POINT-LESS ENDEAVOR

While we had plenty of top prospects pegged properly, we totally whiffed on a Lightning star and his teammate

BY JARED CLINTON

DEVELOPMENT ISN’T LINEAR, or so they say, and for that we should perhaps be thankful. If we had we undertaken this five- and 10-year retrospective of past Future Watch editions half a decade ago, a mea culpa on behalf of our 13-person panel of NHL scouts and GMs would have been in order. That’s because in 2020, five years after Leon Draisaitl was ranked as the NHL’s third-best prospect, the Edmonton Oilers pivot was en route to winning the Art Ross Trophy, Hart Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award on the strength of a 43-goal, 110-point campaign. What would have made that ranking especially egregious five years ago, though, is not just that it was the second of Draisaitl’s truly dominant seasons but that it happened to come in the same year that…

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The Hockey News (Digital) - 1 Issue, Future Watch 2025

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