CHL-NHL Top Prospects Game Returns | PROSPECT WATCH

A staple of the hockey calendar is back after a one-year hiatus due to the global pandemic
The CHL-NHL Top Prospects Game is slated to be played next Wednesday in Kitchener, Ontario, an annual event that brings together the top 40 draft prospects from Canada's three major junior leagues.
The Top Prospects Game was last held 25 months ago, and it produced 19 first-round picks, including the Devils' Dawson Mercer, in the 2020 NHL Draft. Nico Daws was also selected that year but was a game-day injury scratch.
This year's game is headlined by Shane Wright, the Kingston Frontenacs forward who is considered the top prospect for this year's draft, which is slated for Montreal July 7 and 8.

"I still think Shane Wright is going to be the first person off the board," said Kyle Woodlief, chief scout of Red Line Report, an independent scouting newsletter he's operated for more than two decades. "There still is no (better choice) for me with his two-way game."
The Omicron surge, coming as it did in December and January, cancelled notable events on the annual scouting calendar including the critically important Five Nations. The 2022 World Junior has been rescheduled for August in Alberta but it's cancellation mid-tournament in December also deprived the hockey world to properly see about a dozen of this year's top prospects.
Scouts are still playing catch-up and the return of the Top Prospects Game is welcome news. Though this year's crop of players is not expected to produce nearly the amount of first-rounders it did two years ago, it is another indication of normality returning to the evaluation process.
Paul Henry formerly worked for the New York Rangers, Florida Panthers and Hockey Canada. He is now retired from both his "regular" job as a psychologist in Canada's prison system but also from scouting prospects. He still dabbles in evaluating international players for a few Canadian major junior teams.
"It's the draft, there is always going to be a lot of good players and exciting (stories) to go along with it," said Henry, "there is no such thing as a weak draft because it's a team's job to find the good players."
Woodlief says the top tier of this year's draft will be weaker than normal but envisions a scenario where a few years down the line players taken later pan out better than expected. Part of that is due to the uneven process evaluating players during the pandemic but also because so many players missed time last year.
"I think you're going to see that with 2004-born players this year, especially from the OHL," said Woodlief, of the league that cancelled its 2020-21 campaign. "It may be (next season) we see the 04s start to be the type of player we expected them to be."
At the top of this year's draft, it was not thought possible that Wright could be knocked from that perch as recently as a couple of months ago. But a stellar performance by Juraj Slafkovsky at the Olympics - he was named the tournament MVP in Slovakia's bronze medal win - has made it more interesting.
As good as Slafkovsky, a physical forward who could be on a steep development curve, was at the Olympics, Wright's play has been indifferent at times, as has Slafkovsky's in Finland with his club team.
Wright has 71 points in 49 games (24G-47A) and those numbers don't tell the full story of his two-way ability. They also don't fully explain his inconsistency. For example, as of this writing, Wright has 16 points in his past 10 games but in four of those 10 contests he has been pointless. And five of those 16 points came against the Oshawa Generals, who were mired in a long losing streak and fired their coach after that game.
Wright still has plenty of appeal - he reminds some scouts of Patrice Bergeron - and top draft prospects in Canada tend to be over-exposed in a similar manner to how certain college football and basketball players can be hyped in the U.S.
"If you're going to point out (inconsistency) about Wright, you have to also look at Slafkovsky, who my Finnish scout points out, hasn't done much in that league this season," says Woodlief, while rhyming off a list of recent high draft picks who have been more productive in Finland's La Liga in recent years than Slafkovsky has been this season.
Other notable prospects in action in Kitchener include a pair of Winnipeg Ice forwards, Conor Geekie and Mathew Savoie. Both should be taken in the top 10 in July. Two other Western Hockey League players, defensemen Owen Pickering (Swift Current) and Kevin Korchinski (Seattle), are among the fastest risers in the entire class whose status could be further bolstered by the uncertainty surrounding Russian prospects of similar quality.
The on-going development comes after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the backlash of economic/political sanctions that followed. NHL clubs, understandably, could be leery of taking a Russian player not knowing when they could play in North America.
The International Ice Hockey Federation recently banned both Russia and Belarus from a series of events, including the next two World Junior tournaments and 2022 U18s. Not having Russians speaks for itself but it's also worth noting that Belarus has displayed a respectable quality in the past year, not to mention Yegor Sharangovich before that.
Russians already in North America should be less effected. One such player, Pavel Mintyukov, a defenseman on the Saginaw Spirit, will be in Kitchener and is expected to be taken in the top-half of the first round.
With next week's NHL trade deadline looming, the Devils have nine picks including one in the first round. Eight more follow in each of the next six rounds, plus two additional picks in the fourth.
As pandemic restrictions ease in Canada, the 2022 NHL Draft is scheduled to be the first in-person since 2019 in Vancouver, when the Devils took Jack Hughes first overall.