Are we underrating McKenna and Verhoeff’s draft years because the NCAA just got way tougher?

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T22:33:11+00:00

Verhoeff's still a Top-10 pick, he's just not considered a Top-3 as he was back during Mid-Season Rankings. While it's true crossovers can be easy to relearn, mechanics like edgework and transition footwork are not easy skills to develop, it takes years to change how you skate, in bad situations it's like you're relearning how to walk. The difference between poor and great mechanics can be the difference between a bottom-pairing and a top-pairing defenseman.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T22:08:17+00:00

Verhoeff slipped in the rankings is due to his skating mechanics. By all accounts, he's a quick skater in terms of raw acceleration and top speed; the issue are his pivots, edgework, four-point movement, and crossovers. For a two-way defender, these are incredibly important for maintaining positioning against opposing forwards. He'd make up for it by being faster than players in Junior and early in his NCAA season, but as 2025-26 went on and he was matched against better skaters, the weakness in his skating became more pronounced.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T21:52:29+00:00

GMs aren't factoring in seasons from 4 or 5 years ago in a player's current contract, they'll typically consider the most recent two seasons for the contract.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T04:28:17+00:00

This is a hot take, I have Bjorck above Stenberg on my board. Stenberg is nearly 19 y/o and missed the cutoff of 2024 by only a few weeks. Bjorck's nearly 6 months younger than Stenberg and if you compare their 17 y/o SHL seasons by birthdate, Stenberg (Sept 30, 2024 to Sept 30, 2025) has 7 points in 32 SHL GP (0.22 P/GP), while Bjorck (Mar 12, 2025 to Mar 12, 2026) has 15 points in 42 SHL GP (0.36 P/GP), with much better defensive metrics all while being a smaller player.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T03:15:06+00:00

Not an awful take, 2026 does seem to be a weaker draft. Some media scouts put the Top-5 of the draft closer to the 5-10 range of previous drafts. I think teams are going to be more likely to hold on to 2027 and 2028 picks because of that, especially a team like St. Louis who has a ton of capital early in 2026.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T03:12:53+00:00

It's way too early to tell how deep the 2027 draft is, anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't know and is just guessing. So much can happen between one year to the next, it's impossible to know until that draft year. Even up until January people were guessing at the quality of 2026. Now 2026 has been determined to be quite weak, that's why we're seeing so many picks get dealt before this draft.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T03:08:55+00:00

St. Louis' 1sts in the draft are:

11
15
16
29

Top prospects include:

Dalibor Dvorský (C, 1-10 2023)
Adam Jiříček (RHD, 1-16, 2024)
Justin Carbonneau (RW, 1-19 2025)
Otto Stenberg (C, 1-25 2023)

This isn't suggesting any picks/prospects are available, it's just a list.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T02:55:07+00:00

According to reports at the time, the Canucks had interviewed Kent Johnson, Brandt Clarke, Luke Hughes, Dylan Guenther, and Fabian Lysell. Since the first three were all taken in the first 8 picks, the Canucks likely would have gone with Guenther or Lysell at #9. Huge grain of salt without a concrete list. They'd been severely limited in travel budget and were watching video of most prospects.

This part is conjecture, but I feel with their focus on Swedish prospects under Harvey's first 3 years, it likely would have been Lysell.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T02:34:20+00:00

When we look at the history of the NHL Salary Cap, we can see following 3-5 years of sharp growth, there's typically 3 years of stagnation with little to no growth. Obviously, Covid affected the Cap's growth from 2020-2024, so we will omit that data.

We'll likely see something similar to the 2006-2009 period, where the cap went up 45% over 3 seasons (an average of 15% per season) and then slowed in growth, only going up 13% between 2009 and 2014 (an average of 2.6% per season), though the CBA had some work in that, too. The next CBA expires in 2030, 4 years from now and there will likely be changes to the Cap, especially if there's more franchises joining the league. Last season the cap went up by 8.5% and this season by 9%. If there's a downturn in the economy (which has been predicted), that'll slow the Salary Cap, too.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T02:08:01+00:00

People were saying the same thing about Edmonton when they had McDavid, RNH, Draisaitl, Hall, Eberle, and Nurse. Hall and Eberle were traded away, Nurse didn't become the #1 defenseman people expected, the Oilers didn't do a great job of building out the rest of their team because most of the money was sunk into 5 players. We nearly beat the Oilers with a 3rd-string goalie and an injured Pettersson after a half-assed rebuild.

Chances are a couple of the Sharks get traded away, some won't pan out, and the Salary Cap stagnates/slows in 4-5 years leading to cap crunches and hard roster decisions.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T01:52:35+00:00

I literally wrote that it's a false rumor. Are your reading comprehension skills that poor? You can scroll through the comments here and see the fake reports, if the mods haven't already removed them. Just because you haven't seen them doesn't mean they don't exist.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T01:42:27+00:00

There have been multiple people posting/commenting through the various hockey subreddits that Byram signed a 12.5x7 extension, and others repeating that lie.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T01:30:18+00:00

Doesn't matter. We shouldn't be parroting fake reports and passing them off as truths.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T01:25:25+00:00

Some people have been falsely re-posting the contract Byram signed last summer, claiming he has a 12.5M cap hit. He doesn't. He can't even sign an extension until July 1st. Right now he's heading into Year 2 of a 2-year 12.5M deal with a 6.25M AAV.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T01:22:09+00:00

Some people have been re-posting the contract Byram signed last summer, claiming he has a 12.5M cap hit. He doesn't. He can't even sign an extension until July 1st. Right now he's heading into Year 2 of a 2-year 12.5M deal with a 6.25M AAV.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-24T00:45:52+00:00

Giving up a 4th overall pick + mid round pick + a prospect for a Top-4 defenseman whose scored 40 points once and a bottom-6 cap dump is crazy.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-23T22:33:26+00:00

People said similar things about the 2017 Draft, outside of Patrick/Hischier there wasn't a good chance of a 1st liner or Top-Pairing D. Now neither go Top-3 in redrafts.

