Need a hockey distraction to help you repress memories of last night’s 4-1 loss to the Anaheim Ducks?
Well, look no further because have I got some prospect porn for you.
Like he does each and every year, ESPN Insider’s Corey Pronman recently revealed (note: paywall) his mid-season evaluation of the top 50 drafted NHL prospects – which accounts for how the stocks of these prospects has dropped or improved over the course of the season – and fortunately for the Ottawa Senators, there’s some really, really, really good news: not only have Colin White and Thomas Chabot cracked Pronman’s list, they’re actually rated fairly high.
To provide a bit of a backstory, White was the only Senators prospect to be included in Pronman’s most recent top 100 drafted NHL prospects list which was released this past August (note: yep, behind a paywall) and White did not even place that highly, clocking in as the 73rd overall ranking.
White is now ranked as Pronman’s 20th best drafted prospect, but more impressively, Chabot was on the outside of Pronman’s preseason top 100 looking in. Hell, even going back a little further to the time of the 2015 NHL Draft, Pronman even admitted he “would have preferred a few other players than Chabot or Gagne (with where) Ottawa took them.” (As an aside, despite these feelings, Pronman still gave the Sens a favourable B+ letter grade when reviewing their 2015 draft class.)
Now he’s Pronman’s 18th-highest rated prospect and the third highest rated defenceman on the list behind only Zach Werenski and Ivan Provorov.
“Chabot had a really strong NHL camp, a good first half of the season in the QMJHL and was one of Canada’s better defensemen at the WJC as an underage player. His skating is ridiculously good for a 6-foot-2 player. Chabot is also a coordinated puck handler who moves it up the ice very well. His defense is a work in progress, but he’s shown significant improvement there, leading to a large bump in his overall prospect value. Filling out his lanky frame will go a long way toward closing the gap in that area.”
Speaking of closing gaps, if White’s production keeps trending upward, it’s hard not to envision him continuing to shoot up the prospect rankings.
“White has put an up-and-down draft season behind him, and has looked like the top-end prospect he was as a 16-year-old. White has been an outstanding all-around forward for Boston College, and had a very strong WJC. White has a fantastic hockey brain, and is always around the puck making some type of play in all three zones. He’s an above-average skater and puck handler with great vision. White has shown over the years he can be one of his team’s top scorers and penalty killers.”
Even if you take into consideration that 15 of Pronman’s top 50 from this past summer graduated from his rankings because they have accrued “either 25 NHL games played in any one season, 50 total NHL games played in his career or (occupy a) current spot on an NHL roster (as of Jan. 11),” it’s not only pretty remarkable to see both of these players leapfrog the competition and make their way up the rankings, but it reassuring as hell to see these prospects get some third party recognition.
Considering the lack of blue chip prospects within the system and how some of the players who have graduated to the parent roster in recent seasons seem to have hit the wall, the Senators desperately need prospects like White and Chabot to fulfil their vast potential and help transition this team past its playoff bubble status to one that more closely resembles a legitimate Stanley Cup contender — especially in consideration of Ottawa’s internal budget and the reality that it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to not only bring in quality talent via free agency (not to mention the fact that it’s becoming more and more for good players to reach unrestricted free agency), but trade for it as well. These days, it feels like the only way to get good talent is to draft it yourself.)
Of course none of that is to say that there’s any guarantee that these rankings portend future success, but holy shit does it feel good to know that there’s quality talent within the system who have a chance to play a significant role in this organization’s future success.
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