I released my November 2025 NHL Draft ranking on Monday, the NCAA Division I Council will meet Thursday to continue to discuss CHL player eligibility, I’m off to Sarnia for the semis and medal round of World Under-17 Hockey Challenge on Friday, and before we know it it’ll be time for the inaugural CHL USA Prospects Challenge in London and Oshawa and then World Junior selection camps in Ottawa and Plymouth.
In other words, we’re right in the thick of draft season already and it felt like time for a mailbag. You submitted a bunch of questions. Here, I’ve answered 11 of the big ones in depth.
Note: Questions have been lightly edited for clarity and length, and similar questions have been grouped together. If you submitted a question and I didn’t answer it below, I’ll circle back to the submissions and answer the rest in the coming days.
Where do Matthew Schaefer and Logan Hensler rank among Artyom Levshunov, Anton Silayev, Carter Yakemchuk, Sam Dickinson, Zayne Parekh and Zeev Buium?
How do the top defensemen in this class compare to the top-six drafted defensemen of last year?
Considering only where I was at on each of the 2024 prospects pre-draft, I’d probably slot them like this:
1. Artyom Levshunov
2. Zeev Buium
3. Zayne Parekh
4. Matthew Schaefer
5. Sam Dickinson
6. Anton Silayev
7. Carter Yakemchuk
8. Logan Hensler
There are three caveats to that. The first is that I think Schaefer’s got a chance to be the best of the bunch due to his two-way value/smarts, but I just want to see him play more before making that determination. Because he had mononucleosis to start the year and didn’t have a glossy season in the OHL last year, his statistical profile doesn’t yet stack up with some of those other players. He’s got the rest of the season to build that sample size. The second is that while I had the six top D from last year divided into three tiers (1, 2-5, 6), I think I’d have all six in the same tier now, meaning Levshunov moves down a tier to join the pack and Yakemchuk moves up one to join them. The third is that even though those top seven would all be in the same tier now, I have Hensler a tier below them.
Are Porter Martone’s birthdate and physical maturity compared to players his age causing us to overrate him on some level?
I’ve certainly factored Martone’s late-2006 birthday and the fact he’s 200 pounds and almost 6-foot-3 into my evaluation and ultimate ranking of him at No. 2. I don’t think he’s tapped out physically, though. Martone looks like a strong, athletic kid when you see him around the rink. He could fit into an NHL locker room from a look/the way he presents himself perspective.
GO DEEPER
How ‘phenomenal’ Porter Martone has made a case for the top of the 2025 NHL Draft
But just anecdotally I think he also still has room to fill out further and get stronger. From my perspective, he’s not as physically advanced at this age as Cole Beaudoin was last year, or Aaron Ekblad was, or even guys like Colby Barlow and Tyler Boucher were. And I know those who work with him and the Steelheads view him as still having development in front of him that way as well. One of the quotes from Steelheads head coach and general manager James Richmond that didn’t make it into my recent feature on Martone was a metaphor about how NHL coaches need yellow bananas and OHL coaches have to ripen 16-year-old green bananas into yellow ones — or close — by the time they’re 20. He talked about Martone as riper than most his age but also argued he’d get pushed around in the NHL if he played in it tomorrow and used an example of Owen Tippett, a very physically mature alum he had who spent the first time Richmond went to watch him in the NHL on the seat of his pants because he kept getting knocked over.
It’s worth noting, too, that this draft class is more heavily skewed by late-birthdate players on the whole. James Hagens, Schaefer, Roger McQueen, Hensler, Malcolm Spence and Victor Eklund are all late-06s, so there is a big group of players in this class you can compare him side-by-side with. It’s also worth noting he has stood out playing with the 2024 draft class, including at last spring’s U18 worlds in Finland, where he was one of the tournament’s leading scorers.
Always curious: Who stands out for high compete in 2025?
Spence. Kashawn Aitcheson. Jack Ivankovic. Brady Martin. Bill Zonnon. In order of appearance on my top 64, those are probably the five guys who stand out the most in that regard. I like the competitiveness of Hagens, Martone, Caleb Desnoyers and others though as well.
Victor Eklund is projected to go in the No. 10-15 range at the moment in the 2025 NHL Draft. (Michael Miller / ISI Photos / Getty Images)
What are Victor Eklund’s strengths and weaknesses compared to his brother William? How similar are they as players?
What’s the floor and ceiling for Victor Eklund? Could he end up being a more valuable prospect than his brother William was?
They’re similar in more ways than they’re different. They’re both 5-foot-11 wingers (though William has obviously played some center, he’s more of a winger). They’re both early October birthdays. They’re both Djurgårdens products, though they were in the SHL in William’s draft year and are in HockeyAllsvenskan for Victor’s. They’ve both got similar statistical profiles (point per game at the J20 level with 20-plus pro games in their pre-draft seasons and then full-time, contributing pros in their draft year, with Victor producing at a higher clip but at a lower pro rung). They both even share a bit of the same look/posture on the ice. There are some subtle differences in their games, though. William’s was all about smarts, timing, intuition, and being in good spots at that age. And while Victor shares those attributes, I think they’re probably a slight grade lower but his skating/the general zip to his game are a little higher-end. Though William went No. 7 and Victor is projected to go in more of the 10-15 range at the moment, I think they’re comparable as prospects.
Who is a prospect that has all the tools, but has not had a good start to the year?
