The Athletic has live coverage of Connor Bedard’s debut and the Blackhawks vs. Penguins matchup
Earlier this week, you submitted nearly 150 questions on the 2024 NHL Draft, prospects, scouting and more. Here, in part 2 of my mailbag, I’ve answered seven of them in-depth, touching on names like Macklin Celebrini, Cole Eiserman, James Hagens, Michael Misa, Matvei Michkov, Ivan Demidov, Connor Bedard and Lane Hutson, as well as topics like comparing the 2024 class to recent drafts. If you missed part 1, it’s right here.
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Note: Questions have been lightly edited for clarity and length. If you submitted a question and I didn’t answer it here, I’ll circle back and answer the rest of the submissions in the coming days.
Ivan Demidov or Matvei Michkov? Who do you rate as the better prospect? — Joseph G.
Michkov.
Demidov is an impressive talent and looks like a star-level prospect. But I also think he’s the shiny new toy and people can lose (and have lost) sight of Michkov’s pedigree. Let’s not forget:
• Michkov’s D-2: Led the MHL in goals (38 in 56!) and was 1.00 points per game (56 in 56) as a 15-year-old in the fall and 16-year-old in the winger, then outscored Wright and Bedard as an underager at U18 worlds, scoring 12 goals and 16 points in just seven games.
• Demidov’s D-2: Split the season between SKA’s U17 team and the MHL, playing to 0.84 points per game (21 in 25) in the MHL, plus registered five points in five games playing up in the Hlinka Gretzky Cup (in a tournament that Michkov, while a year older, again led in scoring with eight goals and 13 points).
• Michkov’s D-1: An unstoppable force in the MHL, registered 30 goals and 51 points in just 28 games (1.82 points per game). Picked up five points and 19 shots on goal in his first 13 KHL games (1.5 shots per game) while averaging just 7:47. Scored three times in two games at the cancelled world juniors just a couple of weeks after turning 17.
• Demidov’s D-1: Registered 64 points in 44 MHL games (1.45 points per game). Played in two KHL games.
• Michkov’s draft year: Injured to start the year, then registered 10 goals and 14 points in 12 VHL games and 20 points in 30 KHL games.
• Demidov’s draft year: To be continued.
Note, too, that Michkov is born Dec. 9 and Demidov is born Dec. 10, so you couldn’t ask for a better apples-to-apples comparison statistically. Obviously, Michkov has been more prolific to this point.
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As players, while they’re very different, Michkov is also the more threatening of the two, particularly as a scorer but I would argue also with a slight edge as a handler (they’re both incredibly intelligent offensive players). While Demidov is a better skater and an inch taller (5-foot-11 to 5-foot-10), I believe Michkov’s statistical profile is more projectable and I believe his game/skill grades give him a higher ceiling.
How many goals/points do you think Connor Bedard will register in his rookie season? — Johnson H.
I’ve had this conversation on the radio and with colleague Dom Luszczyszyn privately since the draft, and I must say it’s tougher to predict now that we know he’s with the Chicago Blackhawks. If he’d landed in Anaheim with Trevor Zegras and Troy Terry, or Columbus with Johnny Gaudreau, I think we might have been able to have a conversation about a McDavid-type rookie year (he had 48 in 45 before he broke his leg) at or close to a point per game.
I think in Chicago, the bar probably lowers closer to the years Auston Matthews (69 in 80) and Nathan MacKinnon (63 in 82) had.
The Blackhawks didn’t have a 50-point player last year (Domi had 49 in 60 before the trade to Dallas), so even if it’s 26-26-52 that’s probably a good season. That seems more or less like the floor for me, health permitting. Because while he won’t have star talent around him, he will get his looks, he will be the focal point of PP1, and he will score and play-make when he gets those looks.
If he’s centring Taylor Hall and Lukas Reichel all year, that’s probably the best-case scenario for attaining a season closer to the high 60s instead of the low 60s. In either outcome, if he’s in the 60s he probably leads the Blackhawks in scoring. I think you have to hope Hall and Reichel have 50-point years if they’re in top-six/PP1 usage, but I don’t think you can expect much more than that. Can Bedard lead the team in scoring by 20ish points and nab a 70ish-point year? I don’t think it’s completely out of the question, but it feels like a long shot even for an 18-year-old as talented as him — and would make him one of the stories of the year if he did.
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And what if it’s not Hall and Reichel? What if it’s Hall and a preference for a right wing like veteran Corey Perry, or a Taylor Raddysh (whose career high is last year’s 37 points)?
Montreal Canadiens 2022 second-round pick Lane Hutson skates for Boston University. (Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images)Where would Lane Hutson go in a 2022 re-draft right now? — Pete S.
Hutson was the 11th-ranked 2022 prospect on my recent top 50 drafted prospects ranking, which didn’t include Juraj Slafkovsky because he was in the NHL last year, so I’d have him 12th in a do-over. Where I’d have him and where he goes in a re-draft are two different things, though.
