Scouting Report: Fraser Minten

Photo Credit: Tricia Mercuri / Kamloops Blazers

Scouting Report written by Matthew Somma

Fraser Minten is the third player from Kamloops that I’ve done a profile on this year. Of the three, he’s probably the one that gets the least attention, but there’s a possible future for him in the NHL. He fits the mold of a player that can play in all situations and should become a favorite amongst a team’s coaching staff due to his dependability and work ethic. Minten isn’t going to dazzle you with his puck skills or make a lot of highlight reel plays, but he works hard in all three zones and can create a fair amount of offense in the process.

This season, Minten has spent a large amount of time on a line with fellow draft eligible forward Matthew Seminoff. Seminoff, as mentioned in my profile, is a fast-paced winger that does some incredible work on the forecheck as well as along the boards. Minten is there to get to the net and look for Seminoff to strip the puck and make a pass. They’re a dynamic duo for a strong Kamloops team and will only get better as time goes on.

Austin Garrett and I both love think Minten has an NHL projectable game, so I’ve enlisted his help in providing some additional notes on Minten throughout the report. We’ve come to similar conclusions about Minten as a player. We love the fact that he plays like a true NHL bottom six center and we appreciate that he gets to the dangerous areas around the net. Throughout, I’ll be including Austin’s notes as well as video clips to illustrate Minten as a player.

Player Profile

D.O.B – July 5, 2004
Nationality – Canadian
Draft Eligibility – 2022
Height –6’1″
Weight –185 lbs
Position – Center
Handedness – Left

Minten’s Style of Play

I’d describe Minten as a stabilizing presence. He’s steady, with very little panic in his game. That’s good, because when you play with someone like Seminoff, you have to be ready to adapt to anything on the fly. The two work so well together because Minten knows how to support his teammate and makes adjustments accordingly if Seminoff creates a takeaway out of nowhere. Minten can slow the game down and makes a lot of smart plays, but I wouldn’t call him a slow player. He’s one that makes calculated decisions and usually errs on the side of caution. What stands out about Minten’s game right away is the fact that he loves to play around the net. He’s a strong net front presence that can create offense with ease around the crease. Minten’s best work is done in the low slot, particularly in terms of goal scoring. This is a player that can grind away in front of the net and either score greasy goals or wind up with a primary assist off of one of his rebounds.

I’ve appreciated Minten’s ability to find open patches of ice, where he’ll look to establish himself as a screen, passing option or playmaker. Minten is a smart player that can read the play in all three zones and react to it quickly. He sees the ice well as a playmaker, finding teammates along the wings as well as around the net.

Austin: I generally agree with a lot of what Matt is saying here. Tracking three games of Minten this year he’s largely played a similar role in every game. He’s a one-touch player, who struggles to create offensive opportunities when the puck is on his stick for a prolonged period of time, but can make great, short distance passes to relieve pressure or to jump start a rush. He struggles mightily when it comes being able to escape pressure by carrying the puck, and when pressured he can struggle to put a puck to space or on tape to generate chain-linked plays. However, with time and space or off the puck Minten does show some promise. When he’s paired with Stankoven on Kamloops his game can shine, however away from Stankoven he’s heavily dependent on a dump-and-chase style of game. Overall, his head is in the right place. Almost 20% of all of his passes are to the dangerous parts of the ice, however he’s completing just 16% of those passes. It’s a common theme with Minten: there are times where it can look like he’s a physical, power forward with some one-touch skill and some scoring prowness around the net. There are other times where he looks like a fringe 4th liner whose value is derived strictly from his relentless forecheck and shoot-from-anywhere mentality.

Minten is the best forward that I’ve profiled so far as far as defensive play is concerned. Once again, he can react to passes and shifts in the opposition quickly and will disrupt a lot of offensive opportunities. Minten has an active stick in the defensive zone that can create turnovers, which then result in Kamloops taking over in transition. Time and time again this season I’ve noticed that Minten doesn’t fold under pressure and instead slows the play down and forces the attacking forwards to make mistakes. Minten is getting stronger and as a result, is more willing to engage in the play physically. He’ll work along the boards and win puck battles, or at the very least wear the opposition down. This is a player whose dogged determination in the defensive zone will carry him to the NHL.

Minten’s skating without the puck is a strength, although I would like to see his skating with the puck improve a great deal. He can think too much when the puck is on his stick, slowing him down just enough to kill the offensive momentum that his team had built up. I will say that Minten’s skating in general has improved over the course of the season. I would now consider his skating with the puck to be average and his skating without the puck to be above average, maybe around a 60-70 on a 100-point scale. Minten’s skating likely won’t be a defining trait in his game, but it’ll be strong enough for the NHL.

When Minten has the puck on his stick, his skating could be best described as “poor.” There’s a clear shift in his stride, too. He hunches over and keeps his head down, chugging along at a slow pace while his teammates try to push the pace of play. Take this clip, for example. Watch #16 in white and see how he hunches over and slows the play down once he receives the puck.

Let’s not forget about the fact that he had passing options but went with a dump in instead. These sorts of plays don’t inspire a ton of confidence, to be honest.

These types of plays are frequent in Minten’s game and I almost prefer when his wingers carry the puck up the ice. He can establish a presence in the middle and receive a pass, but I don’t believe that his hockey sense or awareness are good enough to make him a dangerous transition player.

