{"id":520650,"date":"2026-03-24T19:24:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T19:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/520650\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T19:24:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T19:24:21","slug":"new-jersey-devils-prospects-update-22nd-best-edition-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/520650\/","title":{"rendered":"New Jersey Devils Prospects Update: 22nd Best Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Scott Wheeler ranks the Devils 22nd best in his prospect pool rankings. Let\u2019s talk about it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Per Scott Wheeler\u2019s most recent rankings for the Athletic (where you can read <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6964156\/2026\/03\/19\/new-jersey-devils-nhl-prospect-rankings-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>), the Devils prospect pool ranks 22nd in the league, down from 17th last season. While Wheeler does not given a reason for the drop, comparing the two lists, it seems the graduation of Simon Nemec and the Devils trading Herman Traff for a few games of Brian Dumoulin last season are contributors to the slide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">I have some personal quibbles with his analysis, especially when it comes to the ceilings of certain players. In my opinion, Lenni Hameenaho should be in Tier 1, not Tier 2, and ahead of Seamus Casey at this point. I also do not understand why goaltender Trenten Bennett is ranked so highly and other, more established, netminders such as Jakub Malek are unranked. The analysis seems to come down to some version of he moves well for his size, which is true, but when it comes to results, Bennett is lagging behind Daws, Malek, Yegorov, and even Louhivaara. A case could also be made for Tyler Brennan performing better than Bennett, though I believe Bennett to be the better longterm prospect. In other words, Bennett has those proverbial \u201ctools\u201d but hasn\u2019t put it together yet. Maybe one day he will, but it seems early to rank him so highly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">I suggest everyone read his article in the link above and make up their own minds. It\u2019s a good read, as always, and while I have some disagreements, overall, I think it\u2019s a very good analysis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Post your hockey-related comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scott Wheeler ranks the Devils 22nd best in his prospect pool rankings. Let\u2019s talk about it. Per Scott&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5109],"tags":[201,5,576,151,5185,5184,4,4778],"class_list":["post-520650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-jersey-devils","tag-devils","tag-hockey","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-jersey-devils","tag-newjersey","tag-newjerseydevils","tag-nhl","tag-prospects-devils-otherwise"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116285791541694928","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}