These last few months have presented all sorts of twists and turns when it comes to all aspects of the NHL but one area that has been heavily impacted is drafting. With the seasons worldwide shutting down their 2019-20 campaigns prematurely, the opportunity for draft-eligible players to showcase themselves in playoff and tournament situations was taken away. As a result, scouts have been forced to turn to video to finalize their rankings.
But there is some early-season activity that could change things. While most leagues in North America aren’t getting underway (aside from the QMJHL which just kicked off their regular season on Friday), several international leagues have already started and in doing so, they have provided new game film for teams to anxiously evaluate with not much else to do on the scouting front.
For players that are pegged to be taken relatively early in the first round, this presents quite an opportunity. Lucas Raymond and Alexander Holtz are Swedish forwards pegged to be top-10 selections while Russia’s Yaroslav Askarov is the top netminder on the board and is also projected to go fairly early. In Finland, Anton Lundell is a center that’s around the top-10 as well. (German forward Tim Stutzle is in a battle for the number two spot although crowd restrictions in Germany have delayed the start of their season so he didn’t have a chance to improve his stock.) It’s a draft class that has a lot of European options at the top to begin with and those players have had an opportunity to cement their status or even move up.
It’s not as if a small amount of time has passed between games. It was about six months since games were called off and a lot of physical development can happen in that timeframe; have areas of their game improved as well? Scouts now have new game film to work off of and early signs of improvement would certainly give them a boost. (Alternatively, a slow start could hurt them as well.)
It isn’t just the top-rated players that will benefit though. The same advantage exists for prospects that are in the lower tier of the draft as they have had an opportunity to bolster their current stock in the eyes of scouts. When you get towards the back half of the draft where team lists diverge considerably and teams look to take bigger swings, some more of those may be used on players they’ve at least had a chance to evaluate more recently.
There is already somewhat of an advantage to selecting European players. Similar to most college players, teams get their rights for four years instead of two if they pick a CHL player while countries that haven’t signed a transfer deal with the NHL such as Russia sees their prospect rights held indefinitely. Add in this potential benefit of getting a fresh look at these players in the days leading up to the draft and there could be a higher rate of international prospects selected next week as a result. There have been plenty of twists over the last few months and a different draft landscape seems likely to be another one as a result of this pandemic.