I cannot believe that this shot went in. I understand that it’s a 5v3, but Minten is moving at a snail’s pace through the offensive zone and the Spokane defense decides to give him a clear path and shooting lane. It showcases his speed with the puck, and while I do like his shot release there, it illustrates some of the issues that I have with Minten.

Minten’s finishing ability is below average, in my opinion. He tends to either shoot it into the goalie’s chest or miss the net. Considering a lot of his shot attempts have been in the low slot or around the crease, I would have liked to see him score more this season. He gets decent power behind his shots and has the right mechanics in place, but his accuracy is off and his shot loses power the further away from the net he gets. Minten’s finishing ability certainly won’t keep him from the NHL, and it’s entirely possible that it becomes less of an issue as he continues along in his development. But right now, finishing is a weakness and one that teams need to be wary of. With the way he and Seminoff work together, it’s not unreasonable to expect Minten to have 30 or more goals, which is eight more than he currently has.

Austin: I would add that, to me, his biggest flaw is he can be a negative impact player on controlling offensive entries/exits. Even when he is able to cross a blue line with control himself; it has been the rare occurrence that he’s able to manipulate the next layer of the defense himself without turning the puck over, shooting from low danger, or dumping the puck into the corner. When paired with a player who is able to do that; Minten is very good off the puck at reading plays and able to make quick, simple reads.

Projection

To me, Minten is a player that could be a solid fit on an NHL fourth line. His ability to play in defensive situations will be a big deal for NHL coaches looking for players to plug into their lineup. The team that drafts him could be getting a two way center capable of roughly 20-35 points at the NHL level in his prime. In our Winter Rankings, Minten made the cut as an Honorable Mention. I like parts of Minten’s overall game, but I felt like his lower upside wasn’t enough to warrant a ranking in our top 64. With that being said, I do believe that Minten will play in the NHL someday. Teams are always looking for a steady presence in their bottom six and I feel that Minten could be one of those players that could be a call-up option for some teams if he isn’t a full-time NHL player.

Austin: My scouting process usually starts with a list of players that caught my eye the year prior and players that are highly ranked by Central Scouting. From there I tend to make notes of players I see who catch my eye and then circle back to them. Scouting Mats Lindgren and Matthew Seminoff early in the year Fraser Minten was a player who caught my eye. He caught my eye by his ability to generate turnovers and quickly give the puck to a teammate to turn into a scoring chance. Not to mention it doesn’t hurt I caught games when he was playing with Stankoven and his three point night against Calgary in early January. I originally pegged him as a very good third line player, but diving deep into him for this report I’d say that he’s more of a fringe 4th line player. His data isn’t terrible, but he plays a ‘very dump-and-chase and forecheck like hell’ type of game without NHL level puck skill or vision with the puck on his stick. He’s intriguing to me though. His July birthday and the flashes of how he adapts his game to high-end talent to thrive does warrant some optimism. However, I don’t see a projectable offensive game to the NHL and for that he probably falls within a 4th-6th pick for me.

I’m right with Austin as to where I’d consider drafting him. There are some projectable tools in his game, such as his defensive ability and his ability to consistently place himself in the high danger areas. This is a player that I’ve watched a lot this season due to the fact that he plays with Seminoff and Lindgren, and over time, I’ve soured a bit on him. I’ve gone from possible late second round pick to possible third round pick to top 150 pick over the course of the season. If I were a team with a handful of late round picks, I’d take a flyer on Minten. His skating can be improved and you can build on some of his offensive tools and turn him into a nice depth forward for your team. It’s likely that he won’t see the NHL for a while, though. I’d set his timeline at roughly five to six years.

Latest Update

March 5, 2022

stats from InStat and EliteProspects

Prospect report written by Matthew Somma. If you would like to follow Matthew on Twitter, his handle is @Mattsomma12.

Looking for other scouting reports? Check out the Prospects tab for our other scouting reports.

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Scouting Report: Adam Sýkora

Photo Credit: Tomas Kyselica / Hockey Slovakia

Scouting Report written by Josh Tessler

Adam Sýkora is a 2022 NHL Draft eligible prospect, who hails from Piešťany, Slovakia. He is one of the youngest draft eligible prospects as he is 8 days older than the cut-off. If he was born 8 days later, he would be one of the oldest 2023 NHL Draft eligible prospects. 

He plays for HK Nitra in the Slovakian Tipos Extraliga alongside fellow 2022 NHL Draft eligible prospect, Šimon Nemec. Sýkora’s home town of Piešťany is roughly a 45/50 minute drive north of Nitra. Sýkora had played youth hockey in his home town for SHK 37 Piešťany before making the move to Nitra. He has played U16, U18, U20 and at the Tipos Extraliga level for HK Nitra. In addition to his play with Nitra, he has played with Team Slovakia U18 and HK Levice at the 2. Hokejová liga (Slovak 2. Liga) level. 

In international play, Sýkora represented Slovakia at the 2021 Hlinka Gretzky Cup in Czechia and Slovakia. Sýkora was on the same squad as Dalibor Dvorsky, Juraj Slafkovský, Filip Mešár, Peter Repcik, Alex Čiernik, Ondrej Molnár and Šimon Nemec. That team dominated and proved to be a force to reckon with. In the championship game, the Slovakian squad was just out of gas after a tournament that had games on back-to-back-to-back days. But, they still had an outstanding showing and took home the silver medal. In five games at the Hlinka Gretzky, Sýkora netted two goals.

