NHL Draft 2022 top 127 prospects: Juraj Slafkovsky leads Corey Pronman’s list

Today I release my long list for the 2022 NHL Entry Draft, with full write-ups on my top-ranked 127 prospects in the class.

The 2022 NHL Draft looks like a somewhat below-average class. It’s a near coin flip for me to decide who is the No. 1 prospect in the class between Canadian center Shane Wright and Slovakian winger Juraj Slafkovsky. Wright has the longer track record of success and the much-preferred position as a center but had a down season by his standards. Slafkovsky’s skill set is more attractive and he continued to pile on impressive performances this season at various tournaments, with the talent he displayed at the World Championship being enough to just nudge him ahead of Wright for me.

The gap between the No. 1 and No. 5 prospect is a smaller gap than usual. This is also not a great goalie crop, with the first netminder appearing at No. 59.

For the first year, I am introducing NHL player comparables into this list. My goal with this is to try to paint a somewhat realistic picture of the type of player a prospect could project as, although I would not interpret the comparables listed as a literal projection that Player A will become Player B. This is mostly because for some players, particularly those who were very large or small in terms of size, an ideal comparison doesn’t exist. Only the top 32 listed prospects are given a player comparable.

The players are placed in a tier showing their NHL projection. Their skating, puck skills, hockey sense and compete level are also given a grade, with their shot given a grade if it’s notably good or poor. The grading scale for tools has six levels, so it could be interpreted as 1-6, but it will be written out as poor, below NHL average, NHL average, above NHL average, high-end and elite. The tool grades are not formulaic, meaning the rankings incorporate the tool grades, as well as players’ statistics, size, and other information I’ve gathered in the process of making this list.

Projected bubble…