This is one of the most important columns I write every year: A look into projections I got wrong. It's important for several reasons:
1. I take my job as a player evaluator seriously. This is not life or death, but it is my job and I strive to do the best I can. It is commonplace in the world of punditry for accountability to sometimes miss, but I have always tried to hold myself accountable. Nobody is a harsher critic of my work than myself -- and you can check my mentions on Twitter to verify that I have some harsh critics.
2. It shows I am willing to learn, and am not married to a set of guidelines. Through the years I have been accused of having different biases, that I'm in favor of small players, Europeans in general, Russians in particular, speedsters, flashy players, problem children, anybody that isn't a goaltender and so on. I've heard many people describe to me how I think. Truth be told, I don't take a player's background into account; my job is to find the best prospects, period. My process has evolved, and part of that process is examining players I project too high or too low.
3. Lastly and most importantly, it describes to the reader why I got a call wrong and why it's important. I'm off slightly all the time -- it's the product of making hundreds of projections each year. But again, examining why a projection is wrong is more illuminating than the simple fact that it was wrong.
Without any further preamble, here are some players who I rated either too high or too low in recent seasons:
Shayne Gostisbehere, D, Philadelphia Flyers
Gostisbehere is the biggest miss that has lingered constantly in my mind for the past year. Some may say counter that he was a third-round pick, or that I did have him toward the tail end of my top NHL prospect rankings before his breakout season, so it wasn't that big a miss. But anytime a player becomes a star -- as he has -- and you didn't have him close to that range, it's a significant miss. In this case, it's about a bigger issue.
There has been a steady progression of the way I evaluate players. I started at a point where I wanted guys who scored a bunch and play a high-skill game, everything else be damned. I realized I was missing attributes such as two-way hockey IQ and not accounting for performance not captured by numbers, and shifted toward another end, which was taking the best players in an age group. This seemed like a good idea; I wasn't so worried about "projecting" players, because I felt that was an excuse for taking big guys and hoping they figure it out skill-wise. In fact, I've come to the conclusion the opposite is true. In general, taking the best players in an age group is the best plan, but projecting is important, though not from "athletic" types who you hope develop hockey skills, and not from hockey players who you hope develop the other athletic skills.
Applying this to Gostisbehere, he was a pretty good player in his age group though he wasn't dominant for a long period of time. He wasn't an elite college player until he was 20, and played in a weak conference. He looked good but not amazing at the IIHF World Junior Championship.
But, he has the hockey skills. He's a fantastic skater, and a great and imaginative puck mover. He wasn't great defensively to begin in college, or to begin in his pro career, but he kept learning how to win battles and make the most of his hockey skills.
This type of development isn't a guarantee. There are plenty of high-skill guys who have floundered away in the AHL, as they didn't develop off-puck skills. I also still believe you can't just go after skill, as other attributes can combine to make a top player, and you should consider who the best players in an age group are. But when checking the biggest gaps in terms of draft-pick value compared to NHL value, the players with the biggest ones are highly skilled at an initial point, who then develop the other parts of their game later. This is what is truly meant by the term upside, and upside means a lot in projecting prospects.
Gostisbehere was an upside prospect. I've gotten too far away from valuing this kind of player, and it's an adjustment I will make going forward.
Griffin Reinhart, D, Edmonton Oilers
The scouting of Reinhart led to a misleading conclusion, and the lessons from Gostisbehere linger for a different reason.
Reinhart looked great versus his age group for a long period of time. He was a significant part of a Memorial Cup team at age 17, a top-four defenseman for Canada at the WJC as an underage player at 18, and MVP of the WHL Playoffs at 19. One problem, though: He never really showed NHL-caliber skill. His stats were always underwhelming, never even playing on the top power-play unit for his WHL team until late in his career; this is not an indictment of a player in every scenario, but is quite suspect for a top-five draft pick.
