Red Wings finish 9th in The Athletic’s Pronman’s prospect rankings

The Athletic is listing their top prospect pipelines in the NHL, defined as the teams with the best crops of players under 23 years of age, and the Red Wings have finished 9th in Corey Pronman’s rankings. Here are Pronman’s top 2 Wings prospects:

1. Moritz Seider, RHD, Rogle-SHL

Apr. 6, 2001 | 6-foot-4 | 183 pounds

Drafted: No. 6 in 2019

Tier: Projected bubble all-star and top of lineup player

Skating: Average
Puck Skills: Below-average
Hockey Sense: Average
Compete: Above-average

Seider had as good a season as you could have hoped for, as the best defenseman in the SHL last season and at the world championships. He’s so tough to deal with for opposing forwards. He’s a 6-foot-4, highly mobile, highly physical defender who projects to match up versus top NHL players. His skating helps him transition pucks very well to go with a strong first pass. The offense might never be elite, but it will be good to go with elite defending. Seider projects as a true top-pair defenseman with a chance to be a star No. 1 in the NHL.

2. Lucas Raymond, LW, Frolunda-SHL

Mar. 28, 2002 | 5-foot-10 | 170 pounds

Drafted: No. 4 in 2020

Tier: Projected top of the lineup player

Skating: Average
Puck Skills: High-end
Hockey Sense: Above-average
Compete: Average
Shot: Above-average

Raymond is an offensive weapon. He’s an extremely skilled and creative player with the puck who can make dazzling displays of puck handling and passing, and improvise like few forwards out there. Raymond also is a dangerous mid-distance shooter, making him a projected PP1 player in the NHL. He had a good but not amazing season in the SHL for Frolunda. He has the puck talent. The question after watching him versus men the past two seasons at his frame without amazing quickness is how does that play in the NHL. He has great edges and balance but struggles to pull away from checks. It may keep him from ever becoming a star, but I still project him as a top-line forward.

Continued (paywall)

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.

4 thoughts on “Red Wings finish 9th in The Athletic’s Pronman’s prospect rankings”

  1. The narratives don’t match the stated 1 or 2 word ratings.
    For Seider, “Projected bubble all-star and top of lineup player” but is above average only on compete level, and below average on puck skills while average on hockey sense and skating.
    The others are like that too.
    With Pronman, I’ve not noticed this apparent inconsistency before.

  2. There are plenty of writers who love to give us their opinion of the top whatevers there are. In this case the best team prospect pools.

    So I wonder has anyone ever done a best list, top ten list if you will, of hockey news writers, prognosticators, bloggers (George leads this list of course), and so on?

    I have favorites as I bet most of us do. That doesn’t make any one of them a better writer though. Me liking them may not be any help at all LOL.

    1. It’s just that I’ve been reading Pronman (& Wheeler) for quite some time, and have mostly trusted their objectivity at the Athletic—I’ll just have to watch Pronman a little more with a wary eye on 1/2 word assessments.
      Til now, I had Pronman in the GJM category. 🙂

  3. I wasn’t criticizing Pronman. I just had that thought. You know, who judges the judges.

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