NHL Draft: Ranking the No. 1 picks of the last decade

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When the 2023 NHL Draft wraps up in Nashville at the end of the month, it will also conclude my 10th season covering the draft. We felt that made this week’s edition of The List a natural opportunity to look back at where I was on each of the No. 1 picks of those 10 drafts, while also contextualizing where Connor Bedard slots into the NHL’s recent history of top picks.

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Here, I’ve ranked each of the last 10 No. 1 selections at the draft relative to where I stood on them before they were picked, removing what we know about how they’ve performed since. The exercise also served to help me recognize where and why I was too high or too low on a player, in theory in an effort to prevent biases and mistakes from reoccurring.

McDavid remains the best prospect I’ve watched while doing this job. In all three of his seasons with the Erie Otters, I was based out of Ottawa scouting the OHL through TD Place Arena, the home of the 67’s, and the QMJHL through the Robert Guertin Centre, the then-home of the Gatineau Olympiques, for public scouting services McKeen’s Hockey and Future Considerations. In that time, I watched Nathan MacKinnon, Jonathan Drouin, Mitch Marner, Nikolaj Ehlers and others come through. It’s not an exaggeration to say they weren’t even close to where McDavid was and where it was clear he was going. He was the only guaranteed sellout of the year at TD Place, and that was true across the OHL as he became a travelling show, stepping onto the ice and then around defenders with the kind of ease that only a singular talent can.

I was, however, surprised by how close the next guy on this list came.

2. Connor Bedard (2023)

It’s unfair to Bedard to compare him to McDavid now, given where McDavid has ascended to and given that McDavid’s otherworldly skating was always going to mean he had a higher NHL ceiling, but Bedard’s dominance this season (not his projection, but his impact at the junior level within his age group) is right there with where McDavid was in 2014-15 for me. Especially when we consider that McDavid’s a January birthday and Bedard’s a July one, it’s hard to understate how prolific he was in Regina, as well as internationally, over the course of his age 15-17 seasons. He may not become a generational NHL player in the way that McDavid and Sidney Crosby did, but he has been a once-in-a-generation, once-in-a-decade type of player at the junior level.

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If this list were broken down into tiers like my draft rankings are, its pre-draft evaluations of each of these players would have settled into the following groupings: 1-2, 3, 4-6, 7, 8-10. Matthews would be in his own tier, landing outside of the generational moniker but also above three other No. 1 picks that I was really high on. I wasn’t among those who believed there was a debate to be had between Matthews and Patrik Laine, and was actually quite defiant about that at the time. Because of his late birthday, he’d put together an incredibly strong profile both in makeup and statistically (he was, by the time he was picked, both the NTDP’s all-time leading scorer and well above a point per game in one of the better pro leagues in Europe). Because of his age, he’d been able to develop his frame, shot and 200-foot game beyond where draft eligibles typically can pre-draft — helped further by two seasons at the NTDP, where they spend a lot of time in the gym, and a full season professionally in Switzerland, where despite still carrying a little baby fat, he got to learn how to take bumps against men. There was a certainty with his projection as a 1C that is pretty rare.

This is where my list starts to differ a little from where a consensus on these players would have landed at ages 17/18. A majority of scouts were higher on the next name on this list than they were on Dahlin, and a decent minority were also higher on the name after that. I was mesmerized by Dahlin and believed he was going to become the best offensive defenceman in the NHL and a perennial Norris Trophy contender, which is something I haven’t ever written about another D prospect.

Here’s a snippet from my breakdown of his game at The Athletic back in the spring of 2018:

“What we can learn from Dahlin’s record-breaking offensive season, beyond the historic numbers, is that the plays he’s making are plays of skill, speed, finesse and technique. With each extra goal or highlight-reel assist comes a reaffirmation of the transformative ability he has. It shows us that what he’s done is repeatable and that his 8 percent shooting percentage (high for a defenceman) is no fluke. Above all else, it’s the way he makes plays, not the end results, that give us a glimpse into the unknown. That dynamism leads to wonder — wonder about the possibilities and the potential. The potential of something truly new and different.”

I think people forget, given the hard time Alexis Lafrenière has had in the NHL, just how much hype and excitement there was around him. He played in two world juniors before the draft and was a force in the second one, leading Canada to gold as tournament MVP. He had also captained Canada to a Hlinka Gretzky Cup gold (tying for the tournament scoring lead with 11 points in five games). He was also the captain in Rimouski, the QMJHL’s MVP and had registered 240 points in 126 QMJHL games (regular season and playoffs) in the two seasons leading into the draft. In his first of three seasons in the QMJHL in advance of the draft, he’d also scored 46 goals and 87 points in 67 games as a 16-year-old. There was some concern out there about his pace of play and how sheltered he had been from pressure (he was, I can tell you, the most protected player from the media that I’ve ever covered, for example), but I think talk today about how loud that was at the time has been overstated.

