2016 NHL Draft Midterm Consensus Rankings

We’re into the meat of the 2015-16 hockey season and as we get closer to the 2016 National Hockey League Draft; rankings are being produced with increasing frequency. In an effort to clarify what consensus, if any, exists between the most prominent draft rankings, we have collected five of them and produced the 2016 Midterm Consensus Rankings.

THE PROCESS

Five January rankings from prominent sources were selected for inclusion:

Points were assigned for players being ranked in inverse order – 1 point for being ranked 30th, 30 points for being ranked 1st – with the total values summed and used to produce the consensus draft order. In the event that multiple players received the same sum, rather than create a complicated metric as a tie-breaker, we decided to declare a tie for simplicity’s sake.

THE RANKINGS

Rank Player (Pos.) Team ISS FC TSN SN HP Biography
1 Auston Matthews (C) ZSC Lions (NLA) 1 1 1 1 1 EliteProspects
2 Jesse Puljuvarvi (RW) Karpat (SM-Liiga) 2 2 2 3 3 EliteProspects
3 Patrik Laine (RW) Tappara (SM-Liiga) 4 3 3 2 2 EliteProspects
4 Matthew Tkachuk (LW) London (OHL) 3 5 4 4 4 EliteProspects
5 Jakob Chychrun (D) Sarnia (OHL) 5 4 7 6 7 EliteProspects
6 Alex Nylander (LW) Mississauga (OHL) 6 6 5 5 8 EliteProspects
7 Olli Juolevi (D) London (OHL) 14 10 6 7 5 EliteProspects
8 Mikhail Sergachev (D) Windsor (OHL) 10 9 9 10 9 EliteProspects
9 Clayton Keller (C) U.S. National Development (USHL) 17 7 11 8 11 EliteProspects
10 Tyson Jost (C) Penticton (BCHL) 9 13 12 13 10 EliteProspects
11 Pierre-Luc Dubois (LW) Cape Breton (QMJHL) 18 11 10 12 6 EliteProspects
12 Julien Gauthier (RW) Val-d’Or (QMJHL) 12 8 15 11 16 EliteProspects
13 Mike McLeod (C) Mississauga (OHL) 7 12 17 15 12 EliteProspects
14 Dante Fabbro (D) Penticton (BCHL) 16 14 8 14 13 EliteProspects
15 Kieffer Bellows (LW) U.S. National Development (USHL) 15 15 14 9 18 EliteProspects
16 German Rubtsov (C) Team Russia U18 (MHL) 11 19 13 21 17 EliteProspects
17 Max Jones (LW) London (OHL) 8 16 28 17 15 EliteProspects
18 Charlie McAvoy (D) Boston University (NCAA) 20 17 22 23 14 EliteProspects
19 Jake Bean (D) Calgary (WHL) 21 25 19 16 20 EliteProspects
T20 Luke Kunin (D) University of Wisconsin (NCAA) 26 18 18 19 EliteProspects
T20 Tyler Benson (LW) Vancouver (WHL) 19 20 26 24 23 EliteProspects
22 Logan Brown (C) Windsor (OHL) 13 22 22 27 EliteProspects
23 Alex Debrincat (RW) Erie (OHL) 24 21 19 22 EliteProspects
24 Samuel Girard (D) Shawinigan (QMJHL) 23 16 EliteProspects
25 Riley Tufte (LW) Blaine High School (HS-MN) 28 30 25 27 24 EliteProspects
T26 Logan Stanley (D) Windsor (OHL) 24 20 28 EliteProspects
T26 Dillion Dube (C) Kelowna (WHL) 18 25 29 EliteProspects
T26 Vitali Abramov (RW) Gatineau (QMJHL) 21 20 23 14 EliteProspects
T26 Rasmus Asplund (C) Farjestads BK (SHL) 27 27 21 EliteProspects
30 Chad Krys (D) U.S. National Development (USHL) 22 26 EliteProspects

THE BREAKDOWN

The 30 players ranked included zero goaltenders, 10 defensemen and 20 forwards.

  • The top five defenders? Jakob Chychrun, Olli Juolevi, Mikhail Sergachev, Dante Fabbro & Charlie McAvoy
  • Top top five forwards? Auston Matthews, Jesse Puljujarvi, Patrik Laine, Matthew Tkachuk, Alex Nylander & Clayton Keller

The top Canadian-born player ranked is Tyson Jost, the 10th-ranked player. If that comes to fruition in June, it’d be the furthest-back the first Canadian player has been taken in NHL draft history.

The teams with the most representation on the top 30 are the OHL’s London Knights (Nylander, Juolevi, Jones) and Windsor Spitfires (Sergachev, Brown, Stanley) and the U.S. National Development Team of the USHL (Keller, Bellows, Krys). Ten of the projected first round picks are from the OHL, four are from the QMJHL and just three are from the WHL.

There appears to be a consensus top pick, and a consensus top three, and a consensus top six or seven, at which point the consensus falls apart and the lists (wildly) diverge from each other. Odds are if we were able to peek at the various NHL clubs’ lists, we’d see a similar phenomenon.