The Seattle Thunderbirds rolled through the Western Hockey League playoffs, and not even the regular-season powerhouse Winnipeg ICE could slow them down in the league final. In the end, they came up just one win short of being crowned the top team in the Canadian Hockey League, falling to the Quebec Remparts in the Memorial Cup final.
Gracyn Sawchyn didn’t feature much in those final two events of the year. He had just two points in the WHL final, and none in five games at the Memorial Cup. It seems he ran out of steam as the hockey season approached its conclusion. Given his energetic style of play, that’s probably understandable.
Birthplace: Grande Prairie, Alberta
Date of birth: January 19, 2005
Shoots: Right
Position: Centre
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 165 lbs.
Team: Seattle Thunderbirds (WHL)
A former member of the United States National Team Development Program, Sawchyn was playing his first CHL campaign in his draft season, setting a new high in games played before the post-season even got under way, then proceeding to play 22 more contests. When you include the Top Prospects Game, that brought his total to 71 games played, compared to 52 he had competed in the previous season.
For a player who throws the throttle all the way open for each shift, that workload had to catch up with him eventually. Unfortunately for him, the lack of production to end the year only served to reinforce the thinking of some scouts that his offensive abilities weren’t at a high enough level to be regarded as a top prospect.
In the offensive zone, his relentless energy goes into racing toward the boards to regain possession from dump-ins or pressure a defenceman into turning the puck over. At 165 pounds, he isn’t able to crash into an opponent and have the puck come free, so he has to employ his stick to steal it away.
His hand skills are his top finesse talent, so those duels often see him come away the winner, and then he’s free to make his offensive plays. He has a strong understanding of the game and knows that the most likely place to score from is near the net. He’s confident he can stick-handle his was around opponents to get to the crease, but at this stage that is an overconfidence as a) he’s not skilled enough to string a series of dekes together at speed, and b) his shot, even from close range, isn’t powerful or accurate enough to be a danger. He had just 18 goals in the regular season and three more in the playoffs, not posing a shooting threat that teams needed to gameplan around.
His passing is much more productive. He’s a good distributor off both faces of his stick, and his desire to get the puck to high-danger areas sees plenty of passes into the slot. He will try those from behind the net as he races past with the puck, or sling pucks from the boards to the middle looking for a teammate’s stick. However, like his stick-handling, he’s guilty of forcing that part of the play as well, and many of those passes fail to find their target, rattling off skates or getting intercepted.
His stick-handling serves him best in transition. He may not have the dexterity to make a series of moves, but one quick deke when he’s skating at full speed in the neutral zone proved effective against WHL defencemen at gaining the offensive zone. As a result, he trailed only Montreal Canadiens prospect Jared Davidson on the Seattle roster in expected primary points off the rush, on a club that didn’t really play a rush style of game.
Sawchyn plays exactly the same way on defence, rushing headlong into board battles and digging for pucks. There, losing board battles due to a lack of size is a bigger issue, with the opponent holding the puck 30 feet from the net rather than 200. It’s surely frustrating for him to put in the work and simply not be able to win his dispute, but with the additional muscle mass he’ll add over the next few years, those one-on-one contests should skew more in his favour.
Preliminary Rankings
Dobber Prospects: #38
Elite Prospects: #13
FCHockey: #69
Hockey Prospect: N/R in Top 75
Hadi Kalakeche: #62
McKeen’s: #41
Bob McKenzie (TSN): #80
NHL Central Scouting: #25 (North American skaters)
Corey Pronman (The Athletic) #116 in Top 34
Scott Wheeler (The Athletic): #38 in Top 64
If you think the size issue will be dealt with in time and his hockey sense will eventually pare down his attempted offensive plays to only those more likely to succeed, you may have him fairly high on your draft list, as Elite Prospects does at 13th. If you see a player with a slight build who doesn’t have a quality shot and usually only finds success by sitck-handling past teenage defencemen, you won’t have a such a positive outlook, as is the case for The Athletic‘s Corey Pronman.
That 103-position range is currently the highest in our preliminary consensus rankings for a player pegged as at least a second-rounder on average. and he lands all throughout that range at various outlets. He has a lot of work to do on his body and his game, and it depends on how effective that development will be whether or not he finds a spot in the NHL.
Jared Book