I think it’s early enough that all of the players who went in that top 10 would go in front of Hutson. It’s after that — when you get into the 11-15 range of Conor Geekie, Denton Mateychuk, Frank Nazar, Rutger McGroarty and Jonathan Lekkerimaki — where I think the debate would get interesting for some clubs. Certainly, Jimmy Snuggerud (drafted No. 23) and Jiri Kulich (drafted No. 28) would also move up. But at worst, he’s probably right around where I had him ranked ahead of the draft (No. 19) and certainly a long way from where he got picked (No. 62).
At the same stage for each year, how high would you rate this upcoming draft versus the past five years in terms of talent in the first round? — Nick C.
Where I was at on them entering each draft season:
1. 2023
2. 2020
3. 2019
4. 2024
5. 2022
6. 2021
Of the teams that had a top-seven draft pick in the 2023 NHL Draft, who do you see contending for a championship first? — Kyle H.
This is an interesting question because six of those seven teams — the Blackhawks, Anaheim Ducks, San Jose Sharks, Montreal Canadiens, Arizona Coyotes and now Philadelphia Flyers — do feel like they’re in a similar spot in terms of priorities, with the seventh, the Columbus Blue Jackets, as the lone exception.
In terms of the Blue Jackets, it feels like injuries were their reason for drafting in that group last year, and their offseason moves to acquire Damon Severson and Ivan Provorov, plus hire Mike Babcock, seemed to signal that. They’re certainly further down the path to competing for a playoff spot than those other teams, while still having a comparable or better prospect pool/young core (see: Adam Fantilli, Kent Johnson, Kirill Marchenko, Cole Sillinger, Adam Boqvist, David Jiricek, Denton Mateychuk, Corson Ceulemans, Stanislav Svozil, Yegor Chinakhov, Jordan Dumais, Luca Del Bel Belluz, Dmitri Voronkov, etc.). But are they closer to contending for a championship? If Fantilli becomes a 1C and Johnson becomes a 1D and Jiricek and Mateychuk hit as a No. 2 and a No. 3/4 respectively before Werenski and Gaudreau begin to markedly decline, maybe?
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If the question were which team is best positioned for the long term, though, my answer would probably flip to the Blackhawks, whose blend of a blank slate, a superstar prospect, an upper-echelon prospect pool behind him, and more upcoming draft capital than any other team in the league should set them up for success.
I like what the Ducks have to build around in Trevor Zegras, Leo Carlsson, Mason McTavish, Troy Terry, Olen Zellweger, Pavel Mintyukov and company, but that core feels like it’s missing that one defining, top-of-the-league Hart/Norris-contending talent. I like what the Habs have in Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Lane Hutson, David Reinbacher and a deep pool of B-grade prospects, too, but they also feel like they’re missing that.
The Flyers and Sharks feel like they’re maybe the earliest in their processes, and thus the furthest away from contention (which has to frustrate the Sharks considering the way they wallowed for a couple of years before turning the page to the current one under new management) but Matvei Michkov and Cutter Gauthier represent a better start to the next Flyers core than Will Smith and William Eklund probably do for the Sharks (although Quentin Musty, Filip Bystedt and company probably give the Sharks the slightly deeper pool).
The Coyotes are a tricky one because Logan Cooley is obviously a stud and Daniil But, Dmitri Simashev, Conor Geekie, Dylan Guenther and Matias Maccelli could make for a decent young group behind him, yet they don’t have a single defenceman on their projected roster for this year signed beyond this season, there isn’t a goalie in waiting, and ongoing uncertainty around the team makes projecting them forward more difficult than the rest.
As a D-heavy class, how many of these kids do you see as having top-pairing potential? — Michael C.
With the caveat that we still have the entirety of the most important season of their development so far in front of them before the draft, I’d probably just say Artyom Levshunov for now. He’s got all of the makings, it’ll just be about reps and putting it all together.
The three with the potential to join Levshunov in that top-pairing conversation (though more as No. 2/3s) are probably Henry Mews, Sam Dickinson and Anton Silayev.
I think Aron Kiviharju’s probably a PP1 No. 3. I think Zayne Parekh and Cole Hutson look like potential PP1/2 No. 4s.
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Adam Jiricek is a bit of a wild card but the hardest to project because he’s still quite raw.
Would you say that 2024 draft-eligibles Macklin Celebrini and Cole Eiserman and 2025 draft-eligibles James Hagens and Michael Misa are in roughly the same tier, or does anyone stick out even among that foursome? — Viktor A.
Celebrini and Hagens are 1A and 1B in a ranking of those four players (I’d listen to an argument for either), with Misa and Eiserman a tier below at the moment.
Celebrini has it all in ways that the other three don’t, and Hagens has a skating-vision-sense combination that really separates him (though Misa gets very high marks in all three of those areas as well, Hagens’ is special).
I’m partial to the Misa player type in considering who would be third and who would be fourth for me in that group right now, but Eiserman’s one trick — his goal-scoring package — is a pretty sensational one trick, even if his game can lack/frustrate in other areas.
(Top photo of Connor Bedard: Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
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