Welcome to Year 4 of the Sound Of Hockey Big Board. As we did last year, we’re kicking off our NHL Draft coverage midway through the hockey season with a “mid-season” version of the Big Board.
What is the Big Board? It’s a composite ranking of 2026 NHL Draft–eligible prospects based on reputable draft analyst and public scouting service lists—in this case, lists published midway through the season to account for draft-year performance. Put differently, it’s a list designed to provide the current, mid-season “public consensus” on the top players in the draft.
The Big Board does not contain any prospect-specific subjective assessments from us here at Sound Of Hockey. If you’d like a little more information on our methodology, check out our 2024 NHL Draft Big Board post.
We used the following nine sources to build the mid-season Big Board:
- NHL Central Scouting
- Elite Prospects ($)
- McKeen’s
- Corey Pronman, The Athletic ($)
- Scott Wheeler, The Athletic ($)
- Craig Button, TSN
- Sam Cosentino, Sportsnet
- Steven Ellis, Daily Faceoff
- Tony Ferrari, The Hockey News
NHL Central Scouting just published its landmark midseason list last week, on Monday, Jan. 12. Some of the other sources referenced above are even more recent, while others date back about a month to December, 2025. It goes without saying that those earlier lists do not have the benefit of more recent gameplay or injury information. Accordingly, this list should be taken as only a rough approximation of a prospect’s current standing. Season-end lists are far more definitive.
As we progress through the remainder of the draft season, you can expect the same coverage you’ve come to know from us here at Sound Of Hockey in the past. Want our watchlist of prospects based on our “Data Score” method? We published a preseason version here, and we’ll have a final 2026 version for you soon after prospect regular seasons end.
Looking for more scouting and video content? We’ll have more on the Sound Of Hockey Patreon and on the Deep Sea Hockey YouTube channel.
We’ll then culminate our coverage with the final 2026 NHL Draft Big Board in June, as always.
The 2026 Sound Of Hockey Big Board – mid-season edition
All 411 players ranked by the nine sources above make up our mid-season Big Board. As you scroll across, you will see the rankings from the various sources we compiled. If a source ranking is behind a paywall, such as Scott Wheeler’s ranking for The Athletic, we have omitted it from the chart. We used those paywalled rankings to develop the composite list, but will not be sharing subscriber-only individual rankings.
Trends and takeaways
Overall, this draft appears to have more balance and depth than last year’s class, which skewed heavily toward Canadian junior forwards. The Big Board has nine Europeans within the top 32 overall prospects, whereas last year only three (including one surprise Russian goalie) were drafted in Round 1.
Six of the top 12 players on this Board are defensemen, whereas only two blueliners were drafted with the top 13 picks in 2025. Overall, there are 10 defensemen in the top 32 here. Only eight were drafted in the first round last year.
The talking point coming into the year was that this would be “The Gavin McKenna Draft.” Yet, a few months into a college hockey season that many have found uninspiring, McKenna has fallen behind fellow undersized winger Ivar Stenberg for the top spot in this mid-season snapshot.
McKenna is a perimeter player with some similar traits to his cousin Connor Bedard, and I think he is simply working through a higher level of competition earlier than Bedard did. As we have seen with Bedard at the NHL level, it can take time to rewire a junior-oriented skill game. Still, I haven’t seen enough to dislodge McKenna from the top spot personally, even if the gap has narrowed somewhat.
Ryan Roobroeck has piled up points in the OHL for three years now and has size to go with it, but analysts have soured on the prospect’s competitiveness and drive—to the extent that he barely factors into the first-round mix at this point. While McKenna’s fall from No. 1 is the most notable development, Roobroeck’s diving stock is likely the most disappointing storyline so far this season. (That said, it is very easy to imagine a team getting a steal with him or J.P. Hurlbert, another prolific junior scorer, late in the first round.)
A top goalie has not yet emerged in this class. Tobias Trejbal of the USHL’s Youngstown Phantoms is the highest-ranked netminder on the Big Board at No. 61 overall. Brady Knowling from the U.S. National Team Development Program, and Dmitri Borchev of the Russian junior league, appear to be in a similar tier. It will be interesting to track how the goalie market evolves over the next few months leading into the draft.
This year’s draft doesn’t have quite as much local flair as the last few drafts did. That said, there are several current and former players on Washington State’s WHL teams that project to be drafted, including Mathis Preston (who would be a steal at No. 18 in the draft), Jakub Vanecek (No. 48, Tri-City Americans), Chase Harrington (No. 68, Spokane Chiefs), Brek Liske (No. 82, Everett Silvertips), and Noah Kosick (No. 120, Seattle Thunderbirds).
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If you have draft- or coverage-related questions, drop us a note below or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @deepseahockey or @sound_hockey or on Bluesky @deepseahockey or @soundofhockey.com.
Header photo: Chase Harrington of the Spokane Chiefs plays in a game against the Seattle Thunderbirds. Photo/Brian Liesse, courtesy of the Seattle Thunderbirds.
Curtis Isacke
Curtis is a Sound Of Hockey contributor and member of the Kraken press corps. Curtis is an attorney by day, and he has read the NHL collective bargaining agreement and bylaws so you don’t have to. He can be found analyzing the Kraken, NHL Draft, and other hockey topics on Twitter and Bluesky @deepseahockey.
With the Lightning pick likely to be a late 1st it will be interesting who falls and is available. Hopefully the Kraken can break the cycle of drafting players early in the 1st who underwhelm so far. At least they have done better at finding 2-4th rounders who can be productive NHL players.
Huh? The Kraken 2nd – 4th rounders have not been more productive than Matty, Wright, or Catton, and don’t have anywhere near the upside of those three.
Matty has scored the 2nd most points of anyone from the 2021 draft. He was the 2nd pick.
Wright is 5th in points and 4th in games played from the 2022 draft. He was the 4th pick.
And Catton, the 8th pick in the 2024 draft, is looking more confident and more dangerous every game. His future upside is huge.
O’Brien (8th pick) was only a year ago.
Their early picks have been just fine.
He’s talking about meeting expectations, not pure point production. Of course draft picks beyond the first round arnt going to out perform those who are. I wouldn’t have thought that needed to be stated so explicitly.
You would expect more from Wright drafted at number 4. Matty is a special case because of his overall game. But I suppose if you wanna be objective, a number 2 draft pick should be more productive. (And I’m a huge fan of his game. Think Bergeron)
Beyond the first round they’ve found some great value. I just looked at their drafts and they’ve actually done phenomenally well. A bunch of their picks have gotten nhl minutes and a few look like full time NHLers.
So yeah, they’ve drafted better in later rounds than in early rounds.
What are the expectations you had of Shane that he hasn’t met?
i find it interesting that this projects 2 under 6ft defenseman will be drafted in the first round. even after Lane Hutson won the Calder it took until the 62nd pick last year to darft a Dman under 6ft.
I agree, I meant to mention this. If teams aren’t confident Villeneuve is a poor man’s approximation of Quinn Hughes or Lane Hutson, I find it hard to believe he’ll go as high as he’s ranked here. If there is a likely “faller,” it’s probably him. (I thought that there were no sub-6-foot defenseman drafted last year, but that’s probably semantics and based on the measurements consulted.)
i hope he falls to our pick wherever that may be. I still feel like we need a true D1 (especially with the number of recent shorthanded goals)
I’m glad to hear this draft is considered deeper than last years. With two late first round picks, how deep this draft is considered is what’s important to me. Hopefully it’s deep enough we can get a few more high quality players into the system.