NTDP defenseman Charlie Trethewey has the ability but is still learning how to actually play and that has been evident early on. His teammate Carter Amico should be better than he is with his length/skating but can’t seem to earn minutes on a weak team. I expected big Charlottetown defenseman Owen Conrad, who really impressed me last year, to take a step and produce more than he has so far this year. NTDP forward Conrad Fondrk has loads of talent but doesn’t seem to know how to use it. There are others, but those are the four that immediately came to mind.
If L.J. Mooney didn’t get injured, would you have ranked him higher or was this evaluation unbiased of his injury? Also comparing Mooney to Cameron Schmidt, both are undersized, right-handed, speedy players. Who do you see having more potential in the NHL and why?
I viewed Mooney and Adam Benák in the same light pre-injury and Benák is early 30s to Mooney’s late 30s, so the injury and lost time/lost opportunity to continue to prove who he is as a player to scouts was a consideration. It was a tough break for him. I hope he’s finding ways to get into the gym and get stronger while he’s off the ice because he needs that badly as well. As far as Schmidt goes, my ranking (teens versus 30s) speaks for itself. I think his energy and interior finishing are the separators there against the other two tiny forwards in this draft.
My annual sleeper question: Who are a couple of guys that didn’t make your list or honorable mentions that you’re keeping an eye on?
The following names were strongly considered for the honorable mentions: Blainville-Boisbriand forward and Justin Carbonneau linemate Mateo Nobert, Kingston forward Tyler Hopkins, Saskatoon’s German import David Lewandowski, Saint John forward Zachary Morin, North Bay forward Shamar Moses, Soo forward Travis Hayes, Norwegian forward Jørgen Nyhus Myhre, Slovak forward Jan Chovan, Russian import forward Ruslan Karimov, Red Deer forward Matthew Gard, and the NTDP’s William Horcoff.
Would you say European prospects tend to rise more during the draft season as you start seeing them more frequently, while you have already seen more of the North American skaters?
There is a higher likelihood that players outside of the CHL, USHL, Sweden and Finland find their way onto radars or become a focus in their draft year. I don’t think that’s exclusive to Europe, though, but rather dependent on the league they’re playing in. Certainly, some players from small-to-medium-sized European hockey countries aren’t introduced to scouts in full until they appear as underagers at the U18 worlds preceding their draft year or with their age group at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup. Now that Russian players are no longer getting the international spotlight, the non-Michkov/Demidov types are taking longer to build momentum and get eyeballs with scouts as well (Anton Silayev wasn’t viewed as a top-10 pick entering last season, Kurban Limatov wasn’t viewed as a potential first-rounder before this season, etc.).
But the larger factor in that, I would argue, is the lack of strong domestic junior leagues in countries like Switzerland, Czechia, Slovakia and Germany, and even (though to a lesser extent) Russia making it such that scouts aren’t focused on junior players in those leagues until their draft year in the same way that they’re watching 16-year-olds in the CHL, USHL or J20 for example. In some of those countries, unless they enter the CHL import draft or play pro, it’s still hard to get drafted if your only experience pre-draft is at the junior level. That’s true in North America, too. Though there are more scouts here, prep school players and Minnesota high schoolers aren’t a major focus for NHL clubs until those kids pop in their draft year. That doesn’t mean nobody’s watching, but it’s not in huge numbers. That’s how a player like Haoxi Wang has only just now built buzz, on top of the fact that kids like him who are playing Jr. A are on that path because they’re late bloomers as is.
Do any of the old-school stereotypes still exist in the scouting world? Are there other current stereotypes of leagues out there that exist in the scouting world that might push the needle one way or another for a prospect’s ranking?
I always like to finish these mailbags on a more theoretical question and this one felt like it had some teeth. I think scouting and its so-called best practices swing on a pendulum of sorts. In the last couple of years, for example, I’ve noticed a pronounced re-prioritizing of length and size in scouting defensemen, for example. But that was a direct reaction to the league getting smaller up front as fewer and fewer Matt Rempe types made their way to the NHL (that Rempe became such a talking point last season I don’t think speaks to old-school stereotypes returning but rather underscores how rare those types now are). Do teams still, for example, operate a little too cautiously with small players across positions, which I would categorize as an old-school habit/groupthink? I think so. And Cole Caufield, a first-rounder, isn’t the argument for that. Devon Levi (seventh round), and Dustin Wolf (seventh round), and Lane Hutson (second round), and Logan Stankoven (second round), and the camp Andrew Cristall (second round) just had in Washington are stronger cases.
Certainly I do think the intangibles of character, leadership and how well a kid presents can sometimes take on a life of their own and become romanticized by teams to the point where they fall in love with guys and make mistakes that way. I think those things were overemphasized with Ben Danford last year, and that Gabriel Eliasson was picked 39th for the wrong reasons as just two very recent examples, but you can also go back to Barrett Hayton, and Lawson Crouse, and Tyler Boucher, and Tyler Biggs — kids who teams really liked for reasons that are very hard to quantify. But at the other end of the spectrum, I also think folks in the public sphere get carried away with their own groupthink darlings who might look nice when they’ve got the puck on their stick in junior but don’t have many of the qualities they need to progress. I think I’ve learned over the years to better control my pendulum and to try to find market inefficiencies when the pendulum of folks in the private and public spheres has swung too far.
(Top photo of Porter Martone: Michael Miller / ISI Photos / Getty Images)
