Great rundown for all asking about prospects

[Goldendelicious]

Good article but no real surprises if you read his top-50 from past years as well as his pre-draft reports. For the most part he just slotted in the 2020 draftees to his last ranking. Though Wheeler and Corey Pronman do have nice analyses for prospects/futures, it would be nice to see a little more insight into situations and projections for these guys.

[Kofax]

Ya, I went through this one as well and found myself scratching my head at some of it. Wheeler's towards the bottom of my list in terms of the rankings/advice I give weight to.

[Doug Glatt]

I don't agree with many of their picks but there is a lot of important and valuable information. Its a great resource. Certainly worth the meager price.

[jshed2]

Great resource. While I usually don't agree with Wheeler's rankings, its still an interesting read, and he does a decent job explaining why he has who where.

[senryu]

If you read the comments, he admits it's recency bias.

Not necessarily. He says that the inclusion of so many 2020 draftees is because they're higher caliber than 2nd and 3rd tier prospects drafted in years previous. It seems many readers roughly estimate that all 2017 draftees should be better than all 2018s, who are better than all 2019s, who are better than all 2020s because each preceding year's crop is older, more experienced, and have been presumably improving on their skills. Wheeler is saying that even with Owen Tippett and Michael Rasmussen's many years of post-draft development, they're not as valuable as LaFreniere, Byfield, Rossi, Perfetti, Holtz, Raymond, etc. right now, ostensibly due to skill differential. As he says, the elite 2017s, 2018s, etc. aren't on the list anymore because they appear once or twice and graduate. So it's not a matter of Wheeler being lazy and listing the names he's most recently heard. In his view, Jamie Drysdale is better than Callan Foote despite Foote's experience.

Now whether he's right is a whole other question and that can be rightly debated from now until Klim Kostin wins the Ross.

[Axeman33]

Not necessarily. He says that the inclusion of so many 2020 draftees is because they're higher caliber than 2nd and 3rd tier prospects drafted in years previous. It seems many readers roughly estimate that all 2017 draftees should be better than all 2018s, who are better than all 2019s, who are better than all 2020s because each preceding year's crop is older, more experienced, and have been presumably improving on their skills. Wheeler is saying that even with Owen Tippett and Michael Rasmussen's many years of post-draft development, they're not as valuable as LaFreniere, Byfield, Rossi, Perfetti, Holtz, Raymond, etc. right now, ostensibly due to skill differential. As he says, the elite 2017s, 2018s, etc. aren't on the list anymore because they appear once or twice and graduate. So it's not a matter of Wheeler being lazy and listing the names he's most recently heard. In his view, Jamie Drysdale is better than Callan Foote despite Foote's experience.

Now whether he's right is a whole other question and that can be rightly debated from now until Klim Kostin wins the Ross.

Im not saying it's right or wrong, I am just saying he admits to the recency bias. This was one of his first replies to someone who mentioned "recency bias":

I get this comment every year, and my answer is different versions of the same thing every year:
- The top of the ranking is always going to tilt towards the recent draft because, well, the best of the other drafts aren’t prospects anymore. There’s no Hughes brothers, or Kakko, or Dahlin, or Svechnikov, or Tkachuk, etc. This was also a very strong draft at the top (the strongest since 2015) and that’s reflected in what this new list looks like.
- Otherwise, your claims of recency bias aren’t anchored in the reality of this list. If you read to the bottom, you’d notice that there are actually more 2019 kids ranked here than 2020 — and that I’m much lower on some names than others, including Jake Sanderson.

He also mentions in another reply that a lot of these kids at the top wont be there next year and will be replaced with newly drafted kids because a lot of the names at the top of this years list will have moved to the NHL. It will be interesting to see if that's true or not. I dont expect a lot of the names at the top of this list to move on to the NHL next year, but time will tell.

[tweetdrivr]

...but time will tell.

It always does. We can all study and form opinions - which is great and fun and why we play fantasy hockey. The truth data will come and we get to see who was right and who wasn’t.