Sýkora’s father is Roman Sýkora, who currently serves as the Development Coach for Team Slovakia U18 and has served as a head coach in international play for Slovakia U17. In addition, Roman had played in WHL for the Tri-City Americans and in the BCHL for the Trail Smoke Eaters in 1997/1998, before returning home to Slovakia to play in the Tipos Extraliga for many years.

Player Profile

D.O.B – September 7, 2004
Nationality – Slovakia
Draft Eligibility – 2022
Height –5’10″
Weight –172 lbs
Position – Right Wing/Left Wing
Handedness – Left

Sýkora‘s Style Of Play

Offense

When entering into the offensive zone and he doesn’t have a clear passing lane or skating lane, he likes to do a dump and chase into the corner and see if he can leverage his speed to beat the attacker to the puck. 

When Sýkora is on the forecheck and going for loose pucks, if he has the clear advantage, he looks to hook the puck in to secure possession instead of leaving it more exposed right away. While Sýkora has really good speed on the forecheck, in tight puck battles, he will try to cut inside but sometimes struggles to cut in because he doesn’t have the weight / upper body strength to force his way in. In situations in which he is skating behind the rush, he will try to stick lift, but his stick lifting doesn’t do much to disrupt the attacker who is pushing the puck out of the zone. His reach is somewhat limited and thus he needs to be extremely close to the attacker to strip possession when lifting his stick.

Speaking of upper body strength, he needs to beef up his upper body strength to generate good slot presence when he is facing tight pressure and he is looking to grab open ice for himself. He likes to skate into the slot when he skating parallel to his puck carrying teammate, but will struggle immensely with carving out open ice for himself. Defenders will box him out. Sýkora needs to develop upper body strength to fend off those attempts to box him out and use that same strength to force his way in.

Sýkora has really good puck security and maintains control of the puck when down low in tight even when the attacker puts pressure on his back. Sýkora will cradle the puck towards him, pivot out of danger and then will deliver a quick pass to a teammate coming towards him with open ice. He is very good at quickly processing/scanning the ice in front of him and making quick adjustments. For instance, check out this clip of Sýkora cradling the puck through the legs of the attacker to open up ice for himself when the attacker extends his stick blade towards him. As soon as the attacker extends his stick blade, Sýkora knows exactly what to do.

When it comes to his production, he tends to generate a lot of rebound assists. He doesn’t generate a lot of passes to high or medium danger areas. When he has control of the puck, there are quite a few instances in which he generates open ice for himself along the half-wall by pivoting away from pressure, but instead of taking advantage of open lanes that lead to the slot. He will decide to pass to a teammate along the perimeter. If he has either an open skating lane to the slot or an open passing lane to the slot, he needs to take it. He has a far better chance of generating a quality scoring chance at net-front versus at the perimeter. 

When moving the puck through the offensive zone and he hits a roadblock in which he can’t get enough separation, he will look to place deceptive drop passes to try to keep the cycle alive and running. Sometimes he will look to complete a behind the back pass. He has good perception and knows when he has teammates are right behind him.

When it comes to his goal scoring ability, the majority of his goals have been scored at net-front when play is at 5v5. Per InStat (as of March 3, 2022), 32 of his 51 shots at even strength came from high danger and medium danger. He likes to shift the goaltender over and waits for the goaltender to expose his five hole. Sýkora also likes to wind-mill at net-front to distract the goaltender and cuts right and finds a gap to exploit at the crease. His presence in the slot has also led to deflection goals. 

When shooting from range, Sýkora needs to open up his stick blade to heighten his shot and push more weight above his knee to generate quality power for his shot. He lacks the power behind his shot to be dangerous from further out.

Defense

Sýkora will lower and widens his stance when defending. It allows him to take up as much space as possible and eliminate skating/passing lanes. He will lower himself when defending against puck movement between the perimeter and the blue line to try to take away space. Sýkora will do the same when he is defending in medium danger or in the slot and a puck carrying attacker skates closer in. By lowering his body to take as much as space up as possible, he forces an ill-advised shot as the attacker runs out of open ice. Not only does he widen and lower himself to eat away open ice, but he also does a good job of echoing the attackers movements at the point and forcing them to take an ill-advised shot and dump the puck to the corner. He has strong alignment to the puck carrying attacker.

If he sees an attacker looking to execute a pass through a certain passing lane that he can shut down, he will do so by extending his stick out and intercepting the pass. But, he doesn’t have lengthy reach, which means that he can only grab a hold of pucks if they aren’t far away from him. 

When looking to keep puck carrying attackers away from high danger areas, he leverages his active stick. Sýkora will extend his stick blade out towards high danger and manipulate attackers to pass back towards low danger.

Since he doesn’t possess the upper body strength to push past attackers, he typically waits for a slight gap to get to inside of the puck battle. If he gets to the inside of the puck battle, he has a far better chance to pick up possession and then he will look to complete a quick breakout pass.

When he is in control of the puck and is looking to create a breakout pass, he uses the space that he has. When facing tight pressure and he doesn’t have a ton of space, he will look to pass underneath the attacker’s stick (through the triangle) to a teammate who is skating into the neutral zone.

