NHL Central Scouting Mid-term Rankings

NHL's Central Scouting Bureau released their mid-term rankings yesterday. Chris Heisenberg picked out players with college hockey ties. Also of note, former Shattuck player Angelo Esposito was first overall. Former Wisconsin recruit Sam Gagner was third. Pat Kane was fourth overall. American Jon Blum was rated 7th. The next Americans playing major junior were Nick Palmieri at 43 and Drayson Bowman at 44. American Jeremy Smith was the second rated goalie, and Brad Phillips was the first player with collegiate ties listed at number 4. Colorado College's Bill Sweatt and Alaska's Dion Knelsen were both listed as Limited Viewing, presumably because of the time they missed due to sickness/injury this fall.

This was an interesting list, but I don't think the top ten will look anything like this by June. Everyone seems to be in basic agreement about how the top handful of players are, but nobody seems to have any sort of consensus about what order those players belong in.

The biggest surprise in the top ten was probably at number 10 with Tommy Cross. He hadn't received a lot of hype up to this point, so not too many people knew who he was. He really played excellent at this summer's Select 17 Festival, and if he plays like that consistently, I'm not surprised he's rated that high.

Another small surprise was Kyle Turris being ranked at number 5. For all the talk about how impressive the group from the WHL was, the highest rated player in western Canada is a kid from the BCHL. Casey Pierro-Zabotel was the next BCHL player listed at 87, followed by Ben Winnett at 89 and Riley Nash at 99. Pierro-Zabotel seems like a player that could end up going a lot higher though.

The top USHL player listed was Michigan recruit Max Pacioretty at 23, followed by Colby Cohen at 27, and Nick Petrecki at 31. Petrecki's stock seems to have really fallen.

Overall, their list wasn't incredibly different from my list. The biggest difference in the first round was that I seemed to overrated the two Gophers, Jim O'Brien and Mike Hoeffel, and Nick Petrecki.