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Future Watch 2013
The Hockey News has been providing the most comprehensive coverage of the world of hockey since 1947. In each issue, you'll find news, features and opinions about the NHL and leagues across North America and the world.
HOW FW WORKS
THE FUTURE WATCH top 50 prospect list is a who’s who of the best NHL-affiliated players. It’s a five-week project that begins shortly after the World Junior Championship, where scouts from all 30 NHL teams evaluate the latest wave of tomorrow’s big-league stars. It starts with The Hockey News consulting with each NHL team to determine an order of the top prospects in that organization. Once a master list of 30 top 10s is established, we ask the talent evaluators to rank the top 50 prospects from the 300 candidates with a five to 10-year projected outlook. Fifteen scouts participated in this year’s exercise and a spreadsheet does the number crunching. The voting system is weighted to give top-10 prospects sequentially more balloting points than those prospects ranked 11-50. The same members…
TOP 50 VOTE BREAKDOWN
THE BALLOTING FOR TOP NHL-affiliated prospect was a neck-and-neck battle between Vladimir Tarasenko and defenseman Justin Schultz of Edmonton. Each prospect received four first-place votes and five second-place votes from our committee of 15 NHL scouts, directors of player personnel and GMs. Panelists ranked prospects based on long-term NHL upside (five to 10 years). Other prospects receiving first-place votes were Anaheim’s John Gibson and Florida’s Jonathan Huberdeau.…
BEGIN ON THE BLUELINE
Any keen observer of the Toronto Maple Leafs will tell you the team’s most glaring needs are down the middle and in goal. But at last year’s draft, the Leafs continued their objective of building a blue-chip blueline by selecting defenseman Morgan Rielly and Matthew Finn with their first two picks. “The thing about defenseman is that the good ones are really hard to find,” said Dave Morrison, Leafs director of amateur scouting. “And if you can build a really good defense, I think that’s always a good thing. So far, we’re happy with the way things have gone in that regard.” 1| MORGAN RIELLY D, 18, Moose Jaw (WHL) 6-0, 205, 45-9-32-41-13 2012 draft, 5th overall OVERALL 19 Rielly was one of the final cuts at the Leafs’ training camp, but it wasn’t an indication…
FLOCK FLUSH
It’s not as though he’s a legitimate Prince of Darkness or anything, but Justin Schultz is to the Anaheim Ducks what Voldemort was to the wizarding world of Harry Potter. You know, He Who Must Not Be Named. It appears even uttering Schultz’s name is verboten around the Ducks these days. In fact, the Ducks assistant GM and senior vice president of hockey operations, David McNab, gratefully declines comment when asked what might have been if the Ducks had managed to sign Schultz to a contract after selecting him 43rd overall in the 2008 draft. “Just too frustrating,” McNab says. We’ll give him that. After all, Schultz could become the first player in hockey history to win rookie-of-the-year honors in the American League and the NHL in the same season. If you’d…
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