The 2026 NHL Draft Big Board – mid-season edition

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.