NHL Draft consensus big board: Who follows Celebrini up top?

No draft ranking can properly account for the chaos that is the NHL Draft.

Each year, we see that vividly when the picks start flying and the shock and awe follow. Last year, for example, Arizona selected Russian defenseman Dmitriy Simashev at sixth overall. That was much earlier than the public consensus had expected — Simashev was 24th on last year’s consensus big board — but well within the range of his highest individual ranking in that survey: Corey Pronman’s list, which had him at No. 10.

And while Simashev’s case shows how an apparent consensus can sometimes be misleading, it’s also an example of the value of putting different draft lists side-by-side. The wisdom of the crowd matters — but it only takes one team to make a pick, so the variance in lists is just as notable as agreement.

That’s why we’re once again compiling a composite big-board of five high-profile draft rankings, in an attempt to find both consensus and dissent.

We started with rankings from The Athletic’s own prospect writers, Corey Pronman and Scott Wheeler, as well as FloHockey’s Chris Peters, who contributes regularly to The Athletic Hockey Show podcast. To give some outside flavor to the consensus, we also surveyed the lists of former NHL GM Craig Button, who is currently the director of scouting for TSN, and his TSN colleague Bob McKenzie, whose list is itself a composite survey of 10 NHL scouts, and is therefore a highly useful insight into the league’s thinking.

Each list is of course worth reading on its own. But the goal in combining them into a composite here is to find some form of consensus, as well as to highlight where there are major differences.

So, let’s dig into the findings of this year’s list, starting at the position that could define the 2024 Draft.

The first thing you may note is that five defensemen ranked in the top eight overall. That’s a big number considering just two defensemen were picked in the top eight last year, and three in 2022. In fact, the last time five ‘D’ went in the first picks was 2012, when six defensemen went in the top eight, and eight in the top 10: Ryan Murray, Griffin Reinhart, Morgan Rielly, Hampus Lindholm, Matt Dumba, Derrick Pouliot, Jacob Trouba and Slater Koekkoek.

We’ll see how many ultimately go in that range this year, especially with forwards locking down the top two spots on the consensus board (Ivan Demidov edged out Artyom Levshunov by just one point for the second overall spot), but there’s no doubt that the ‘D’ will be a key story early on.

Levshunov ranked second or third on four of the five lists we surveyed, a testament to the value of a right-shot ‘D’ with size (6-foot-2) who put up excellent numbers as an NCAA freshman. His 35 points in 38 games for Michigan State dwarf the draft-year numbers of 2021 first-overall pick Owen Power, who had 16 points in 26 games in the same conference. Power’s size at 6-foot-6 is a notable difference, but the production from Levshunov is impressive.

Even more impressive? There was another NCAA freshman defenseman who topped it this season. That would be Denver’s Zeev Buium, who comes in at fourth overall on the composite after ranking in the top seven on all five lists. Buium’s staggering 50 points in 42 NCAA games are among the most ever by a U19 defenseman, and while his number of games played helps that, they also speak to a selling point for Buium: He played that big role on the NCAA champion. In fact, Buium won both the NCAA title and the world juniors last season, giving his production a winning backing.

Towering Russian Anton Silayev is up next at No. 5, bolstered by three different lists having him at No. 4 — Pronman, Peters and McKenzie’s scout poll. Silayev’s size at six-foot-seven certainly stands out first, but his production in the KHL is even more eye-catching: Silayev’s 11 points in 63 games are the most ever points by a U18 player — not just a defenseman — in that league. There are players who scored at better rates in the KHL at that age, including Vladimir Tarasenko, Kirill Kaprizov, and Evgeny Kuznetsov, but playing in so many KHL games as a 17-year-old defenseman speaks to Silayev’s rare profile.

After that, three CHL defensemen slot into the top 12: Saginaw (OHL) dynamo Zayne Parekh slots in at sixth overall, London’s (OHL) Sam Dickinson is at No. 8, and Calgary (WHL) dynamo Carter Yakemchuk is at No. 12. All three had big-time years in Canada’s top junior circuit, and Parekh and Dickinson squared off in the Memorial Cup Final earlier this month. And while Yakemchuk may be the lowest of the three on the consensus board, he had the highest individual-list ranking of any of the three, finishing at No. 3 on Pronman’s list.

While we’re showing the top 10 here, there is some separation after those six, with Czech defender Adam Jiricek (brother of Blue Jackets prospect David Jiricek) and late-rising Norwegian Stian Solberg clustered together in the teens, followed by EJ Emery of the USA Hockey National Team Development Program and Sweden’s Leo Sahlin Wallenius more in the mid 20s.

That speaks to one potential shape this year’s first round could take on: a run on the top defenders early, shifting into a more forward-heavy crop in the teens.

Celebrini is of course the headliner of this draft, with no real doubt that he will be the Sharks’ choice at first overall. Behind him is where it gets interesting. Demidov took the second spot overall on the composite list behind three second-place rankings (Peters ranked him third, Pronman eighth), but will he actually be the second forward off the board?

The Russian winger has dynamic skill and could go as high as No. 2 to Chicago, but if he were to slip a bit — perhaps based on difficulty with in-person scouting in Russia in recent years — it’s entirely feasible the consensus No. 3 forward, WHL center Cayden Lindstrom, could go ahead of him. Lindstrom ranked in the top five of only one list we surveyed (McKenzie’s), but his rare combination of size, skating and skill could be enough to land him there on draft day, especially if teams are content with his medicals after he missed time with a back injury.

Two more WHL wingers are next up, with Spokane’s Berkly Catton and Kelowna’s Tij Iginla finishing ninth and 10th on the composite list. Both are relatively small (NHL Central Scouting lists Catton at 5-foot-10 and Iginla at 6-foot) but both finished in the top seven of all WHL goal scorers this season, and Catton (who plays center) finished fourth in total points.

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Three more names who did not finish in the consensus top 10 received at least one top-10 ranking, though: Finnish center Konsta Helenius finished at 11th but landed at ninth for McKenzie and all the way up at No. 6 for Button. OHL winger Beckett Sennecke and U.S. NTDP sniper Cole Eiserman tied for the 13th spot on the composite, but Sennecke ranked seventh for Pronman, and Eiserman ranked seventh for Wheeler and fifth for Button.

There is still some substantial forward depth beyond those names that should carry into the 20s, but those top eight forwards — and how early they can break into the run on defensemen — could determine just how long that depth lasts on draft day.

This, to me, is the most interesting part of the composite board: seeing how wide the range is on different players, and what it means for their overall placement on a list. Parascak, for instance, had a ranking as low as 37 from Pronman, but ends up in the No. 24 spot largely on the strength of his place on the lists of Button (13) and Wheeler (20). While that’s certainly a wide gap for a player this high on the overall list, it speaks to his potential range of outcomes.

Behind Parascak on the list of players with wide ranges are a pair of defense-first defensemen in Solberg and Emery. That profile may not be as sexy or have the gaudy stat lines, but we see year after year that general managers value it significantly, so high rankings of 12 for Solberg (Pronman) and 16 for Emery (Button) could well prove accurate come draft day.

Other players ended up here more on the pull of one low ranking. That’s certainly true of Guelph center Jett Luchanko, who was top-19 for four lists surveyed, but down at No. 31 for Wheeler. And it’s true to a lesser extent of Greentree, who was in the top 23 for everyone but Peters, who ranked him 31st.

You can read the complete top 65 here:

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos; Bailey Hillesheim / Icon Sportswire, Maksim Konstantinov / SOPA Images / LightRocket, Nic Antaya / Getty Images)