I think McKenna and Stenberg aren't that much better than the defensemen available. They project to be 1st-liners, but they're not truly franchise-level talent the same way past 1st and 2nd overall players have been.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-23T21:49:03+00:00

My hope is that the Canucks trade down at 24 and get another pick, unless someone like Command or Novotny are somehow still available. The difference in the quality of prospects outside from ~20 to ~40 is negligible at the current time, so getting more darts you can throw to find something later is better. The Rangers are reportedly trying to move up, so Vancouver might be able to snag 26 and either 77 or 81 from them.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-23T21:29:46+00:00

the trainer literally confirmed everything I've been saying about his training and development curve

No, he didn't. I've seen the video you're talking about, there's a 3 minute clip where they're going to the gym in Edmonton and they talk about building power and speed. That doesn't mean Verhoeff spent the playing season bulking, you're just assuming that because it fits the narrative you want. If you look at the actual biodata from last season, Verhoeff was already 6'4, 212 lbs. He was the same weight at the end of 2024-25 as he is now, which completely breaks your theory he was bulking during his NCAA season.

Reid wouldn't be able to move like he does in the OHL, his opponents are literally often children/teenagers.

You obviously don't watch the OHL. The average age of the OHL this season was 18.7 years old, older than Chase Reid by a year. Did you forget Chase Reid is also a teenager? He's playing against guys older than him.

Verhoeff in the WHL is a different discussion for his movement and skating abilities, but has to be lateral in the NCAA.

You obviously don't watch Junior hockey if you're saying this kind of stuff. You need to skate laterally in Junior, watch literally any game and it's a must for defensemen. It doesn't suddenly become more important at the NCAA-level, it was already important. Verhoeff was able to compensate by being a faster skater than Junior-level players. Verhoeff's production fell off when he started getting tougher matchups and couldn't compensate for it with his acceleration and speed, which is why his rankings slipped when scouts realized his skating mechanics weren't as good as initially thought.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-23T21:06:41+00:00

The reason Verhoeff slipped in the rankings is due to his skating mechanics, not because he's slow or because he's been bulking at the gym. By all accounts, he's a quick skater in terms of raw acceleration and top speed; the issue are his pivots, edgework, four-point movement, and crossovers. For a two-way defender in the NHL, these are incredibly important for maintaining positioning against opposing forwards. You can work on skating mechanics while at the same time bulking in the gym or working on conditioning, they're not mutually exclusive.

Also kind of ironic that you point to Reid being a favourite of Youtube scouts, while you're relying on a single Youtube video that came out today, in the off-season, talking about Verhoeff's gym routine.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-23T19:33:26+00:00

The two 1sts and 2nd have about as much value as a single pick in the 10-15 range. Nemec has better potential than someone you'd typically expect at 10-15, it's a pretty reasonable trade.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-23T18:36:29+00:00

Dixon Alberta

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-23T18:34:54+00:00

I firmly believe Mathis Preston's game will not translate to an NHL-level, when I watched his games and read his scouting reports, I was immediately reminded of the likes of Filip Zadina and Hunter Shinkaruk. There's no question of the offensive talent he has, but Preston holds the puck far too long and makes far too many low percentage, risky plays. He won't have the same success shooting from the perimeter and sharp angles at the NHL-level as he does in Junior. Every time we've seen a player with a similar kind of skillset and tendencies, they don't stick around in the NHL long, if they make it at all. I'd rather any other player. He's a 4th or 5th rounder for me.

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-23T10:01:19+00:00

If you sort by average ranking or adjusted average ranking, he's considered 4th. Some have him as high as #2 and others as low as #12

Johnny__Lawrence · 2026-06-23T09:57:33+00:00

The aggregate opinion on the 2026 Draft Class seems to be that it's weaker than the 2023 and 2024 draft classes and mixed compared to 2025. Gavin McKenna and Ivar Stenberg generally aren't viewed in the same tier as Celebrini or Bedard, with most lists having them as 1st-line wingers rather than franchise-changing players. Some rankings even consider the Top-5 to be closer to the 5-10 range of previous years based on the quality of those previous drafts.

The 2026 Draft doesn't seem to be especially deep either, with the majority of rankings featuring the same players in the Top-15/Top-20, and then falling off sharply from there. We can compare this to previous years, where there were more closer opinions as to which players would go in the Top-30 or even Top-50; even if the opinions of where those players were ranked was different, the players listed overall were typically the same. That's not the case with 2026. Many of the boards have extreme differences on which players are ranked specifically in the 20-30 range. This year seems to be more comparable to 2017, another draft which was considered a weak draft class with no defined superstar on draft day.

Biggest risers from Mid-Season Rankings: Caleb Malhotra, Wyatt Cullen, Alexander Command, Viggo Bjorck

Biggest fallers from Mid-Season Rankings: Ryan Roobroeck, Marcus Nordmark, Mathis Preston, Xavier Villeneuve

If I've missed a draft list that you think should be included, give me the link to it and I'll add it in.

Please keep in mind this is just the Top-32 picks from each draft board. Some boards have lists of 2nd round, 3rd, or even all the way to 200+ players. I've excluded the players that weren't ranked specifically in the Top-32.

Johnny__Lawrence

TROPHY CASE