Lane Hutson’s defensive play, revisiting Wallstedt vs. Cossa, 2025 NHL Draft names: Mailbag

The prospect calendar is in full swing. The 2023 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge is about to wrap up in Prince Edward Island. The fall U18 and U20 Five Nations tournaments in Hämeenlinna, Finland, and Chomutov, Czechia, respectively, are at their midway points. The World Junior A Challenge, to be held in Truro, N.S., and the 2024 world juniors, to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, are right around the corner.

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On Wednesday, we released my preliminary top 64 ranking for the 2024 NHL Draft. On Thursday, we opened submissions for reader questions. Today, I’ve answered a bunch of them in depth, touching on names to know for 2025, Lane Hutson’s defensive play, Jasper Wallstedt vs. Sebastian Cossa, 2024 goalie prospects, comparing the top prospects in 2024, 2025 and 2026, and more.

(Note: Questions have been lightly edited for clarity and length. If you submitted a question and I didn’t answer it here, I’ll circle back and answer the rest of the submissions in the coming days.)

Who are your early names to watch for the 2025 draft? — Tyler G.

I actually just started to build out my 2025 draft sheet a few weeks ago, bringing together all of the notes I’d gathered and beginning to map out some loose tiers, players I need to get more viewings on, etc. It’s a little more than 40 players deep now, and I’d share it with you but I’m afraid I’d have to kill you.

The early quote-unquote names, at least geographically, are Americans James Hagens and Logan Hensler; Canadians Michael Misa, Porter Martone, Roger McQueen, and Malcolm Spence; Swedes Sacha Boumedienne, Filip Ekberg and Anton Frondel; Czech Adam Benak; and Russian Ivan Ryabkin.

Some others I really like: QMJHL defensemen Alex Huang (a dynamic offensive defenseman) and Owen Conrad, and Victoria Royals forward Cole Reschny. Charlie Tretheway, William Moore, Conrad Fondrk and Cullen Potter have begun to pull away from the pack with the 2007s at the NTDP as well.

After a couple of drafts without a goalie taken in the first round, Russian Pyotr Andreyanov and Canadian Gabriel D’Aigle could both play their way into that conversation as well.

Who are some Macklin Celebrini and Cole Eiserman player comps? — Cam H. 

To whom would you compare Celebrini? — Jöel F.

Longtime readers know I’m not a fan of using player comps as a tool for projecting prospects. But since there were multiple of the same question, I’ll oblige. Note, though, that these are purely stylistic/trait-based comps and not projections (i.e., don’t get carried away by the names used, please).

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Let’s start with Celebrini. In terms of makeup, there are a few names that naturally come to mind. One is Sidney Crosby, whose thick lower half and Shattuck roots have both been natural conversation starters among scouts. When you see Celebrini around the rink or on the ice in person, one of the first things you’re struck by is how strong his legs are. He’s heavy on pucks in a puck protection/holding sense because of it. John Tavares had some of that earlier in his career as well, to where when he would stick his rear out and start in puck-protection games with his back to defenders, you couldn’t knock him off of it. He’s not going to be Sid, obviously, and prime JT would be a pretty good outcome for him (though he’s a better skater at this age than Tavares was). Some scouts go to Jonathan Toews as well, but I see less of that. I think there’s some Brayden Schenn (higher upside) in Celebrini, though.

Eiserman’s a trickier one because there are so few one-dimensional ultra-scorer types to pull from and he doesn’t really fit the moulds of any of Phil Kessel, Patrik Laine, Cole Caufield, etc. He can give you that feeling that Nikita Kucherov gives you inside the offensive zone. By the time a pass across to Kucherov is about five to 10 feet away from him, you know whether there’s a goal or a post coming — you say in your head, “Here comes another one,” before he has even touched the puck. Kucherov’s never been a committed or reliable defensive player, either. But Kucherov is also a 100-point machine and first-ballot Hall of Famer, and it goes without saying that Eiserman is almost certainly not going to be that (I’m not sure Eiserman has the rest of Kucherov’s offensive arsenal/feel either).

Rank who has the highest potential between Celebrini (2024), Hagens (2025), and Gavin McKenna (2026)? — Thomas O.

I normally don’t love making firm lists or projections about kids whose drafts are two and three years away, because there’s just so much more info to be gathered and development to happen with them, but Celebrini and Hagens are actually both from the same birth year and very close in age because Celebrini is a June ’06 and Hagens is a Nov. ’06, so that one feels more tangible.

If Celebrini is anything like the way I’ve described him above, and Hagens is Jack Hughes-lite, I think most teams would be partial to Celebrini, as he’s the more complete, ready-made player and prototypical center, but the game is trending quickly towards the puck-dominant, buttery-skating playmaking types like Hagens, so it’ll be fascinating to track into the future. I’ll lean Celebrini, but I’m not sure that’s where I’ll be a year from now.

I’ll leave McKenna to the side for now, with the caveat that he has looked a complete echelon above his peers whenever he has played with his age group, and even already like one of the more gifted players in the WHL at 14 and 15.

Where is Lane Hutson’s defensive development compared with guys like Adam Fox, Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes when they were putting up similar offensive numbers in college? — Bruce W.