He will also look to pass the puck over the attacker’s stick when he had absolutely no room. Sýkora makes the decision quickly on the fly to pass over the attacker’s stick. 

Even if sometimes he can’t get the pass to the intended target and his pass doesn’t lead to a zone exit, I like that Sýkora attempts to pass underneath the triangle when he find a teammate in the lane. Sýkora knows that he doesn’t have the reach to create separation, so by passing underneath the triangle or above the triangle (stick), he has proven that he can still get out of pressure with ease.

While Sýkora doesn’t have strong reach and in situations in which he isn’t looking to pass, he will quickly identify when attackers position their stick blade towards the puck and then he quickly makes the decision to position the puck further out to make it a challenge for the attacker to strip the puck. 

Transitional Play

Sýkora is a dependable puck mover in the neutral zone. His lengthy stride and crossovers get him up through the zone with quality speed. 

When skating the neutral zone with the puck, sometimes he will struggle with stick-handling reachability and that leads to bobbled pucks. With that said, he has to implement puck manipulation to open up the necessary space for himself when facing aggressive pressure. Once he manipulates and generates open ice for himself, he will shift the puck to the far side before entering the offensive zone or before finding a passing lane. When shifting the puck to the far side, sometimes he choose to push the puck out further with one hand to create as much space as possible. Sometimes pushing the puck out with one hand will lead to quality shovel passes. 

Similarly to his play in the offensive zone, there are situations in which he doesn’t use the most ideal passing lanes when passing in the neutral zone. He needs to be more cautious when passing in the neutral zone. If he runs out of options towards the offensive zone blue line, then he should look to back to his defenders, but passing to his defenders shouldn’t be option number one. It should only be option number one if he is truly sandwiched and can’t get a pass off towards the offensive zone blue line or there is simply no one open.

When it comes to defending in the neutral zone, Sýkora will put on the jets in the neutral zone with lengthy skate extensions to win loose puck battles as he manufactured enough speed. In general, he does a good job of staying in position and staying toe to toe with the puck carrying attacker in the neutral zones. Even though he doesn’t possess the upper body strength needed to force his way in on loose puck battles, he can still match the speed of a decent amount of attackers and trap them along the boards in the neutral zone when the attacker nets possession of the loose puck. He will interchange crossovers amidst lengthy skate extensions to keep chugging along. 

Skating

Sýkora uses quality edges and crossovers that allow him to chugging along on the forecheck/backcheck and when looking to capture possession of loose pucks. He will leverage lengthy crossovers to generate the exact amount of speed that will allow him to stay toe to toe with the puck carrier. He will implement quality pivots when either trying to shift out of danger when he has control of the puck and when he has maintained good defensive positioning on the puck carrier and he has to react to the puck carrier pivoting out to try to escape him. In the offensive zone, Sýkora’s pivoting can buy him a bit of separation when he is along the boards and facing heavy traffic. He can shake off the tight pressure with a pivot and that nets him a few more seconds to find an open teammate to pass to when he doesn’t have much room to continue skating to the corner.

Sýkora will struggle with agility at times on his edges. It will impact his balance slightly and that hurts his mobility when going after loose pucks or on the forecheck/backcheck. He can be inconsistent with his edges as sometimes he won’t lean on them and sometimes he will. Leaning on his edges needs to be far more routine. He needs to lean on his edges to retain speed. When he doesn’t lean on his edges, he slows down his pace and he is more likely to get out of position in situations where he was following an attacking puck carrier. 

Sýkora implements lengthy skate extensions to try to keep up with oppositional puck movement and when he is driving up the ice with and without the puck. When he has control of the puck and is driving the rush himself, he can leverage his forward skate extensions to net the speed he needs to get into the offensive zone and away from pressure. He will use those same skate extensions to generate quality speed when going after loose pucks in all three zones.

Projection

I see Sýkora as a top nine contributor at the NHL level. 

If he can improve his upper body strength that will allow him to shove attackers out of the way, it will only increase his value. But, in Tipos Extraliga play, it has been clear that the lack of upper body strength has made it far more challenging for Sýkora to generate quality scoring chances. He will get pushed out of the slot easily and he struggles to net possession when facing heavier defenders in puck battles. His straight line speed makes him dangerous and is of great value when staying aligned with both puck carrying teammates and puck carrying attackers. If he can build up his strength for both slot presence and tight puck battles, he will be a pain to deal with. In addition, if he can fine tune his shot mechanics and work on identifying the best passing options in all three zones, his production will go up. 

Latest Update

March 3, 2022

stats from InStat and EliteProspects

Prospect report written by Josh Tessler. If you would like to follow Josh on Twitter, his handle is @JoshTessler_.

Looking for other scouting reports? Check out the Prospects tab for our other scouting reports.

Need a scouting report on a particular prospect, contact us today!

Scouting Report: Cutter Gauthier

Photo Credit: Rena Laverty

Scouting Report written by Paul Zuk

While the casual fan may have been focusing on the likes of Logan Cooley and Frank Nazar when it comes to American-born forward prospects for the 2022 NHL Draft, they may want to direct their attention to another US-born forward that’s eligible: Cutter Gauthier.

