Predicting the fates of teenagers eligible for the NHL Entry Draft is an exercise in futility. History eventually exposes everyone as frauds who got a lot of assessments wrong. The best scouts are the ones who consistently get wrong a little bit less often than everyone else.
The chaos brought on by COVID-19 made evaluations all the more difficult, with players forced into limited schedules, sometimes with unfamiliar teams. A handful of players barely saw competition action altogether.
While the 2021-22 hockey calendar has seen its share of hardships – The cancellation of the World Junior Championship chief among them – most leagues have returned to at least some semblance of normal.