Relative Strength of the 2024 and 2025 drafts

[joe jones]

I have been reviewing lots of people's rankings and there is a lot of interchanging in the 4-12 and 13-22/23. One thing is that is appears there has been a lot of movement since the beginning of the season (both risers and fallers), which perhaps leads to a lot of differences in the various rankings. Will make the June nhl draft very interesting.

[Eskimo Brother]

^Agreed. Was just saying to someone else that the 5 spot in fantasy drafts is where it gets interesting after the top few forwards are off the board.

Down from there, I have pick 17 in one of my dynasty drafts (after picks 8&10 too) and I think that is going to be the key pick for me hopefully getting someone that is in my top 10-12 range but slips because everyone else has very different lists.

[joe jones]

"Ivan Demidov is going to score no matter where he plays. Maybe similar timeline to Michkov to come over to the NHL, but for most fantasy GMs that shouldn't be a deterrent. Possibility of getting a huge impact player like Kucherov or J. Hughes."

Interesting comparing these two. SKA kept Demidov in their system this past year (MHL) but loaned Michkov to Sochi (KHL). Hard to know why but pretty interesting.

[joe jones]

Interestingly, Wheeler released the following integrated 2023 and 2024 top 10

1. Connor Bedard (’23)
2. Macklin Celebrini (’24)
3. Matvei Michkov (’23)
4. Adam Fantilli (’23)
5. Leo Carlsson (’23)
6. Will Smith (’23)
7. Artyom Levshunov (’24)
8. Ivan Demidov (’24)
9. Cole Eiserman (’24)
10. Zayne Parekh (’24)
11. Sam Dickinson (’24)
12. Zeev Buium (’24)
13. Anton Silayev (’24)
14. Zach Benson (’23)
15. Gabe Perreault (’23)
16. Berkly Catton (’24)
17. Konsta Helenius (’24)
18. Cayden Lindstrom (’24)

Also Dobber Prospects team just posted their April rankings
https://dobberprospects.com/2024/04/...024-nhl-draft/

Definitely points/fantasy centric I think, as there are a lot of shorter guys that will likely fall further down the draft board (Catton, Parekh, etc.) and big fellas that will climb (e.g. Silayev, Dickinson)

[hawkdog]

There seems to be a lot of hype on Demidov - my concern is he plays in the MHL unlike Michkov who was drafted out of the KHL. I am no expert on either league just have questions.
Kucherov came out of the MHL so there's that.
Any thoughts? Anyone know why Demidov is not in the KHL? Bummer we didn't see Demidov at the World juniors to see him play against his peers.

A couple notes on Celebrini - he's only 17, youngest to win the Hobey Baker. Fantilli was 18. He also broke the record for the most goals ever by a U18 player in a single NCAA season - in significantly less games.

I think maybe the reason the 2023 draft was dubbed to be deep was there were 4 players who could have went first overall in 2022? I recall it being tagged as deep as well.