This is a really good question. I’d say it’s a cut below where Makar and Fox were defensively, and comparable to where Hughes was.

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Makar’s skating made defending easy at the college level, especially in his sophomore year, once he knew he could completely control the game in all three zones on both sides of the puck with it. And I was much higher on Fox than most at the time, but I thought he was an excellent defender at that level as well. Hughes’ game came with a lot of give and take back then, and it was particularly noticeable on a Michigan team that, especially in 2018-19 in his second season there, gave up a lot defensively. Lane’s footwork is definitely more susceptible to getting beat one-on-one than Hughes’ was. His pivots and transitions are actually not super clean, considering how proficient he is on his edges in other areas. That wasn’t an issue for Hughes. He’s also a little weaker physically.

I’d probably go (strictly defensively):

1. Makar
2. Fox
3a. Hughes
3b. Hutson

It’s close with those last two, though.

Now that Sebastian Cossa and Jesper Wallstedt are both in the AHL, who has impressed you more? Who gets to the NHL first? Are they both starters? — Eric J. 

I’ve always been — and remain — higher on Wallstedt, who I have little doubt will be an NHL goalie (there’s basically nothing about his game to punch holes in). I expect he’ll get the first NHL look, too.

But Cossa has made some really important progress from, really, November of last year to where he is this November. He’s getting beat five-hole (once a major issue) less, he has continued to play his very aggressive and confident style (challenging out and atop the crease a lot for for a goalie his size, playing the puck as actively as he does, communicating as much as he does, etc.) while refining his control and his movements. He has always had real upside, but there was some risk/work to do. He’s starting to put it all together, not to raise that upside but to strengthen the likelihood that he meets it. I think he’s got starter upside, too, but it’ll probably come in more highs and lows than Wallstedt (whom I expect to be a very consistently good goalie).

Who is your top goalie prospect as it stands in the 2024 draft? And the dark-horse goalie prospect who could overtake him? — Garrett K.

There were three goalies among the 33 honorable mentions (ie. in the top 99 but not the top 64 at the moment) for my draft ranking this week. They are: Mississauga Steelheads standout Ryerson Leenders, Owen Sound’s Carter George and Djurgardens 2005-born net minder Teodor Munther.

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Leenders was the closest to making the list (he’ll be on my midseason one if he keeps it up) and if I had to rank them I’d go:

1. Leenders
2. George
3. Munther

As far as some deeper cuts go: After hearing good things about a trio of NAHL goalies for this year, I’ve liked what I’ve seen out of Chippewa’s Ajay White (a University of St. Thomas commit), Bismarck’s Stephen Peck (a University of Michigan commit) and Philadelphia’s Lukas Fursten (whose odds are really long at 5-foot-10, but is a good goalie).

Unlike a beat writer who gets to focus in on a single team, your job requires you to follow teams and players that are literally around the world. How does someone do this effectively without putting in 70- or 80-hour work weeks? There’s a risk of being a mile wide but an inch deep, talking about a pile of prospects but having no sophistication in the analysis. What’s the best way to stay on top of things? — Kyle J.

I usually like to finish with a philosophical or scouting-related question for these mailbags, and I’ve always been surprised by how much interest there is in how the sausage is made, so to speak.

This question is a particularly common — and fair — one as well.

The truth is that for much of the year, this isn’t your typical day job. In-season, when I’m not on the road, my schedule usually consists of your average 9-to-5 work day from Monday to Friday (which includes a combination of writing, a weekly meeting with my editor, texting and calling sources, transcribing, at least a couple afternoons of video work and note taking, emails to media relations folks to set up visits, interviews and photos,), plus watching NHL games at night to keep up with the kids who are entering the league and respect my PHWA voting privileges.

When I can, I also try to get to one live viewing in the OHL (with rare minor hockey/St. Andrew’s College games mixed in when there’s a prospect or story of interest) on every in-season weekend I’m home for from October to May, which turns a five-day work week into a six-day one most weeks. When I’m on the road, that 70-hour week you asked about is very real, with game-day workdays starting early and ending at or close to midnight at any event.

My schedule is also such that in order to do the job properly, I don’t get the lulls in the hockey calendar that beat reporters (whose job requirements I don’t envy, having also done that for a couple of years, it must be said) use to recharge. In August, when everyone takes their PTO, I’ve got the Hlinka Gretzky Cup and the World Junior Summer Showcase to cover. During the holidays, I fly out to the world juniors on Christmas Day every year. It’s the best job in the world, so none of this is a complaint, but that’s what it looks like. It’s a lot of nights and weekends away from your family — and worse for actual NHL scouts.

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You have to be extremely organized and diligent about your time, you have to be obsessed, and then when your knowledge about a player is lacking, you have to be transparent and trust that your readers will respect that. The most laborious part is getting to know a player from scratch. Once you’ve developed that familiarity, keeping tabs on guys isn’t actually that heavy a lift. The big names are easy that way, because you see them so often and across so many years that you just know them. The real work is making sure you know the guys who come out of nowhere, or the ones who weren’t top prospects and then quickly develop to become them, so that when that happens, you’re not playing catch-up.

(Top photo of Lane Huston: Richard T Gagnon / Getty Images)