Welcome to our fourth annual analysis of all NHL-affiliated prospects and each organization’s prospect pipeline. September is here. Rookie camps and tournaments are right around the corner with training camps following soon thereafter. There is no better time to get up to speed on the players who will soon take center stage across the league.

A few analysts have already put out short preseason lists of top NHL-affiliated prospects. Today, we’re diving deeper, giving you a list of 300 top skater prospects to follow as the season progresses. (We’ll be returning with a separate look at the top NHL-affiliated goalie prospects shortly.)

The “Data Score” approach

This is not a traditional scouting assessment of prospects. Instead, we built our watchlist using quantifiable data only. Think of it as a supplement to the scouting and analytical work on prospects being published by other sources like Elite Prospects. It can be revealing in its areas of agreement or disagreement with the work of traditional scouting services.

What does our data-only analysis involve? As I have done in years past when looking at NHL-affiliated prospects (or NHL Draft prospects), I have organized this player list by “Data Score”—a rough metric we came up with here at Sound Of Hockey. Data Score begins with the bedrock of an NHL equivalency (“NHLe”). NHLe is a method to compare the scoring proficiency of players in the various professional and junior leagues across the globe. I used Thibaud Chatel’s model, which is the most up-to-date public research in the area. Check out Chatel’s Substack for an in-depth discussion of NHLe. For this project, I used Chatel’s newest model, which has been updated to account for 2025-26 season data.

From there, I make adjustments based on factors known to be linked to prospect success rates: (1) position, (2) height, and (3) age. I then made a modest upward adjustment to the NHLe for low-scoring players playing in high-level professional leagues. This is based on public research by Chace McCallum that was taken down when he started working for an NHL team. Finally, I also adjusted the underlying point-rate totals used in the process to give less weight to assists relative to goals. This is based on public research suggesting goal scoring is more predictive of future point production than assist totals, even primary assists.

For simplicity of presentation, only one team-season of data is shown in the list below for each player. It should be the highest level reached where the player played at least ten games. That said, if a player split their season between multiple teams and/or leagues, all of that scoring information is accounted for in the player’s Data Score.

NHL-affiliated prospects list eligibility

To be eligible for this list, the player (1) must be a skater on the roster or reserve list of an NHL team, (2) must be younger than 24 years old as of Sep. 1, 2026, and (3) cannot have played more than 50 NHL games. This approach yielded 970 skaters. The full list will be made available to Sound Of Hockey Patreon members shortly.

Top 300 NHL-Affiliated Prospects

Age bias?

Big picture, this approach prioritizes players closer to contributing at the NHL level than most scouting-based lists. You could fairly argue that the data fails to capture the likely upside and potential star power of younger prospects like Chase Reid (#40) or Caleb Malhotra (#50).

On the other hand, you could argue that scouting lists too often err on the side of prioritizing the potential upside of younger players—or display recency bias toward recently scouted NHL Draft prospects—at the expense of the more probable contributions of older prospects. Eventually, this will be a worthy topic for side-by-side comparison.

For today’s purposes, however, it’s certainly notable that the highest-ranked true junior player on this list is Jake O’Brien at No. 22 overall. You won’t find many prospect rankings like that elsewhere.

A blind spot for defensive defensemen?

The placement of several defensemen is certainly “unique” as well. Tomas Galvas (#25) is an undersized European blueliner who went undrafted twice before finally being selected by the Penguins in the 2026 draft. He has put up points in international competitions and in the Czech pro league, but clearly the NHL does not view him as a well-rounded or sure-fire prospect.

At the other extreme, well-regarded defensive specialists from the 2026 draft like Alberts Smits (#149) and Malte Gustafsson (unranked) fall much lower. Even if there are compelling reasons to favor a model built on the bedrock of scoring data, it is certainly true that such a model will “miss” at least some defensemen who trade on shutdown defense.

Tracking the top players

Revisiting the top of last year’s list, Ivan Demidov (2025 #1) has since graduated after posting 62 points in his rookie NHL season. Michael Misa (2025 #3) nearly graduated after playing 45 NHL games; he remained near the top of this year’s list at No. 6 overall. In contrast, Bradly Nadeau (2025 #2) found himself stuck in the AHL in a deep Carolina organization. Despite posting another excellent scoring season there, he slipped to No. 16 on this year’s list, with the passage of a year putting a dent in his Data Score.

This year’s top skater, Porter Martone, rose from No. 7 on last year’s list. Ilya Protas (#2) also moved up gradually from No. 6 on the 2025 list. The biggest jump at the top of the board came from Anton Frondell (#3), who surged from No. 95 last season following a strong season split between the SHL and the NHL.

Developmental leagues

Among the top 100 prospects, 16 played at least 10 games in the NHL during the 2025-26 season (but were still eligible for this exercise). Fourteen played in the AHL. Beyond those professional players, the NCAA and the OHL were tied for the most players represented, with 19 apiece. 16 played in the WHL, 13 played in the USHL, and five played in the QMJHL. Rounding out the list were 10 players playing in Swedish professional leagues, seven in Russia, one in Finland, and one in Czechia.

Prospect pipelines and organizational outlook

Last season, the Calgary Flames had the most top-100 skaters, with eight. The Flames had eight again this season, but were surpassed at the top by the San Jose Sharks and Pittsburgh Penguins, each of which have nine such prospects. The Sharks are widely regarded as having a top system. The Penguins have favored strong data profiles at recent drafts and deployed a young AHL roster last season, which worked in their favor in this data-only look.

The Penguins also have the deepest system, with 16 skaters in the top 300 overall. The Anaheim Ducks have the second-most skaters in the top 300, with 15.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Colorado Avalanche, Edmonton Oilers, and Dallas Stars have zero top-100 players. The Minnesota Wild have the shallowest system, with only three top-300 skaters, followed by the Avalanche and Oilers with only four each.

Top-100 skaters are indicated in dark green and top-300 skaters in light green in the chart below.

All is not lost for the Oilers and Avalanche, of course. Both NHL teams are Stanley Cup contenders. But this provides some perspective about where they stand in the team “life cycle.” They need to “win now” before a fallow period could hit in the future.

The chart below visualizes this “life cycle” by comparing current NHL success (measured by 2025-26 standings points) against the organization’s prospect pool (measured by the total number of top-100 players in Data Score).

With more weight given to high-end players than organizational depth, here is how we would grade the 32 prospect pools by “Data Score”:

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Did we miss a player? Do you have any questions? Reach out to us in the comments below or on Twitter/X @deepseahockey or @sound_hockey or on BlueSky at @deepseahockey or @soundofhockey.com.

Header photo of Daxon Rudolph taken by Evan Morud, courtesy Everett Silvertips.