The regular season has either wound down or ended across leagues outside the North American professional ranks. European teams are already into the postseason, major junior is on its way there, and college hockey is into its conference finals as we move quickly toward the NCAA tournament.
With that in mind, it seems like a good time to check in with some of the top systems feeding into NHL rosters.
Just to give you some insight into the methodology, I value depth of a team's pool more than an elite prospect or two at the top of a team's system. You need stars to win in the NHL, but it seems that many of those players are spending less and less time in the prospect pipeline. The health of an overall system often comes from having not only good prospects, but also plenty of options. There aren't many huge misses in the first round anymore, but the teams that are finding players in the midrounds or through undrafted free agency are building bigger, better pools to pull from.
With all of that said, I don't think there's a ton of separation between most teams in the NHL right now. Because so many top prospects are reaching the NHL by 19 or 20 years old, it's harder for franchises to establish a loaded pipeline. Each club has at least one legit top prospect, which is a big reason I leaned more heavily on system depth, with a few exceptions for teams with a particularly intriguing top three or four guys.
Rookies who appeared in at least 40 of their NHL club's games for this season were no longer considered part of the pipeline for this particular piece. Others just shy of that -- such as Philadelphia's Travis Sanheim and Boston's Anders Bjork, for instance -- are still considered pipeline pieces for now. Here's a look at the top 10 prospect pools in the NHL.
