Oilers fans are outraged about the low ranking that prospects expert Corey Pronman of The Athletic gave to Edmonton’s two top prospects, forwards Matt Savoie and Ike Howard.

Is the outraged justified?

On his list of the best NHL player and prospects under the age of 23, Pronman ranked Savoie 148th and Howard 163rd.

Pronman had this to say about Savoie: “Savoie was impressive as a rookie pro as a top player for Bakersfield. He’s a great skater with a high skill level who makes a ton of difficult plays at very fast speeds. Savoie is both a strong playmaker and finisher who’s a threat off the edge. Savoie isn’t that big, but he can play in traffic and competes well. He’s talented, but Savoie probably doesn’t rise to the ‘special’ level you want at a player that size. He does work hard enough, though, that you could see him as a middle-six winger in the NHL.”

Pronman ranked Savoie as having above average skating, hockey sense, compete level and shot and average puck skills.

On Howard, Pronman said, “He’s a super-skilled offensive player who can make a lot happen inside the offensive zone. He sees the ice well, is a shifty skater and can create offense with good enough pace. He also has a very good shot that can finish chances from mid-range. Howard isn’t the biggest winger, can be pushed to the outside and doesn’t have the super high compete level you would ideally like at his size. He projects as a middle-six scoring winger.”

He ranked Howard as having above average skating, puck skills and shot, and average hockey sense and compete level.

I didn’t see anything objectionable in Pronman’s commentary on the two players, his overall ranking of the two players did not go over well with many hardcore Oiler fans and observers, with the issue bubbling up on Bob Stauffer’s Oilers Now and, of course, on social media.

Here are some of the highlights:

Oilers fan Mark 📸 @TheLineBlender
Pronman did us sooo dirty. Ranked Savoie 148th and Howard 163rd amongs U23 players. Well behind less proven guys, some with “Poor” skating and mostly “Average” grades. 🤔

Oilers fan Raffaele Papaianni @PAPAIANNI
Poor skating…. they can fly, especially Savoie. Guys, everyone hates the Oilers because we had 99 and now 97.

Derek Boberic @DeafJam92
I’ve found Pronman to be very hard on Oil prospects, also works for a left wing publisher,..

Oilers fan bobisawesome @zach_20007
Most scouts didn’t think Savoie game will translate to the NHL. This is the lowest I have seen Savoie and Howard in prospect rankings. Savoie being bad at puck skills makes zero sense. I think his hockey sense or shot should be higher.

Oilers fan Harold Baker @hgbaker
Before you go out and harm yourself over this guy’s list…who is Corey Pronman and what makes him an expert on this topic…Quick look around google suggests he is a writer with limited background in hockey…guessing no hockey team rushing to hire him to do prospects…rest easy!

Oilers fan Karman Gill @Kgill39
Corey Pronman, from The Athletic, did not rank Isaac Howard or Matt Savoie in his top 100 prospects. Excuse me? Help me out.

Savoie had a great rookie season in the AHL and Howard was a Hobey Baker winner. How the heck are they not top prospects?

Pronman’s rankings dissected on Oilers Now

On Oilers Now, host Bob Stauffer and guest Bruce Curlock, an expert on Oilers prospects, also dug into Pronman’s rankings.

“He had Matt Savoie and Isaac Howard both out of the top 100, which I got to tell you surprised me a little bit,” Stauffer said, noting Pronman had some lower drafted d-men ranked higher, even as they are years away from playing in the NHL.

Curlock said he follows Pronman’s work and said the writer is “very talented” at what he does and noted such rankings are subjective. In his own rankings, Curlock said he looks at a player’s ability to step into the NHL right away and he would have had Savoie in his Top 100.

“I don’t know what the criteria that Corey used, but there’s no question (Savoie) is going to play on championship NHL roster or at least one competing for it, and he’s likely going to play in the middle six and maybe even in the top six. So I’m not sure how you don’t rank that player pretty high. Isaac Howard, I think you can make a case that there’s a little bit more uncertainty with the player. Certainly, he’s got all kinds of offensive skill, skating ability. You know, there’s some questions around his defense. And I think the big thing is he’s coming out of collegiate hockey. Yes, he was the Hobie Baker winner, but again, he did that, you know, not as an 18-year-old or as a 19-year-old. He did that, you know, as a relatively mature player. So, you know, there’d be more uncertainty. I could see justification for ranking him a little lower, but Savoie, not so much.”

My take

1. Pronman has been ranking and rating prospect players for more than a decade now. I find his work to be detailed and credible. I take him as an expert at this work, given the many years of dedicated effort he’s put into mastering scouting prospect players.