He performed well versus his young peers, but his ceiling always gave me some pause in the back of my mind. That became a problem as he has turned pro. A player's ability to develop is mostly based on their base of natural hockey skills, such as puck skills, vision, creativity, skating and the like. Reinhart was always lacking in those categories. He's not a bust -- he could carve out an NHL career -- but he'll never be a star, and that's what many thought as he was rising through the younger ranks.
Tage Thompson, RW, St. Louis Blues
This one needs a bunch of caveats, because Thompson hasn't done a ton in a full season yet and it has been only a few months since he was drafted. In the first half of last season, many scouts I talked to questioned whether he was a real NHL prospect. I had never seen it in two years watching him. His numbers were also concerning.
I didn't see him much in the second half of the season, but something must have clicked, because the times I did see him after the draft, he looked electric. The Blues had a scout in the rink in just about every Thompson game down the stretch of his season with UConn, and they certainly picked up on his transformation. His numbers biased me, his history biased me, but good scouting was the key to picking up on him.
Christian Dvorak, C, Arizona Coyotes
I never rated Dvorak very highly, up until last summer when he was No. 60 on my ranking of top NHL prospects, and that was likely still too low.
I had plenty of rationales for not buying Dvorak as a top-flight prospect. He's not a dynamic skater or puck handler. He surged as an older CHL player, and there's a long list of players who did that but didn't amount to much in the NHL. He never dominated an international event away from his loaded London Knights teams.
But this season, he has been a good two-way forward as a 20-year-old rookie for the Coyotes, and looks like a long-term top-six forward. It's really come down to his hockey sense, which is the hardest attribute to evaluate.
Andreas Athanasiou, LW, Detroit Red Wings
There was a period of time when Athanasiou was in major junior and toward the end of his AHL time when I was a huge fan, but for a large part of his time as a prospect I didn't think he would be an NHL regular. I always saw the incredible speed, the ability to make a highlight-reel moment happen, but I also saw a player who was inconsistent, and didn't go east-west as much as I'd like to see. He could be a long-time average NHLer, but my projection was for a career AHL player, so I'll take a bite on this one.
His skating and skill carried him -- that was his upside -- and as he developed his body and defensive game, that complemented his true strengths. This is also the second straight Red Wings player (after Dylan Larkin) I've done in this column the past two years, so mark another one down for Detroit's scouts.
Andrew Nielsen, D, Toronto Maple Leafs
During Nielsen's draft season of 2014-15, I was watching his team (Lethbridge, WHL) not really for him, but would occasionally take note of what he was doing. There were so many red flags on his projection. Late-birthdate, low-production defensemen with slow feet, with a lack of dynamic skill and a boatload of penalty minutes aren't usually first in line on my draft board. I had him rated as a tail-end prospect, rating his size and decent puck moving as pluses, but with little upside.
Fast forward two seasons, and that projection looks hilariously wrong. Nielsen, before he turns 20, is arguably his AHL team's top defenseman. His skating is still a problem, but what I underestimated -- as did 29 NHL teams -- was his hockey sense, which is off-the-charts good. I was blown away by this two-way hockey sense when I scouted him live this season. Chalk that up to great scouting, and to the Leafs' scouts looking beyond all the stats.
A.J. Greer, LW, Colorado Avalanche
I saw Greer play a fair amount in his draft year (2014-15) since he played on the same team as Jack Eichel at Boston University. I barely saw an NHL player. Most of what I saw was a big man with decent skill and poor feet. Then in 2015-16, I watched him a lot again and didn't move in my assessment that he was a fringe prospect. To wit, 19-year-olds who can't hold their own in college hockey and are just solid in the QMJHL tend to not be NHL players.
After signing with the Avs, he came out flying as a pro rookie. He had a great preseason and a great start to his AHL season, and looked capable in a one-game call-up to the Avs. His skating looks better, and while I don't think he's going to be a top-flight NHL player due to a somewhat limited upside, I underrated his hockey IQ as well. He could become a capable everyday NHL player, and a reasonable value where he went in the draft (No. 39 overall).