Gauthier was born in Skellefteå, Sweden where his father, Sean played pro hockey for the hometown team. Eventually, the Gauthier family moved back to Michigan, where Cutter began his youth hockey career for Honeybaked. Gauthier enjoyed a few successful seasons playing for Honeybaked’s AAA programs, even racking up 71 points in 84 games across all competitions in the 2018/19 season. Following one season with Compuware’s 16U AAA squad in 2019/20, Gauthier caught the eye of the NTDP.

Beginning in 2020/21, Gauthier had a very successful campaign with the U17’s, tallying 58 points in 76 games during USHL/NTDP play. He also earned a call up for the U18’s for one game but didn’t register a point. This season, Gauthier has been on a tear for the U18’s, scoring at over a point per game pace as of February 28th, including an impressive 41 goals in only 54 games.

For the 2022/23 season, Gauthier is committed to Boston College, where he’ll join former NTDP U18 forward Andre Gasseau (Boston Bruins prospect) and Chicago Steel blue liner Lukas Gustafsson. Arguably the headliner for BC’s forward class of 22/23, Gauthier will be leaned on to be a key contributor on offense. Not only will BC’s Head Coach Jerry York enjoy being able to utilize a player with Gauthier’s skillset anywhere throughout his lineup, but Gauthier will also benefit immensely from the experience.

Player Profile

D.O.B – January 19, 2004
Nationality – American
Draft Eligibility – 2022
Height –6’3″
Weight –194 lbs
Position – Center/Left Wing
Handedness – Left

Gauthier’s Style of Play

If you’re an NHL Scout or Front Office member and you’re looking for players who play a complete 200-foot game and be extremely effective regardless of where they slot into the lineup, look no further than NTDP forward Cutter Gauthier.

Gauthier’s ability to play a high paced, but at the same time relatively calm game is a trait which most teams will certainly appreciate, as he’s able to make the more challenging plays seem less stressful. He’s exceptionally talented with the puck on his stick, especially in the offensive zone.

There’s a certain level of physicality that a true “power-forward” brings with his game, and Gauthier is certainly capable of that. He’s able to consistently out-muscle attackers off the puck in the defensive zone, or he can force an offensive zone turnover for the opposing team by delivering a booming bodycheck.

Alternatively, Gauthier can utilize his frame to fend off opponents while attacking in the offensive zone with a high rate of success. Whether he’s driving towards the net with speed, or simply engaging in cycling the puck down low, he can make some very slick plays with minimal time and space.

If I had to choose a word to describe his overall game, an easy choice would be “versatile”. Gauthier’s ability to slide up and down the forward lines and not skip a beat, is a testament to how unique and mature of a game he really plays. Gauthier can be relied on to play in any situation, at any time of the game, and NTDP Head Coach Adam Nightingale knows exactly what he’s going to get out of him.

When you combine Gauthier’s ability to be physical in all three zones of the ice with his ridiculously impressive skills in the offensive zone, it gets you a player who is relatively hard to come by in the 2022 NHL Draft class.

Skating

Gauthier is surprisingly agile for a player of his size at 18 years old, as he can turn on a dime, with enough lower body strength and a powerful skating stride to get him up to high speed in only a few strides. When the puck is turned over in transition by the opponent, Gauthier can quickly switch direction and begin a rush up ice, seemingly never losing a step. Gauthier is also quite strong on his edges, and is incredibly difficult to knock him off balance, especially when he’s carrying the puck. 

Speaking of his skating stride, it’s one that embodies a lot of leg strength and power. Gauthier uses his long, powerful stride to effectively carry the puck out towards the boards when entering the offensive zone and maneuver his way around defenders to drive the net.

When it comes to quickness, Gauthier does have a decent amount of explosiveness. He’s able to combine the skating attributes mentioned above to generate breakaways for himself relatively regularly, which puts on display his quick feet and powerful first step.

Offense

While Gauthier is very talented in every zone on the ice, it’s his offensive ability which may draw the greatest number of eyes to his game. Gauthier plays the role of modern power-forward to a T and excels at using his speed and size to generate space in the offensive zone. Once he’s found space, he has no issue firing a puck on net from just about anywhere from the blue line in.

Speaking of his shot, it’s one of Gauthier’s best attributes to his overall game. Not only is it powerful and accurate for the most part, but he’s also able to get it off insanely quick. Gauthier tends to make goalies pay from multiple angles, but his bread and butter seems to be the left-side circle.

Gauthier’s ability to be deceptive while executing controlled zone entries is another positive aspect to his game. He can attack the offensive zone in a myriad of ways, usually combining his larger frame and quick feet to beat a defender out wide, or he can cut into the middle of the ice by stickhandling around the defending forwards and drawing opponents onto his person, allowing his teammates to enter the zone and set up.

One aspect of Gauthier’s game which has been noticeably impressive this season is his passing. Over the past couple of seasons, his film has shown he sees the ice very well and is capable to be an effective playmaker. However, this season has shown scouts just how talented of a passer he truly can be. It’s not uncommon to see Gauthier dish out 3-4 beautiful passes a game, with the potential for even more if he sees an abundance of powerplay time.  

Gauthier’s relentlessness when forechecking is another aspect of his game which causes nightmares for opposing defensemen. Not only does he use his size and strength to outmuscle defenders off the puck, but he’s also very hard to dispossess while attacking the net and below the goal line.

Defense

If there’s one thing the NDTP can pride themselves on, it’s the ability to develop their players into playing a very mature and responsible game in all three areas of the ice. Much like Winnipeg Jets 2021 Draft selection Chaz Lucius, he is extremely talented at defending his own zone when called upon, although it’s not necessarily the best aspect of his game.