No, he was never a pro hockey player, but neither was Barry Fraser, the greatest scout who ever lived, the one who brought in Kevin Lowe, Mark Messier, Glenn Anderson, Jari Kurri, Grant Fuhr, Paul Coffey, Andy Moog, Charlie Huddy and Esa Tikkanen to the Oilers.

I’m not saying Pronman is Fraser. I am saying you don’t have to have been a high level player to be expert at rating and ranking high level talent. It takes a different skillset to do so.

2. The shock of the low ranking for Savoie and Howard comes in part because Pronman’s list is unusual. Most lists simply rank top prospects outside the NHL. Pronman’s list isn’t that. It’s a list of all the best player under the age of 23, everyone from top ranked Macklin Celebrini and Connor Bedard to Savoie and Howard nearer the bottom. In total, more than 40 established NHL players are on Pronman’s list.

If you take those players out of the equation, Savoie and Howard are much closer to being ranked in the Top 100 prospects outside the NHL.

3. It’s also the case that Pronman’s rankings have six tiers, with the top tier being “elite NHL player”, only Celebrini and Bedard making that cut. The next ranking is “NHL all-star,” with seven players making that cut. A

fter you get past the Top 75 on Pronman’s list, the majority of which are established NHLers, everyone else on the list, all players ranked 76 to 173, are in the same general Tier 6 category, “Middle of the line-up player.”

It’s no shame and no error to right now rank Savoie and Howard as middle of the line-up NHL players. That’s a fair and sober assessment of them.

Yes, if the Oilers get lucky one of them will break out and be a first or second line winger, a forward who can put up 50 to 70 points a season. But the odds aren’t great that either Savoie or Howard will be such a player. One of them might accomplish it. Both of them might. But that would be them defying the odds.

I’ll suggest at this point Savoie has about a 40 per cent shot at being a Top 6 forward, while Howard has about a 25 per cent chance.  It’s possible they’ll do so, but not probable.

4. To assess Pronman’s list, I compared it to another list from Nick Iacoban of the Watch the Stats substack. Iocaban is one of a number of stats mavens who base their prospect rankings on consensus rankings from scouts and statistical models, a promising combination to rate and rank players.

Iacoban also uses tiered groupings to rank prospects. In his most recent rankings of all NHL teams, he has Savoie and d-man Asher Barnett ranked highest, saying, “Isaac Howard is another notable name, one that my model is lower on than the public, but seems in line with how NHL teams see him. Yes he won the Hobey Baker but he did it in his D+3 year with production not on par with winners of the past few years. It’s still an impressive feat, and he seems destined for a solid NHL career but I don’t see him as the top six forward that it seems a lot of people do. If Sam O’Reilly is the most the Bolts could get for him, I’d assume most NHL teams see him closer to how I do.”

He continued: “I like what the Oilers have done over the past few months to bolster their prospect pool from one of the worst to now just being below average. The Savoie expierement seems to be working so far, he had a great AHL season and now seems ready for an NHL role. The knock on him is that his play style won’t work in the big leagues so I’ll be curious to watch how that goes for him.”

Iacoban ranked Reilly, now with Tampa, as doubtful to be a fourth line NHL player, Howard likely to be a fourth line NHL player and Savoie likely to be an impact NHL forward.

In his list, Iacoban used only tiers to divide the players. He had 24 top prospects ranked in higher tiers than Savoie, with Savoie grouped in with a large tier of 69 prospects all deemed to be likely to be impact forwards and d-men in the NHL. By “impact player” Iacoban means a Top 6 forward or a Top 4 d-man on a team.

5. In the end, Iacoban evidently ranks Savoie higher than Pronman does, but he’s got Howard lower than Pronman does.

Of course, other scouts and draft experts will have different opinions.

I have no opinion on Howard, not having seen him play, but was impressed with Savoie in his brief stint with the Oilers last year. Savoie is fast, determined, skilled and aggressive. He reminded me somewhat of Kailer Yamamoto, when Yamo first broke in with the Oilers and made such a big splash.

Yamamoto hung in for a few years as a Top 6 forward but ultimately failed to stick.

6. The good news here? In the past year Edmonton has brought in a number of candidates to play in the Top 6. That number includes Savoie, Howard, Euro veteran David Tomasek and NHLers Vasily Podkolzin, Trent Frederic and Andrew Mangiapane.

Edmonton needs two of those six players to stand out and seize jobs in the Top Six. When there are so many decent candidates, it’s more likely that those prized jobs on Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl’s wing will be filled with solid players.

7. In the end, I’m not alarmed or offended by Pronman’s rating and ranking of Savoie and Howard.

I’ll leave the real outrage here to Montreal fans.

Somehow — and I really don’t get this one — Pronman had Lane Huston ranked 34st overall on his list.

On that one, I’ll suggest, Pronman has some explaining to do.