Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Final CSB Rankings

The NHL Central Scouting Bureau released their final rankings for the NHL Draft. I've heard that these rankings don't take into account last week's U18 World Tournament.

The Rankings:
North American Skaters
North American goalies
European Skaters
European goalies

The draft continues to be all over the place. Kyle Turris became the first player playing Tier-II hockey to be ranked first overall. Between Turris and James van Riemsdyk's impressive U18 tournament, Erik Johnson's reign as the only player to play college hockey after being drafted number 1 may be short lived. The Blackhawks are on the clock with the first pick though, so I wouldn't rule out them doing something completely stupid.

College guys in the top 30 among NA skaters are:
1. Turris
3. van Riemsdyk
11. Ryan McDonagh
12. Tommy Cross
16. Max Pacioretty
21. Nick Petrecki
22. Mike Hoeffel
23. Pat White
25. Colby Cohen
27. Billy Sweatt

And here's one guy from each round of the rankings that I think could be a steal:

Round 2-Teddy Ruth-Kevin Shattenkirk is an obvious choice since he was awesome at the U18s, but I also think Ruth is very underrated. He's a solid, dependable defenseman that should flourish playing for Jeff Jackson

Round 3-Jake Hansen-Ian Cole was way lower than most everybody else has him too, but I already picked a Notre Dame defenseman. I like Hansen because he's got pretty good size, and great offensive ability. I think that there is a lot of potential there.

Round 4-This is really tough to pick, because I see about 4 guys that I really like. Aaron Palushaj and Corey Tropp seem way too low for how well they've played this year. Max Campbell is probably the most intriguing prospect to me, since he scored a bunch of points this year in a weaker league, but I'll pick Joe Stejskal. He's not extremely flashy, except for his ability to step up and make huge hits, but I think he will end up being very, very good.

Round 5-I can't think of a great reason why Jason Gregoire is this low. He missed some time due to injury early in the season, but was great when he came back. I don't often pay too much attention to plus/minus, but he was +28 in 32 games. That's too good over too long to be ignored.

Round 6-I'll pick Brandon Martell, because I think he has the most potential to develop into an exceptional player.

Round 7-Once again, there's 4 or 5 guys I could pick, but the most glaringly obvious is Dion Knelson. I have no clue how he got bumped down that low.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Against guys his own age this should have been an opportunity for Turris to shine but he looked fairly ordinary. I will be shocked if he is in the top 10

Anonymous said...

Maybe the CHL Memorial cup format should change.

Instead of having the host team be an automatic bid.

Invite the USHL champ as the 4th team.

Now that would be a nice tournament!

Anonymous said...

So 3 goals and 2 assists in 6 games on a team high 24 shots while also killing penalties for his team was "ordinary". I'll take as many of those ordinaries on my team as there are to go around.