Whether the U18’s are hemmed in their own zone by an attacking sequence from the opponents, or simply killing a penalty, Gauthier can anticipate where the play could be heading, and gets his stick/body in the passing lanes to disrupt the attack. Not only is he successful at defending the center of the D-zone, but he’s also dangerously good at covering the perimeter.

Gauthier has seen his special teams ice-time increase over the past season, as he’s currently averaging 2:10min/game on the penalty kill. He’s able to effectively neutralize any sort of seam passes with his active stick and isn’t afraid to put his body on the line to block a shot.  

Gauthier absolutely loves to engage in the physical aspect of defending when his opponents have the puck along the boards. He’s not one to shy away from making a huge hit along the half-wall, in which he can recover the puck and create some form of counterattack in the process.

Improvements

As with any prospect, there are areas of their game which they may look to improve on to boost their draft stock and likelihood of making it to the next level at some point in their career. Below are a couple of areas in which Gauthier may look to brush up on.

Gauthier may look to be a little more selective with where he shoots the puck. He seems to be willing to get the puck on target from just about anywhere, but there are times when his accuracy is off. For example, if he tries to get a shot on net from the goal line, there’s a fairly high risk the puck exits the offensive zone, killing any sort of attack the U18’s may be putting on an opponent.

Somewhat of a similar point to above, Gauthier likes to take risks on the ice, especially when trying to get creative with the puck on his stick in the offensive third of the ice. While it sure does look beautiful when one of the riskier plays works out, it’s the plays that lead to an unforced offensive zone turnover that drive coaches and scouts crazy. Gauthier may look to choose the safer play over the riskier play at times, which would not cost his team possession of the puck, while at the same time, prolonging the time they have the puck in the offensive zone.

Lastly, Gauthier has shown his shift-to-shift consistency can waver a little bit. That’s not to say it’s common for him to take shifts off, but it may be noticeable to some where he may not be going 110% every time he sets foot on the ice. While it’s quite common at this age and development level, it may be an aspect of Gauthier’s game he’ll look to develop further before making the jump to Boston College in the fall.

Overall Outlook

Although Gauthier does have the ability to play both left wing and center, his overall game may be suited more to a left-wing role at the next level. His ability to use his stride and his speed to break out wide and fly past defenders in the offensive zone.

This season has seen Gauthier suited to a predominantly left-wing role, which has allowed him to focus on being a little more offensively inclined, as his point totals and overall play in the O-zone has certainly showed.

Overall, there is a LOT to like about Gauthier’s entire game. He can be relied upon to get the job done in every single role he’s cast into and is certainly in the minds of his opponents whenever his skates touch the ice.

If he can simply fine tune some of the “rough around the edges” aspects to his game mentioned above, as well as continue his developmental path, he’ll be a force to be reckoned with in the not-so-distant future.

In terms of his draft position, teams with multiple first-round picks (ARI, BUF, MTL) may be hoping Gauthier is still on the board when their other selections are on the clock. Look for Gauthier to be a mid to late first-rounder this coming July.

Latest Update

March 2, 2022

stats from InStat and EliteProspects

Prospect report written by Paul Zuk. If you would like to follow Paul on Twitter, his handle is @paulzuk_81.

Looking for other scouting reports? Check out the Prospects tab for our other scouting reports.

Need a scouting report on a particular prospect, contact us today!

Smaht Talk: Welcome to the Hot Seat

On Episode #9, Smaht Scouting’s Josh Tessler is joined by Smaht Scouting’s USHL and OHL amateur scout Paul Zuk and they talk about quite a few players from both the OHL and USHL. Several players are discussed including Logan Cooley, Lane Hutson, Adam Ingram, Cole Spicer, Cole Knuble, Danny Zhilkin, Brennan Ali, Shane Wright, Christian Kyrou, Pavel Mintyukov and Sam Rinzel

The episode was recorded on February 23, 2022.

If you would like to listen to this episode, you can find an embedded link from SoundCloud below. Our podcast can also be found on iTunes, Spotify and Google Podcasts.

Scouting Report: Noah Warren

Photo Credit: Dominic Charette | Olympiques de Gatineau

Scouting Report written by Josh Tessler

Noah Warren is a 2022 NHL Draft eligible prospect, who hails from St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. St-Jean-sur-Richelieu is a suburb of Montréal, Quebec and is just east of Brossard, Quebec. 

Warren plays for the Gatineau Olympiques in the QMJHL (Quebec Major Junior Hockey League) and made his QMJHL debut during the 2020-2021 season. He had been selected by the Olympiques at 8th overall in the 2020 QMJHL Entry Draft. Warren was one of four first rounders that Gatineau selected. In addition to Warren, they drafted Tristan Luneau, Antonin Verreault and Samuel Savoie. 

Prior to joining the Olympiques last season, he played bantam hockey for the CCL Dynamiques AAA team and midget hockey for the Collège Charles-Lemoyne Riverains.

In February of 2021, Warren wrote a post that was published by Hockey Canada, in which he mentioned that as a Black male that he has faced racism on the ice. He explained that he wants to be involved in making hockey more diversified. In his post, Warren stated “But I’m motivated to do what I can to make the game a better place. To make it safer and more welcoming for everyone, regardless of the color of their skin. I want to follow in the footsteps of players like Anthony Duclair and P.K. Subban, and hopefully join in the work being done by the Hockey Diversity Alliance.”

