Simon St-Laurent, an analyst with the TSLH Prospect team, closely evaluates prospects for the 2026 Draft. Usually discreet with his opinions throughout the year, “St-Lo” opened up on a few topics related to the 2026 NHL Draft, but also shared some retrospective thoughts on prospects from past drafts. With my colleague’s permission, I’m sharing his notes recently posted on “X.”
Here are my general impressions regarding the 2026 NHL Draft class so far.
The strength of the top 10 is okay to decent. There are 3 or 4 players that I really like and on whom I’m clearly higher than the majority. After that, it’s a bit of a strange draft because, usually, at this point in the year, it can be difficult to find enough players to complete a top 32, and sometimes you end up putting players there who really have no business being included.
In the case of the 2026 draft, there are around 40 players who could form a group between the 25th and 40th spots, and it wouldn’t be too bad. But the overall quality between the 10th and 25th ranks is probably below average.
Yet, oddly enough, I find that there is a lot of depth in the middle to late rounds. Lots of intriguing sleepers. In that sense, this draft reminds me a bit of 2021 and 2023: after the top 10, the 2nd and 3rd rounds may end up being more interesting than the rest of the first round.
My Top 5
I usually don’t reveal much about my list throughout the year (except to a few lucky ones hehe), but I’ll share my top 5 for now:
Gavin McKenna
Alberts Smits
Chase Reid
Keaton Verhoeff
Xavier Villeneuve
Here’s the preliminary top 32 from our team at TSLH Prospect (november edition)
2026 NHL Draft: my Hot Takes !
On a more personal level, it’s sometimes difficult not to feel anger or bitterness when you work extremely hard on something and keep your observations to yourself (I’ve always shared my preliminary and mid-season lists privately with a few people), and suddenly others begin to be very vocal about things you noticed MONTHS earlier.
Especially nowadays, when it seems like everyone and their grandmother are “scouts,” not many players can stay hidden for long. So why not share a few of my early-year hot takes with you, to avoid feeling resentment when those opinions eventually surface publicly.
There are two players that no one really talks about—and in one case, isn’t even known—who are, let’s say, firmly placed inside my top 32: Jakub Frolo and Jonas Lagerberg Hoen.
Far from being top-32 material at the moment: Frolo is a C-grade by NHL Central Scouting, and Lagerberg Hoen is a W.
And while we’re at it, I had a scorching hot take right at the start of the season, and already we’re hearing rumblings around the league that it might not be as bold as it originally sounded. Caleb Malhotra began the year 6th on my list and hasn’t moved since. I’m not sure if he’ll stay that high by season’s end, but there’s no way he drops out of my top 10.
Draft Retrospective
Here’s a fun exercise to remind myself that things can definitely change throughout the year regarding the draft.
Here are some players that I had to move higher than I originally had them (and not because the player improved, but because I didn’t like them at all):
Kirby Dach
Jacob Perreault
(That ended up being a huge mistake)
Quentin Musty
Carter Yakemchuk
Ben Kindel
Justin Carbonneau
(I’m still not sure I can say I love him, but I had him relatively high compared to the consensus. At first, I didn’t want anything to do with him.)
Oliver Moore
(Well, I still don’t really like him, but at first I wanted nothing to do with him. The fact that people saw him as an offensive, point-producing, line-driving center only made me want to be harsher on him. But I took a step back and instead saw him as an energetic, reliable 3rd-line winger who can play the PK, so I moved him up to 19th.)
On the other hand, here’s a list of players who started the year much higher on my list than where they eventually ended up:
Jake Neighbours
(I saw him as a top-15 early in the year. Big mistake dropping him.)
Zachary Bolduc
Mackie Samoskevich
Oskar Olausson
(Thank God)
Danila Yurov
Noah Dower-Nilsson
Tristan Luneau
Adam Jiricek
Michael Hage
Jack Murtagh
As someone who takes a lot of pride in the amount of work I do, I’m not afraid to say that my greatest strength is correctly identifying the players who will fall on most lists throughout the year—but more importantly, the players who will rise. For those players mentioned, obviously I don’t have a perfect record and I’ve had my share of misses along the way, but I still have a track record that can back up what I’m saying.