It’s August and in the hockey world that means it’s time to rank prospects. It’s a month’s worth of optimism to be confronted with the fact that very few players go onto NHL stardom. Wait, I mean all these kids are going to work out great. They have to, Wes Clark drafted them, and the Leafs don’t have enough picks that they can afford to miss on anyone, right?

Let’s get back on track here and define what we mean when we say we are ranking prospects. A big part of our definition is based on vibes. Has this player had a legitimate shot at the NHL before? We’re not looking at anyone who has multiple seasons of looks at the NHL or played a significant stretch in the NHL. Are they too old? This year we’ll call it the Alex Steeves line. That probably applies on both the age and experience front. Where last year we were battling over whether or not to include Joseph Woll (we ultimately did) this year it was an exercise to include Steeves. The other criterion is the player has to be on the Maple Leafs reserve list. Throughout the summer we can have a look at some of the interesting players who are presently on AHL/ECHL deals, but for now, if the Maple Leafs don’t hold their rights they are excluded from the countdown.

Here are our eligible players:

Alex Steeves
Alexander Plesovskikh
Artur Akhtyamov
Ben Danford
Braeden Kressler
Cade Webber
Dennis Hildeby
Easton Cowan
Fraser Minten
Hudson Malinoski
Jacob Quillan
Joe Miller
John Fusco
Matthew Lahey
Mikko Kokkonen
Miroslav Holinka
Nathan Mayes
Nick Abruzzese
Nick Moldenhauer
Nikita Grebenkin
Noah Chadwick
Roni Hirvonen
Ryan Tverberg
Sam McCue
Semyon Der-Arguchintsev
Semyon Kizimov
Timofei Obvintsev
Topi Niemelä
Ty Voit
Victor Johansson
Vyacheslav Peksa
William Villeneuve
Wyatt Schingoethe

33 players seems like it’s our smallest crop in a while. There also were plenty of graduates last season to the Leafs roster, which should provide some hope that players are more or less panning out and opportunities still exist on the Maple Leafs. Matthew Knies (1), Joseph Woll (2), Nick Robertson (4), and Pontus Holmberg (6) were all ranked in the top six last year and are gone from the list this year. I’m not sure that it will be four players from the top of the rankings this year that will find their way onto the Leafs, but it still seems possible that four players could make their way onto the Maple Leafs although perhaps in less notable roles than Woll, Knies, or even Robertson.

Now a bit about our process. I think we’ve got a solid group of rankers this year. Our site leaders Arun Srinivasan and Alex Hobson are both involved. As is Bennett Jull who leads our Marlies coverage and brings that insight into our list. We are fortunate enough to have two prospect gurus, Nick Richard, who leads our TLN prospect coverage and does our midterm prospect rankings, as well as Steven Ellis, who leads prospect coverage for Daily Faceoff and watches more hockey than I thought was humanly possible. Filipe Dimas and myself round out the mix, with Filipe bringing his love of all things goaltending prospect to the table and as for me. I said I’d create the spreadsheets and tally the votes, so they had to include me in the process.

All of us ranked our top 20 players from that list, and based on the value of the ranking we ordered them 1-20, using highest individual ranking as a tie breaker when it came up.

I hate the idea of doing an introductory post and not giving you anything of value regarding the rankings, so here are the players that didn’t receive a single vote. It’s probably worth noting that Pierre Engvall was consistently a no-vote guy until right before he made the NHL. And no matter what your thoughts are on Engvall as a player, he did develop into a full time NHLer and that makes him a success story as far as prospect rankings are concerned. Pontus Holmberg is another player that TLN was initially tough on. Maybe we can blame the fact that every player is going to have a different development curve, maybe it is that up until now none of us have committed to watching someone like Sam McCue’s game, or maybe it’s a legitimate case where a player is nearing the end of their NCAA career and hasn’t stood out in a meaningful way and we overlook them (hello, Dakota Joshua).

Whatever the reasons, here are the seven players who went completely unranked in the 2024 TLN Prospect Rankings:

When you take a look at the numbers on the Russian winger there is a bit reason for excitement. His numbers in international play point to a kid that measures up well against his peers and as we learn more about him, he could make his case for joining the rankings.

For now, Plesovskikh didn’t immediately stand out to the rankers the way some of the other 2024 draftees did.

Fusco is entering his final season of NCAA hockey and is yet to crack the TLN Top 20. He’s had barriers like changing schools from Harvard to Darmouth, which is definitely not the same tier of program but has aided in getting Fusco increased playing time. Fusco’s offensive outputs increase in his junior year because of it and 7G and 10A isn’t bad for a college blueliner.

It seems unlikely that the Leafs see the 5’10 defenceman in their plans going forward, but a big senior year could change that and as we’ve learned in the past having a right shot can buy you an extended look in pro hockey.

Lahey is going the NCAA route as is usually the path for Canadian Junior-A players and as such he’ll get a good four year look on the prospect rankings and a chance to prove our initial assessment wrong. At 6’5 there is a big frame to work with although the snapshot on Lahey on Elite Prospects shows a more thoughtful player than one that relies on brute force:

McCue is in a similar situation to Lahey in that he looks like a promising development player for the Maple Leafs but at this point it would either have required some eyes on him to know what the Leafs are getting and to be excited about it or some standout statistics.

McCue’s toolkit has bottom six energy player written all over it and while that might not be the most exciting path, it’s also nice to have homegrown affordable players in those roles rather than expensive free agency alternatives.

The Leafs still hold the rights to SDA and a strong KHL season coupled with a decent lead-in season in the AHL before that doesn’t change that our rankers likely saw Semyon returning to Russia as a good enough reason to move on from him completely. If he returns he’s still an interesting undersized playmaker that harken back to the glory days of Denis Malgin.

Let’s just look at the two Semyons together for a moment. Der-Arguchintsev played more games, is younger, and achieved better results. Kizimov has slightly more size. If we’ve given up on SDA, it’s safe to say that most of the rankers never even looked at Kizimov as having any kind of future in North America.

Being a defensive specialist in the NCAA is a hard sell. It’s such a hard sell that Schingoethe isn’t a regular in the Western Michigan lineup even in his junior year. It seems highly likely that Schingoethe is as much off the Leafs radar is he off the radar of our rankers, but there have been plenty of players who invented themselves in their senior year and made a case for a pro hockey career. It’s just what has been seen to date doesn’t lend itself to that being likely.

Tomorrow we’ll hit you with our list of honourable mentions. One of which was just shy of the top 20 vote and the rest…well… some of us liked them. Monday will mark the first entry in the Top 20 and with that the start of the debate over what we got right or wrong.