Player Profile

D.O.B – July 15, 2004
Nationality – Canada
Draft Eligibility – 2022
Height –6’5″
Weight –214 lbs
Position – Defense
Handedness – Right

Warren’s Style Of Play

Offense

Before I dive in and break down Noah Warren’s offensive play, I want to explain that the offensive zone is typically not the zone that Warren consistent thrives in. The zone in which he is far more consistent in is his own zone. In the offensive zone, you will see Warren pinch up and get involved down low, but it is far from consistent. 

When he pinches up, he will open up passing lanes for teammates in the corner or across the slot to pass through. he identifies opponents who are puck watching, skates past them, cuts in front of the forward looking to cover him at the net, collects the puck off of a pass and scores. 

While Warren is a bit inconsistent with his pinching when he is looking to create passing lanes, he is rather consistent at pinching up to cause disruption. Warren will pinch up to blindside the attacking winger who is facing his defensemen with the puck and not paying attention to Warren nor the point. Warren does this to force the attacker to lose possession of the puck immediately after receiving it from the defenseman.

Warren will struggle to make quick decision passes and get the puck to a teammate. He doesn’t identify the best passing lane and thus draws tight pressure to him. When he has the puck and draws pressure, he isn’t the mobile type. He won’t pivot out and try to net open ice. Instead, he will attempt to take a shot from the point before the attacker takes away the shooting lane. With that said, Warren doesn’t have a great shot. Most shots go to the pads if they get on net and can be easily stopped. Simply, he doesn’t possess a lot of power behind his shot. His weight transfer doesn’t shift forward. In addition, he needs to work on skate placement when attempting a slap shot from range. Like golf, when you are aiming to connect with the puck or golf ball, your feet need to be pointed towards the desired direction. Warren will have his skates positioned towards the boards and that hurts his accuracy. In addition, he needs to be more selective in shot selection, if he has a man right on him, it’s not ideal to take a wrist shot and see if he can somehow get the puck through the lane. As stated above, he isn’t mobile enough to shift out of pressure and that means that he will struggle to open up ice for himself when facing tight pressure at the point. So, he is stuck and has to shoot or dump the puck to the corner.

When it comes to stick-handling, Warren has excellent upper body strength and that has been evident with his stick-handling reachability. Warren has really good reach that he can use if a loose puck is coming to him and he only notices at the last second.

Defense

Warren’s play in the defensive zone is where he truly shines. 

Warren centers his positioning if there are puck battles along the boards along the opposite half-wall. He implements good positioning down low and in the corner and will implement solid pressure when the attack is trying to cycle the rush but has their back turned to Warren. He looks to blindside them and trap them. When the attacking rush is skating up the other half-wall when entering into the offensive zone, Warren stays at centered ice and defends against the attacker skating towards the slot. 

Warren implements solid pressure against the half-wall, will sandwich attackers at the perimeter, but looks to take away lanes to the slot and force the attacker to work the boards when the oppositional rush enters the zone. He will look cut off the rush by throwing his weight. But, he doesn’t just use his weight to suppress pressure off the rush. Warren has strong net-front presence and if someone is looking to park themselves in front, Warren will throw his weight. He also uses his weight in the corners in puck battles to trap the oppositional cycle.

When he is defending multiple attackers in a 2-on-1 situation, Warren bends his knees, gets low and extends out his stick in front of his net. He doesn’t overcommit to one attacker in a 2-on-1, he stays centered and that allows him to use an active stick (extend his stick blade) and truly neutralize the situation. His stick blade extensions managed to silence the oppositional’s odd-man rush as he was able to use his reach to take away passing lanes. But, it isn’t just 2-on-1 situations in which Warren lowers himself. In most situations when Gatineau doesn’t have control of the puck, he looks to bend his knees and lower his body when defending to take up as much space as possible. After lowering himself, Warren manages to traps the puck carrier in the corner and then shoulder checks him.

As mentioned above when we discussed Warren’s defensive pressure on 2-on-1, Warren has excellent stick-handling reach and it allows him to extend his stick out to take up space in the defensive zone. When he gets face-to-face with an attacker skating along the line between medium and low danger, extends his stick out in front of his body to force play to stay on that line. His reachability can be used to trap attackers too when attackers are cycling the puck along the boards and can be used to take away passing lanes especially when implementing tight pressure on the puck carrier. That allows him to disrupt oppositional puck movement and he doesn’t have to be right at the attacker, he can be situated slightly further back. He will also use his stick-handling reach to match the attacker’s stick extensions as the attacker carries the puck towards the slot. Warren will put weight on the attacker when he is about to strike and then he steals possession of the puck.

One of the issues that Warren will struggle with in the defensive zone is generating enough speed to net defensive recoveries. There are instances in which he will trap puck carrying attackers, push into them and force pucks to be dumped into the corner. But, he lacks the speed to net control of that loose puck. He needs to work on a quality hop and lengthy skate extensions to power himself to the corner to grab the puck. He does have an advantage when it comes to reach, so if he can improve his acceleration, he will find far more success when going for loose pucks and dealing with oppositional pressure at the same time. 

