The decision on the No. 1 ranking in my recent top 100 NHL draft prospects was the toughest to make among the top 10.

I'll address the process I used to make the call in two parts: The first is why Aaron Ekblad is a superior talent to Sam Bennett and the rest of the field, and the second is an explanation of why Ekblad's risks were not risky enough to push Bennett or any of the other top forwards ahead of him.

Talent and skills comparison

It's always tough to explain why one prefers a forward to a defenseman. For ranking decisions of the same position, you simply can compare the skills and illustrate the decision much easier. However, we don't look at skating, offensive skills, physicality and hockey IQ in the same light for forwards as we do for defenders.

Ekblad is a good not great skater and a good not great puck handler. I sense the excitement already! He projects to be an above-average offensive player. He could be a defenseman who plays on a team's top power-play unit, specifically if that team doesn't use four forwards, but he won't be a top-10 scoring defenseman in the NHL.

The areas where he separates from the pack are his physical game and defensive value, with both being elite. It's rare that a big, strong defender like Ekblad possesses such natural hockey skills. In addition, he has high-end to elite hockey IQ on both ends and a huge shot. That total package looks like a player who has an NHL All-Star floor and the ceiling of being one of the NHL's elite blueliners.

Bennett does a lot really well, but I don't see him being an elite player in any one fashion; he's the Sam-of-all-trades in this class. Consider that Sam Reinhart has elite hockey IQ, Nathan MacKinnon is an elite skater, Jonathan Drouin and William Nylander are elite puck handlers; Bennett is merely high end in a lot of areas. He is a very good skater, puck handler and passer who plays hard, but he doesn't have the same projection as the amazing forward prospects of the past few years. He hasn't played way ahead of his age group, and he hasn't put up off-the-charts numbers. Instead, he's just been a standard (albeit elite) forward prospect.

If you're just going off the talent and skills rationale, Ekblad is better than Bennett and should be picked before him.

The risk in taking Ekblad first overall

There are legitimate arguments against going with Ekblad over Bennett based on the talent argument above. For starters, defensive value is much tougher to project to the NHL. Moreover, Ekblad has an unsustainable goal-to-assist ratio this season (23:30) and hasn't scored a lot at even strength. The physically developed defenseman looks so good because he dominates against teenagers (some of whom have yet to fill out their frames). There's also the trend: Going back through the past 10 drafts, only one defenseman was taken first overall (Erik Johnson in 2006 by the St. Louis Blues).

Compared to forwards, there is less of a chance of defenseman picks hitting and developing quickly enough to be of help. That risk is why many top defensemen don't come from the very top of the draft. On the other hand, defensemen taken high do hit at a fairly good rate. Of the top 10 defensemen in total ice time in the NHL this season, four were lottery picks (Ryan Suter, Drew Doughty, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Alex Pietrangelo). We presume there is risk in drafting defensemen, and teams must decide whether the potential upside is worth that risk.

Scoring is one piece of the puzzle. This past season, Ekblad was third in the OHL in points per game among defensemen and first in goals; fellow 2014 draft prospect Anthony DeAngelo (No. 37 overall on my top 100) and Matt Finn (selected No. 35 in the 2012 draft by Toronto) were the two with better per-game point-scoring rates. Given Ekblad's experience in the OHL and skill set, that's not a true indication of his talent level on offense, although he would likely be able to replicate it (or improve upon it) if he stays for his 18-year-old season. In their respective 17-year-old seasons, Pietrangelo was ninth in scoring per game among OHL defensemen, Doughty was first (although he fell to 10th in his age-18 campaign), Zach Bogosian was third and P.K. Subban 10th. However, considering that Ekblad has much more defensive value than those players, his scoring rate is still comfortable for an elite defense prospect, even if his numbers were inflated a bit.

On the issue of physical dominance, Boston Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli's comments at the 2012 Sloan Analytics Conference about weight being more predictive than height are important to consider. While there is some merit to the theory that some junior-level players can look better than others because they bulked up earlier, there is also the counterargument that not all players have much more filling out to do. For example, Gabriel Landeskog was 6-foot-1, 205 pounds in his draft year and is listed at 6-1, 204 pounds now. In the same draft class, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was 6-1, 165 pounds, but he is now listed at 6-1, 180 pounds. While it's possible some other top prospects may catch up to the 6-4, 216-pound Ekblad, I'm skeptical the gap completely closes, and his early development substantially lowers the projection risk inherent with a smaller player.

Truly elite players are scarce

Ekblad is slightly below-average scoring-wise among elite OHL D prospects after controlling for luck, and this fuels an argument against his chances of being an elite NHL player. On the other hand, he is the only player in this draft you can say has a nonmarginal chance to be an elite NHL defenseman, and that makes a difference to teams picking at the top of the order. Refer to this graph of a player's GVT per game (via three-period moving average) compared to how many players at that position produce at that rate, with the amount adjusted for the fact there are more forwards than defensemen.

The chart shows the following: Superstar forwards (the left end of the red line) tend to be distinct in how much they produce, with the very best defensemen in the NHL (the left end of the blue line) not getting to that production level. However, the next level of players -- the top-tier All-Stars who aren't quite elite -- tend to show defensemen are rarer at this level of production. This is in line with a look at a GVT leaderboard, in that top-end defensemen are scarcer than top-end forwards but never as elite as their elite forward brethren.

In this year's draft class, we do not have a potential Steven Stamkos or John Tavares; we have forwards whose ceilings are a tier or so below that superstar level. Because of that, this is a different conversation than it was in 2013 with MacKinnon vs. Seth Jones, as elite NHL forwards are more scarce than elite defensemen. Put another way, the type of player Ekblad could become is harder to obtain than the player Bennett could become.

Putting it all together

I hear the anti-Ekblad arguments: Defenders bust more often, his offense isn't elite, we're falling in love with his size, the value of a defenseman's play in his own end is hard to project. I'm not saying it's a clear-cut case. I see reasonable arguments to select someone other than Ekblad first overall, and the Florida Panthers may well do so on June 27.

On the other hand, Ekblad's offense is pretty good even if he never develops elite skills in that regard, and his defense is elite; his play in the defensive end has less risk to project than typical similar prospects. Additionally, he has the most talent of anyone in this draft class, and with the top of the draft class lacking any superstar forward prospects, his ceiling appears to be the highest of any in that top group of players.