STL fan in MN wrote: ↑21 Aug 2025 14:00 pm
This list goes to show how wildly different and subjective prospect rankings can be. I have my own opinions but at the end of the day, you’re comparing players of varying age in a whole host of different leagues with wildly different strengths and weaknesses and it’s just really hard to compare them all to each other sometimes.
From my perspective though, the Blues have 6-7 really strong prospects: Dvorsky, Snuggerud, Lindstein, Mailloux, Carbonneau, Stenberg and maybe Jiricek if he can stay healthy and get back on track this season.
It feels like a lot of these lists try to put later picks ahead of top 10 picks to catch people’s eye or they don’t want to just copy/paste all of the highest drafted players from each team and scramble them.
I’m still very surprised to see the praise Carbonneau is getting this quickly. It’s possible he had more of an influence on trading Bolduc than we realize. The trade might not have even happened, who knows.
To be classified as a prospect, players generally need to meet the following criteria: they must have played in 50 or fewer NHL games or spent more time outside of the NHL than in it during the previous season. Players over the age of 23 are excluded from this classification, along with certain prospects who have played fewer than 50 games but held a full-time role for a significant portion of the season — this determination is more subjective.
His assessment of the Blues doesn’t make much sense.
The Blues’ pipeline isn’t deep. But I could see most of this top 10 play at least some NHL games, with a few becoming key components of the future. Jimmy Snuggerud and Dalibor Dvorský and Justin Carbonneau all have futures as top-six forwards, with Snuggerud, in particular, ready to take up the mantle out of training camp. Logan Mailloux, Theo Lindstein, Adam Jiricek and Colin Ralph give the team some serious defensive depth, and I’m still a big Otto Stenberg fan.
He first says the Blues lack depth in their prospects…and then continues to talk about how most of the top 10 should play in the NHL (a rarity) and then lists a depth of players he likes. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The notion that the Blues prospect pool lacks depth is flat out wrong. There is perhaps not another org in the league with the depth of prospects the Blues have. Their main strength is depth. Their main weakness is a lack of a true likely elite, superstar caliber prospect. The Blues have 8 former 1st rounders as well as many others that are developing very well as well. Very few teams can match that sort of depth in their pipeline.
hockey is far behind in terms of prospect evaluation goes as being a paying job. It doesn't really exist. And to be honest it doesn't really exist outside of the NFL and NBA at least as north american leagues go. It makes sense that its all over the place. Most of the time the people doing the write ups on this stuff are doing it as a side job or in hopes that it will get them some exposure for a different job. Neither of which are proven track record positions.
Like you said, anything saying the Blues don't have some of the most depth in the minor leagues right now isn't paying attention. They have a wealth of 1st round deemed talent. They also have other players that have at least on the world juniors stage kicked way above their draft position. This is a good problem to have as it's going to be trade assets or it allows for the ability to fill out the lineup. The Blues should be looking to take advantage of the next 2-3 seasons where their cap starts to open up in a very advantageous way while simultaneously having all of this youth churning thru.
Should be an exciting end to the 2020s as a Blues fan and we are just at the halfway mark.
STL fan in MN wrote: ↑21 Aug 2025 14:00 pm
This list goes to show how wildly different and subjective prospect rankings can be. I have my own opinions but at the end of the day, you’re comparing players of varying age in a whole host of different leagues with wildly different strengths and weaknesses and it’s just really hard to compare them all to each other sometimes.
From my perspective though, the Blues have 6-7 really strong prospects: Dvorsky, Snuggerud, Lindstein, Mailloux, Carbonneau, Stenberg and maybe Jiricek if he can stay healthy and get back on track this season.
It feels like a lot of these lists try to put later picks ahead of top 10 picks to catch people’s eye or they don’t want to just copy/paste all of the highest drafted players from each team and scramble them.
I’m still very surprised to see the praise Carbonneau is getting this quickly. It’s possible he had more of an influence on trading Bolduc than we realize. The trade might not have even happened, who knows.
I do very much think this was the plan. I know I posted before the draft that if we did get Carbonneau then we would be loaded at RW (it was in context of Kyrou's NTC) and would have an incentive to trade from strength to get RHD help or possibly a Wright or Beniers type at center using Kyrou.
