2027 NHL Draft Standouts, Calder Candidates and the CHL–NCAA Shift

Now, guys, just to kick things off, let's start with an outlook sort of on the 2027 NHL draft.

We just had the first major event of the scouting calendar, which was the Holinka Gretzky last year, or sorry, last month, where we got to see some of the top draft eligible prospects compete on the international stage.

Some of them for the first time, some of them for the second time.

So Ryan, we'll start with you.

Who were some of the standouts for you at that tournament? And let's just talk a little bit about the draft class as a whole here.

Yeah.

I mean, ironically, some of the biggest standouts were for the 2028 draft, but I do think that Milan Sundstrom was very interesting.

And Tony, feel free to weigh in on this.

I think this is, at least at the beginning here, this is an interesting draft class because it feels like there's a lot of smaller or skinnier players that could be vying for Top role, you know, like top rankings.

And, you know, I look at Sergei Skvortsov and again, Tony, I don't know how high you are on him.

I know, you know, he's looked really good so far, sort of preseason and his first KHL game, but he's 154 pounds.

and and six feet tall and uh and he's a late birthday so like i don't know how much like bulkier he's gonna get but you know i i look at sunstrom and he's a big kid that can move uh and you know i mean sweden wasn't super impressive in that tournament but sunstrom certainly had his moments and so for me he's pretty high like landon dupont obviously you know comes in as the the number one prospect uh and and he looked great and you know we're gonna be talking about him all season long.

Uh, but I'm going to keep an eye on Sundstrom, especially cause he's also a center.

And then, uh, you know, you look at, uh, Jonah Neunschwander, uh, who is much easier to say than it is to spell, but here's another kid who he's a big kid and he's a center.

He's And I'm very curious to see by the end of this season how things shake out, because like I said, there's a lot of talented kids that are a little on the smaller side.

And then some of these bigger kids that it'll be interesting to see what kind of potential they fulfill.

Yeah, that was my biggest takeaway from the Hlinka Gretzky as well is we have some of the bigger prospects.

For example, Alexey Joseph is a guy that everyone's coming to the year super, super high on.

Everyone wants to see him at his top-end potential, and the Hlinka wasn't really that.

I think it was a bit of a disappointing performance for him, but because he's a big guy, he's got size, he plays a little bit with a physical edge, he's a guy that NHL teams are undoubtedly going to be attracted to.

A guy like Nazar Privolov over in Russia as well – A bigger guy, plays with power, throws his body around.

That guy's a bit of a missile in the ice at times.

And he's showing some of that higher-end, finer skill.

So this is a really interesting draft class because, as you mentioned, we're talking about a guy in Landon DuPont being the top defenseman and the top player on the board for most people.

And it's not like he's this 6'3 defenseman who's playing this stout defensive game with physicality and everything.