Intrigue and excitement in the Year of Connor Bedard MORE:
In this, the Year of Connor Bedard, the 2023 NHL Draft still holds an enormous amount of intrigue, anticipation, and sheer excitement beyond the obvious certainty of who’ll be the No. 1 pick.
We simply ask the scouts to rank the players in the order they would take them. Then we put all 10 lists together to come up with a consensus ranking that historically has been a decent barometer of where in the draft a player is most likely to be taken. Team USA Under-18 National Team Development Program dynamic offensive centre Will Smith, who got six votes at No. 4, one at No. 3 and three more at No. 5, is fourth on our list. Could he end up in San Jose? Sure, he could, but he’s fourth on our list because that’s what the numbers say he is, regardless of what the Sharks do. One scout called Smith a veritable offensive “genius” with the puck with all the skills and smarts to be a top-line offensive centre in the NHL.
- He’s under contract to a KHL team for three more seasons and unless accommodations are reached between his NHL club and his KHL team, Michkov is not expected to play in the NHL any earlier than the fall of 2026. Might he sign an extension in Russia? Who knows? Michkov is expected to arrive in the U.S. as early as tomorrow or Saturday. He’s expected to be in Nashville early next week. The first round of the draft, of course, is Wednesday.
Washington will no doubt be one of the teams interviewing Michkov and those talks will be critical to any draft-day decisions, but one has to allow for the possibility some other team could still claim Michkov before Washington. It would only take Michkov to fall out of the Big Five for any one of Leonard, Dvorsky or Reinbacher to fill the void.
He’s followed at No. 10 by Team USA U-17 left winger Gabe Perreault, the son of former NHLer Yanic Perreault who is the third member of that dominant American trio with Smith and Leonard. The sub 6-foot winger has elite hockey sense and high-end skill/creativity but will need to continue working on his strength and skating. One scout had Perreault knocking on the Top 5 door at No. 6 but four did have him between 11 and 20.
All five of the prospects ranked from Nos. 11 to 15 on our list — University of Connecticut right winger Matthew Wood at 11; Owen Sound Attack left winger Colby Barlow at 12; Team USA U-18 centre Oliver Moore at 13; Swedish defenceman Axel Sandin Pellikka at 14; and Moose Jaw Warrior centre Brayden Yager at 15— did get one vote each in the Top 10.
Each of Honzek, Simashev, and Willander got Top 10 consideration from one scout. Stenberg is more of a wild card in this grouping, with a range of No. 13 on the high end and 45 on the low end. Danielson was as high as No. 11 but no lower than No. 20. Given all the talk about Michkov and all things Russian, it’s perhaps surprising to see three Russian prospects ranked between Nos. 19 and 23:
Which is to say for bottom-half-of-the-first round prospects, those three Russians appear to have a surprisingly stable consensus. That could mean they’re very highly thought of, and teams maybe aren’t as concerned about the so-called Russian Factor with these three. Or, come draft day, interested teams may find another non-Russian prospect they like better and any one, two or three of them could slip closer to, or into, the second round.
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