Search for your favorite player or team
© The Hockey News. All rights reserved. Any and all material on this website cannot be used, reproduced, or distributed without prior written permission from Roustan Media Ltd. For more information, please see our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
Prospects Unlimited 2022-23
Our annual Prospects Unlimited issue returns, with full listings of every NHL team’s system, grades, and a profile on an intriguing youngster. Also, we count down the top 100 21-and-under players in the world.
NEW YORK RANGERS
WHEN A young Maxim Barbashev arrived in Moncton, N.B., to watch his older brother, Ivan, star for the QMJHL’s Wildcats, little did he know he would be making the same trek on his own a few years later. “When Ivan played here, Max would visit and always wanted to come back and play here,” said Wildcats GM Ritchie Thibeau. “He had his Wildcats jersey and everything.” Now wearing Wildcats garb in front of the same crowd among which he once sat, Barbashev has brought a skill set and attitude that has made him a star in the QMJHL and a notable NHL prospect. The realities of recent years altered Barbashev’s junior experience in a way his elder sibling, who currently plays for the St. Louis Blues, never experienced. Though not always easy, it…
TOP 100 21 AND UNDER: 1. CONNOR BEDARD
POS: C | AGE: 17 Regina Pats (WHL) | Draft: 2023 NOTHING IN CONNOR BEDARD’S DNA, upbringing or physical makeup provides any markers of greatness. There are no elite athletes in his family tree. His father is a lumberjack, and his mother, who rarely went to the rink to watch her son play because of the behavior she saw at youth hockey games, hosts international students in their suburban Vancouver home. He’s 5-foot-10 and 185 pounds, and it was always too warm in Vancouver for him to have a frozen rink in his backyard. But here he is playing in a WHL that he has already outgrown. Somehow, he already shoots the puck harder and more accurately than most of the men he’ll be competing against in the NHL next season. When he…
BUFFAL-WHOA
COUNT BUFFALO SABRES GM Kevyn Adams – or 'GMKA' as the kids call him – as one of the many who are suitably impressed with Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. He was very impressed on his first trip there in October at what they had done with the place. It was only his first visit because the last time the Sabres were in Seattle, Adams was a little preoccupied making a franchise-altering trade, one that could go a long way toward defining his managerial legacy. The same day the Sabres were putting the finishing touches on a 1-3-0 western road trip with a 5-2 loss to the Kraken in Seattle on Nov. 4, 2021, Adams was back in Buffalo trading the guy who was supposed to be the franchise beacon, whose…
COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS
ENTERING LAST season, the Halifax Mooseheads knew Jordan Dumais was special. As a rookie in 2020-21, he’d produced 29 points in 40 games, all against divisional foes as the QMJHL navigated the pandemic. It actually turns out the unusual schedule may have helped. Halifax coach Sylvain Favreau says playing a tough, veteran-laden team like the Charlottetown Islanders so much aided the right winger’s development. Dumais spent much of the first half of 2021-22 among the league’s top 10 scorers. But that wasn’t enough to earn him an invitation to the CHL/NHL Top Prospects Game. “When the prospects game roster came out, he was certainly disappointed and had a bit of a slump for a few games after that,” Favreau said. “Then it clicked in his head that he was going to…
Made possible with the support of