Reports were the Blues' room erupted the same way I did when Reschny was selected and Carbonneau was available (sorry to MN who may still be right about that one, time will tell). But that says they really felt they got something with Carbonneau. And if they weren't going to trade Kyrou then Bolduc was the right call to be moved instead of Snuggy IMO.
Harry S Deals wrote: ↑22 Aug 2025 12:16 pm
It wont matter much 3i/ATLAS will be here sometime around Oct, i hope at least we can get a few Blues games in
FWIW here is a "how the Kings got Brzustevich at the draft" insider breakdown and I cannot help but think there's a nonzero chance that if Carbonneau had slipped one more spot the Kings would have traded up, but it could also have been Reschny since the models would not likely have had Carbonneau available at 24 in the "one or both of these will be available" ... or maybe Aitcheson?
seattleblue wrote: ↑22 Aug 2025 14:58 pm
FWIW here is a "how the Kings got Brzustevich at the draft" insider breakdown and I cannot help but think there's a nonzero chance that if Carbonneau had slipped one more spot the Kings would have traded up, but it could also have been Reschny since the models would not likely have had Carbonneau available at 24 in the "one or both of these will be available" ... or maybe Aitcheson?
really interesting read into the strategy of trade ups and trade downs as it unfolds dynamically. I like that they all loved the Happy Gilmore pick
I really like behind the scenes stories like that.
Around pick 15 or 16, there began to be some excitement in the Kings draft room that a player the organization had projected to go much earlier in the draft might be available in a range where the Kings could consider trading up to get him. I wouldn’t say it was like crazy optimistic but it got at least into the range of okay, maybe there’s a chance here and this was a player multiple tiers ahead of what the Kings had projected.
The thought of trading up was a deviation from strategy but the draft calls for pivots. The Kings targeted something around Pick 20 to look at potentially moving up if that player was available. It turns out he was selected before that point so the talk was moot.
Without disclosing details, the Kings actually did have a trade-up scenario on the table and the cost in moving up actually felt like it was less than the Kings wound up receiving to trade down. The offer involved an additional draft pick going out, a 2026 pick, along with Pick 24, to move up in Round 1. The Kings declined the offer with their guy no longer available.
Agree that the two players that make the most sense as to who the Kings likely projected to go higher would be Reschny and Carbonneau. I personally would still absolutely pick Reschny over Carbo but doesn’t mean I don’t like Carbo. Something we can revisit in 2-3 years.
The article then goes into shifting back to their original plan of trading down because they were targeting 2 players - Brzustewicz and an unnamed player that ended up getting picked before they were on the clock. My guess is that was either Ryker Lee or Sasha Boumedienne.
It’s all very interesting how fluid this stuff is and how so many butterfly effects end up determining where players end up. Sometimes those decisions by others help you make a decision that makes you look like a genius and other times, they will set you to make a disastrous choice. The draft moves at a crawl for us, but these are big decisions that can sometimes impact orgs for decades. All very interesting stuff.
STL fan in MN wrote: ↑21 Aug 2025 14:00 pm
This list goes to show how wildly different and subjective prospect rankings can be. I have my own opinions but at the end of the day, you’re comparing players of varying age in a whole host of different leagues with wildly different strengths and weaknesses and it’s just really hard to compare them all to each other sometimes.
From my perspective though, the Blues have 6-7 really strong prospects: Dvorsky, Snuggerud, Lindstein, Mailloux, Carbonneau, Stenberg and maybe Jiricek if he can stay healthy and get back on track this season.
It feels like a lot of these lists try to put later picks ahead of top 10 picks to catch people’s eye or they don’t want to just copy/paste all of the highest drafted players from each team and scramble them.
I’m still very surprised to see the praise Carbonneau is getting this quickly. It’s possible he had more of an influence on trading Bolduc than we realize. The trade might not have even happened, who knows.
We were able to draft Carbonneau at #19 less than two months ago, with no game action to change perceptions and rankings. How is he now #25 of all prospects? Why wasn't he drafted higher if so many see him so highly ranked? Interesting is all - very excited that we were able to grab him!
