Over the last couple of days we here at TLN have been using PCS% and The Projection Project to try and identify CHL players that may be overlooked leading up to the draft relative to where they are ranked.  Today we’re going to show you the full list of projection tool rankings.  In these tables will be not just the players that might be overlooked, but the projection numbers of every single CHL forward and defenseman ranked by NHL Central Scouting.

The tables are sorted using PCS% (this is the preferred tool because it uses more factors to develop it’s numbers than The Projection Project), but The Projection Project numbers will also have a column.

Note that PCS% is a player’s % chance of reaching 200 NHL games based on previous players with similar height, age, and level of production.  The Projection Project measures a players % chance of becoming an NHL player.

Without further ado, let’s get started:

Overall, there aren’t too many surprises in this table.  Most of the players ranked very highly show up near the top of the table and the players ranked lower show up closer to the end.

I guess I should briefly talk about the 3 players given a 0% chance of reaching 200 NHL games played by the PCS tool.  First of all, the reason Connor McDavid scored a 0% is because he has no historic comparables – because his numbers were so good.  Basically, Connor McDavid is so good that he pretty much broke the tool.

It’s a similar case for Evgeni Svechnikov, who is a 6″3′ forward that put up 1.42 points per game in the QMJHL this season as a 17-year-old.  That doesn’t happen too often.  He did have 5 comparables, but that’s not a lot.  One of them was Jordan Caron, who may very well reach 200 NHL games one day, maybe even next season (he’s at 153 so far).  In any event, I wouldn’t read much into Svechnikov’s score here as he’s just a fairly unique player.

The same can’t be said for Nicolas Roy though.  True, he’s 6″4′.  But he actually had 44 historic comparables – 44 players historically similar to Nicolas Roy this season and not a single one of them reached 200 NHL games played.  For a player already considered to have low upside, that doesn’t bode well for Roy or the team that ends up drafting him.

Other than that, this table is mostly by the book.  There are a few names that score a lot higher than you’d think, and those mostly seem to be the ones we’ve identified as being overlooked.  There are also a few names that have scores a little lower than expected (such as Pavel Zacha, Daniel Sprong, and Anthony Beauvillier) but those players usually score highly in The Projection Project.  They’re also pretty talented, and numbers aren’t everything.

Anyways, make of this table what you will.  The point isn’t so much for me to discuss it for you, but for you to look at it yourselves and start to draw your own conclusions.

Again, nothing too surprising here that we didn’t already discuss in our article about overlooked CHL blueliners.

In fact, this table is almost as by the books as you can get.  Almost every player ranked highly by Central Scouting shows up somewhere in the top half of this table, and all the lower-ranked players show up later on.  One exception might be QMJHL defenseman and Team Canada representative at this year’s U18s, Guillaume Brisebois.  Ranked 41st by NHL Central Scouting, Brisebois is given just a 4.67 PCS% score, good for 8th-last on this list.

Again, make of this table what you will.  Use it to educate yourself more on some of the lesser-known players of this draft class.  And make sure to bookmark this page, because this is something you might want to refer back to, especially as the picks start officially rolling in later this month.

On a final note, I just wanted to take the time to thank our friends at Canucks Army who were kind enough to let us at TLN use their still-in-development PCS% tool.  I also wanted to thank the fine folks who created The Projection Project for their invaluable new tool for evaluating young players.  Shout out to CHL Stats too, another product of Canucks Army writer Josh Weissbock.  You are all awesome.