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Created: Friday, 06 January 2017 17:47

By: Brendan Ross (@RossyYoungblood)

The 2017 World Junior Championship has freshly come to a close with the United States taking home the gold medal against a tough Canadian team, in a game that could have went any which way. It was a tournament stacked full of players selected in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft and while it’s probably too early to visit a topic, attempting a 2015 NHL Re-Draft is a fun exercise.

Before diving into the rankings, it’s best to remind the readers that there are countless variables that play into deciding between Player A and Player B. Several of the following players are already competing and leaving their impact on NHL teams. Many others were selected by their teams, knowing that these players may take five years to really come into their own. So, let’s reiterate that this process is meant to be for fun and that in two or three years, could look entirely different as players undergo and fulfill their development game plans. Recency bias could certainly play an effect to some extent (see Kaprizov, Terry, and company), especially coming off the World Juniors, but given the amount of skill displayed, we will trust the eye-test and get a little excited about what these exciting prospects showed.

For the sake of simplicity, the draft order will remain in tack as it unfolded at the 2015 NHL Entry Draft site. The teams who traded for draft picks (Boston, New York Islanders, etc.) maintain those picks. Secondly, we are not taking into account team drafting styles but rather placing players in an order that we feel is based on a combination of NHL value (current and/or future) derived from their playing style and skills. Third, many players are only shuffled one, two or three spots from their original order making it important to understand that slight variances in a few spots isn’t all that significant – particularly lower in the first round (i.e. Jacob Larsson moving from 27^th to 29^th). It’s just how the players fell. Lastly, it’s a nearly impossible task to dissect every player’s performance to date from the 2015 draft crop so there’s a very real chance that players have been unintentionally omitted – we apologize for that!

It’s very early to assess the 2015 draft crop but early showings and productions have us believing that it’s a strong crop and each of the following players listed below have bright NHL futures.  

Complete seven round 2015 NHL Entry Draft (Courtesy of www.EliteProspects.com)

Honourable Mentions

An argument could be made to include any of the following players in a re-draft of the 1st round:

Out of 1^st Round

The following players were originally selected in the 1^st round but did not make the cut this time around:

Rapid Risers

$$ - indicates prospects who have outperformed their original draft slots significantly (particularly in the 2016-17 season)