Undrafted Players to Look for in the Super Series

Super Series Rosters came out last week. Scrolling through them it’s hard not to notice all the elite level talent each team has. They are loaded with first round picks, with emerging late round talent and some of the best upcoming players for the draft. However there are a few players who don’t fit into those categories, having never been drafted, and on no one’s radar as a top prospect. The Super Series is going to give these players a chance to make a name for themselves as the hockey world watches.

The players I'm taking about are Tyson Baillie of the Kelowna Rockets, Hunter Garlent of the Peterborough Petes and that Anthony Deluca of the Rimouski Oceanic.

Consensus Top 30

Having just released my top 30 I thought it would be a fun exercise to take a look at some of the better known prospect evaluators out there to get a rough idea what the industry thinks.

I have included six lists: Brendan Ross of McKeen’s Hockey, HockeyProspect.com, Craig Button of TSN, Corey Pronmann of ESPN , Damian Cox of Sportnet  and International Scouting Service (ISS) . Rather than repost every list I have linked their list to their name in the previous sentence. All of them are free with the exception of Pronmann’s which requires ESPN insider.  

Every list ranked 30 players with the exception of Craig Button who ranked 60. There were 66 players ranked in total. If a player was not ranked he was recorded as a 67 rather than a zero.

Sarnia Sting vs. Peterborough Petes – October 16th 2014

Sarnia was in town Thursday taking on the Petes. The Sting was one of the teams I identified as a must see this season. They are a scouts dream with the amount of NHL talent on the roster. They have six draft eligible players including potential top 10 pick Pavel Zacha and potential first rounder Nikita Korostelev. Also on the roster is the OHL first overall pick, and potential top five player for the 2016 draft; Jakob Chychrun. Not to mention Tampa Bay Lighting first rounder Anthony DeAngelo.

The game was never close with Sarnia pulling ahead 5-1 in the second before allowing a couple score effects goals in the third. They controlled the play for the majority of the close situations.

Top 30 for the 2015 NHL Draft

October is finally here and with that comes my updated list of 2015 draft prospects. I have added another 10 to my list bringing the total to a nice round 30. New features to this list include a stats tracker for each player. For players who play on multiple teams/leagues I will only include the stats for the team they played the most games with.
*Stats as of October 10, 2014*

Charlottetown Islanders vs. Cape Breton Screaming Eagles - September 20th 2014

As promised, I watched the second game of the back to back between the Charlottetown Islanders and the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles. This game was a blowout which made evaluating guys a little tougher.  

Sherbrooke Phoenix vs Val-d’Or Foreurs – September 20th 2014

Video quality wasn’t great for this game and both feeds had French speaking announcers, so I wasn’t able to follow as many players as I had hoped. The ones I was able to follow I tried to go into a little bit more depth.

Charlottetown Islanders vs. Cape Breton Screaming Eagles - September 19th 2014

Thanks to the great QMJHL promotion of streaming its games free for the month of September I was able to watch the Charlottetown Islanders and Cape Breton Screaming Eagles face off in the Eagles home opener. These two teams have quite a few 2015 eligible players, notably Danial Sprong of the Islanders, who I ranked 8^th in my latest 2015 draft list.

I tried to watch as many of the draft eligible players that I could but with 14 eligible players on the two rosters that just wasn’t going to happen. So I tried to highlight guys that are either the top prospects or stood out in one way or another.