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I wrote this in my final draft ranking: “Though he’s not in the generational echelon that Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid were at the same age, and may not hit the tier that Nathan MacKinnon or Auston Matthews have hit, he’s still a better prospect than many other recent top picks (including Nico Hischier, Aaron Ekblad and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins), and he did have a better junior career than MacKinnon.”

I also wrote that while I believed he was a better prospect than Jack Hughes the year prior, they were in the same tier as prospects for me. Which brings me to …

6. Jack Hughes (2019)

I loved watching Hughes play ahead of his draft year. There was a breeziness and confidence on the puck to his game that I’ve always been drawn to in prospects. The talent level, playmaking and transition game were undeniable, and there were times when he made it look so, so easy against his peers. Anecdotally, that 2001 NTDP age group is right up there for me both in terms of talent and personality. It was a ton of fun, and he was the focal point of the group on and off the ice. But there were also questions about his slight frame and whether he was going to be able to score enough and play hard enough to make an immediate impact in the NHL as a teenager and a centreman. I agreed with some of that but was really excited about what he could become in his prime. Now we’re all seeing it.

“If you’ve followed this draft closely, you’ve probably read ad nauseam about there being no clear-cut No. 1 prospect. If you’ve followed my work closely this year, though, you’ll also know that Owen Power has led the way from start to finish on my boards.”

Those were the first two sentences of my Power scouting report in my final 2021 draft ranking. There was a lot of doubt in public sphere prospect evaluation about Power’s merits as the class’ top prospect. I never agreed with that, though, and the vast majority of NHL scouts didn’t, either. In fact, I think he’s probably the player on this list that private sphere scouting differed most from the public space on. He’s someone almost everyone I talked to pre-draft — scouts, folks in Chicago, folks in Michigan, folks from his time in the Greater Toronto Hockey League — was really high on both as a player and a kid. Given his tools and what he’d accomplished in the USHL and NCAA, he was closer to slotting into the 4-6 tier above him here than the 8-10 one below him for me.

8. Aaron Ekblad (2014)

It’s easy to forget, but Sam Bennett finished No. 1 on The Hockey News’, Hockey Prospect’s and even NHL Central Scouting’s final list of North American skaters in 2014, while Sam Reinhart finished No. 1 on Craig Button’s, ISS’ and McKeen’s Hockey’s lists. In fact, the only of the major public lists that had Aaron Ekblad at No. 1 at year’s end was Bob McKenzie’s, and even then three of the 10 NHL scouts he surveyed had another player first.

I first saw Ekblad play on a trip up to Barrie for a scrimmage in his first OHL training camp in 2011. I’d heard a lot about him because I’m a 1995 and he’d played AAA hockey up a year as a 1996 with a bunch of my buddies growing up, and I’d made the drive up because one of my closest childhood friends was drafted with Ekblad to the Colts that spring and I wanted to support him. But it was also an excuse to see Ekblad. There were two players who stood out in the two games I watched that day. The first was Mark Scheifele, who’d just been drafted seventh by the Jets. The second was Ekblad who, even at 15, stood out for his physical maturity and command of the game. Three years later, when writing about prospects began to go from a part-time side hustle while I was in journalism school to closer to a full-time job, that draft class was the first I scouted and reported on exhaustively. Though he was viewed more as a solid and projectable NHL defenceman than an exceptional status star by the time the draft rolled around, I always remained a little bullish on Ekblad, arguing steadfastly for him as the draft’s top prospect.

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9. Nico Hischier (2017)

When The Athletic’s Corey Pronman conducted a survey of scouts for a similar piece, Hischier ranked ahead of Ekblad. One of two No. 1 picks in the last 10 drafts who wasn’t No. 1 on my final list, I could never get there on Hischier, who finished second on my final 2017 ranking behind Nolan Patrick. In hindsight, that was obviously a mistake, even considering the role Patrick’s concussion issues played in his career path and even knowing that he went right after Hischier with the No. 2 pick.

Those who’ve followed my work in the last seven years at The Athletic, and the die-hards who followed it before that, will know that Slafkovsky is among the top picks I’ve been lowest on versus the consensus. He didn’t just not rank first on my final ranking last year, he ranked fifth. And while it was a weak draft and he slotted in the same tier as the four players in front of him, I wouldn’t have taken him in front of Shane Wright, Simon Nemec or Logan Cooley.

(Top photo of Connor McDavid at the 2015 NHL Draft: Dave Sandford / NHLI via Getty Images)

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