th), Billy Constantinou (96th), and Michael Gildon (113th).

Previous Rankings:
2017
2018
2019

The correlation of the rankings in 2019 (140 players ranked) to actual draft position was 0.83. It was the best performance the rankings had to date.

The sources used:
Bob McKenzie (TSN, ranked 93)
Craig Button (TSN, ranked 117)
HockeyProspect.com (ranked 109 skaters)
Corey Pronman (The Athletic, ranked 131)
Scott Wheeler (The Athletic, ranked 100)
Future Considerations (ranked 300)
Chris Peter (ESPN, ranked 100)
EliteProspects.com (ranked 129)
Will Scouching (ranked 96)
McKeensHockey.com (ranked 217)
The Hockey News (Ryan Kennedy online rankings, ranked 120)
Draft Prospects (ranked 240)

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 truly representative, players who were not ranked by a system were given the last ranking of the source+10. This ensured that a player not ranked did not benefit more than a player ranked low.

As an example, Bob McKenzie ranked 93 players. Those not ranked by McKenzie (or given an honourable mention) received a ranking of 103. HockeyProspect ranked 109 skaters. Those not ranked were given 119, and so on.

Last year, we eliminated the two top and bottom scores. This year, because we used fewer sources the rankings are based on the true average.

Hockey Prospect ranked goaltenders separately. Those separate rankings were not used in the average so goaltenders had their average based on 11 sources.

The “Drop” 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.

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 averages tended to be more equal. This also represents how close players are.

The “Range” column shows the difference between the player’s highest ranking and their lowest one. As an example, Alexis Lafreniere had a variance of 0 because he was ranked first by every outlet. Quinton Byfield had a variance of 1 because his rankings were second or third. The highest Variance in the first 31 prospects is Noah Gunler with a difference of 52.

(Note that you will need to scroll the table to the right in order to see the Range column).

The 16th ranked player is Dylan Holloway. However, players are quite close throughout the first round.

The draft has several significant drop offs. There is separation after the top 10, and there’s a drop after 17th. Other drop offs occur after 27th, 32nd, 39th, and 42nd.

The draft still has a lot of depth well into the third round and even some third round prospects have first round grades among them. What’s also interesting is that every player down to 25th has at least one ranking in the top 15.

Below are the top 200 ranked players. In total, 257 players qualified for the rankings by having at least two rankings. Obviously, only 216 players will be drafted. Please note that all names, teams and positions are from NHL Central Scouting’s final ranking.

The Montreal Canadiens have, for the moment, picks 16, 47, 48, 57, 78, 98, 102, 109, 136, 171, and 188.

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

2020 EOTP Consensus Draft Rankings