PODCAST: Corey Pronman Breaks Down Devils Draft Picks

New Jersey Devils Official Podcast
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Draft and Prospect Analysis with Corey Pronman | Speak of the Devils
The Athletics' Corey Pronman watched roughly five hockey games by the time he logged in to Zoom for his recording of the Speak of the Devils Podcast.
It was just 2 p.m., and those five games were just a guess.
"I honestly can't answer that first question," Pronman told Amanda Stein when asked how many games he watches in a day. "I think technology has evolved a lot in that regard to where you are able to watch multiple games of a guy in an hour."
He watches the games, so you don't have to.

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"The large chunk of the year is kind of spent figuring these players out, whether it's through watching them, talking to people who know them, whether it's the scouts around the league, or people in various other leagues, who've seen these guys come up the ranks and just kind of doing your best to kind of put the puzzle together and kind of figure out where all these guys kind of fit and what makes them good or not. And that's what most of the year is kind of devoted to leading up to a couple of critical moments, such as the NHL draft."
Pronman knows the next generation of NHL talent better than most, clued into every franchises' list of needs and current prospect pools, he takes it all into account when compiling his annual draft ranking list. It's an area of the hockey world that 10 years ago, Pronman saw as under-covered and decided to dive in headfirst.
"When I started 10 years ago as a big baseball fan, I would look to all the prospect coverage in baseball, America Baseball Prospectus, across various other mediums, and see a lot of people who were really kind of devoted this kind of role where it's to kind of know prospects at all levels on the pre-draft and the post-draft level. And I did not really see a lot of equivalents in the hockey world, despite the fact, there were some very significant similarities in terms of how the minor league systems worked."
Now, Pronman is one of the go-to reporters for all things related to NHL prospects. When his final rankings hit The Athletics website, he's spent nearly two years watching and getting to know the players on his list.
"I would say typically two years is the typical," Pronman said, "Typically the farthest back I will go unless there are some guys that just jump off the radar so much at a super-elite level that they're in that kind of playing range where you typically would only be looking at one or two years back, but there's playing so far up their age group. A guy like Connor McDavid would be an example of that. He just kept playing like way ahead of his age for a couple of years."
Earlier this summer, Pronman released his prospect pool rankings, a look at who is in each NHL team system and the New Jersey Devils ranked number two on his list.
"There are two big reasons," he shared, "The first one was, the two first overall picks Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier. I would say neither of those two have probably hit what you kind of hope and expect they will be. But those two, in particular Jack Hughes, if they become even kind of close to what I think they could potentially could be, those are kind of cornerstone building block caliber players. And the other reason would be the kind of the quality depth of the organization, you can get to a high ranking usually if you have like a really, really elite player, and Jack and Nico are close to that range, but having that, plus the quality depth, I think really kind of distinguishes the Devils in terms of their young talent. I mean, they've had so many picks the last couple of years."
The Devils have now added to that list of prospects and Pronman shared his thoughts with the podcast about every pick from the 2020 draft, including saying his thoughts on 18th overall selection Dawson Mercer.
"You saw a guy with high-end skill, high-end playmaking ability, he wins a ton of one-on-one battles, a guy who could score goals, he has size. There's a lot of dimensions there that I think are really appealing."
And of Alexander Holtz?
"I think with Alex, the two things that have always stood out to me are his elite skill and his elite shot. He is going to be known as the goal scorer, the guy who can finish from range and all that is true, and he does that at a really high level. But for me, he has like elite, elite hands. He can be I think, you know, he projects to be the kind of guy that can beat a lot of NHL defenders with his one-on-one play, and kind of be able to create on offense with his skill very consistently."
Pronman has done all the scouting and hard work so you don't have to. Listening to Pronman talk about the Devils prospect pool will give you all the insight you need to know about how Devils management has built up over the last several years and the Speak of the Devils Podcast will take you through it all.
This week's podcast also features our brand-new community segment, hosted by Catherine Bogart.
This week, Catherine is joined in conversation with Audible Founder, Don Katz. Don, through his company Audible, created Newark Working Kitchens to help Newark restaurants and citizens through the COVID-19 pandemic. The program partners with restaurants to create meals for low-income seniors as well as people in the community hit by the pandemic.
When it came to why this program was created, Katz said that the company's
Newark
roots and partnerships in the community brought forth a way to give back during these tough times.
"When COVID hit, because we employ so many people from the neighborhoods including our Audible scholars and interns…we were very aware of how aggressively this crisis was going to hit a city like Newark," said Katz. "One of the biggest things that came out quickly was food deprivation and lack of access to food. And then there was the other part of it, which is why Newark Working Kitchens is multifaceted power to it. The small businesses were not going to be sustained when downtown in particular emptied out."
By partnering with these restaurants, NWK has served over 500,000 meals from 24 different restaurants in Newark since it started earlier this year. For more information and how you can get involved, go to NewarkWorkingKitchens.com