When you look at Warren’s breakout passing ability, he does well when it comes to complete tape to tape feeds to teammates in his own zone. Warren looks for teammates towards the blue line and identifies passing quality passing lanes to use to get the puck to those teammates. His passes are smooth and easy for teammates to trap. While a decent amount of his breakout passing is tape to tape feeds, Warren does have the ability to complete bounce pass breakout passes that ricochet off the boards to a teammate further up in the defensive zone when Warren is facing an aggressive forecheck. In addition, he can rely on his reach to create passing lanes in the defensive zone should the forechecker extend his stick blade towards the puck when Warren is controlling the puck. The only type of pass that Warren seems to struggle with is stretch passing. He struggles with long range passing to his teammates in the neutral zone and it will lead to icing if his teammates can’t get their stick blade or shaft to touch the puck before it goes into the offensive zone. 

Transitional Play

When defending the rush in the neutral zone, Warren will look to skate into the rush and cut you off at the blue line. Warren will inch closer to the rush along the boards and when the rush gets to the Gatineau blue line, he will swivel his hips and shuts down the rush with a hip-check.

There was a game against the Drummondville Voltigeurs that I watched in which Warren was able to shut down one of the top QMJHL 2023 NHL Draft eligible prospects in Tyler Peddle. He managed to assert tight pressure on Tyler Peddle in the neutral zone to kill his rush attempts. Warren leaned in with his shoulder and manages to force Peddle to lose control of the puck. 

He will look to lean in with his weight in the neutral zone to slow attackers down if they are looking to go into the Gatineau zone for loose pucks before the attackers cross the Gatineau blue line.

When Warren is in control of the puck in the neutral zone, he will often end up dumping the puck into the offensive zone. As we mentioned in the offensive section, he lacks mobility and that means that when he runs into pressure that he can’t rely on his edges to peel away from pressure and that means that in a lot of cases that he runs out of room. So, he has no other option than to dump the puck to the corner.

Warren can rely on his reachability and use one hand to stick-handle towards the side that his attacker isn’t near to secure the puck. If he spots a teammate who is faster than he is and has the ability to get the puck to the offensive zone faster than Warren, he will then complete a shovel pass to that teammate.

Skating

Warren skates well for a player of his frame. He constantly has his knees bent and has good ankle flexion. 

He does have solid lengthy crossovers that he can rely on to build acceleration, but he does need to work on incorporating more crossovers into his forward skating to net more acceleration. When typically skating forward, he will rely on a few crossovers when pushing off, but then quickly swap to average length skate extensions. Unfortunately, his skate extensions don’t help him muster the speed that he needs to hunt for loose pucks. But, if he is in a tight puck battle, he has shown that he can rely on his reach to grab a hold of the puck before the attack does. He can also leverage his upper body strength to cut to the inside when engaged in a loose puck battle. However, if he can adopt a power stride and add more crossovers into his forward skating, it will only make him faster to loose pucks and he won’t have to rely on his reach to grab a hold of pucks. With additional speed, he can get to the puck cleanly and not have to deal with heavy pressure.

As mentioned a few times now, he isn’t a mobile skater when he is in control of the puck. He doesn’t have the mobility to create space for himself and there are times where his outside edges fail him when he is trying to capture possession of a loose puck and he has to pivot to grab a hold of the loose puck.

When he doesn’t have the puck and is defending, he seems to be a stronger on his edges when reacting to puck movement. He rotates his hips well and deploys quality inside edges with his knees bent when defending against an attacker that pivots to try to draw Warren off guard. 

Projection

If Warren’s pinching in the offensive zone can become more consistent and he looks to create passing lanes more and more down low, his offensive upside potential will go up. But, he hasn’t shown to be overly consistent in that regard. His mobility and straight line speed needs to improve as well to shift around pressure to pick up possession of loose pucks. He can bail himself out with his reach, but increasing his speed will allow him to pick up pucks without much pressure. If he can work his mobility, he can become far more elusive and dodge pressure instead of dumping pucks in and hoping that teammates can regain control. Warren does have the fundamentals and the talent to at least be a defensive defenseman in the NHL. Most likely a third pairing defenseman. But, if he can improve his skating, mobility and his shot, he could be a contender for a second pairing role in the NHL. 

Latest Update

February 26, 2022

stats from InStat and EliteProspects

Prospect report written by Josh Tessler. If you would like to follow Josh on Twitter, his handle is @JoshTessler_.

Looking for other scouting reports? Check out the Prospects tab for our other scouting reports.

Need a scouting report on a particular prospect, contact us today!

Scouting Report: Lane Hutson

Photo Credit: Rena Laverty

Scouting Report written by Josh Tessler

Lane Hutson is a 2022 NHL Draft eligible prospect, who hails from Chicago, Illinois. Hutson’s father, Rob Hutson played NCAA hockey for the University of Illinois-Chicago in the 1990s and is currently an assistant coach for the North Jersey Avalanche 16U AAA. Rob was previously a video scout for the Arizona Coyotes and served as head coach for both, Team Illinois and Barrington High School’s varsity team. Lane has two brothers, Quinn and Cole. Quinn plays for the USHL’s Muskegon Lumberjacks and a Boston University commit. Cole plays for the North Jersey Avalanche 16U AAA club and is a 2024 NHL Draft eligible prospect. 

Hutson currently plays for the US National Team Development Program (USNTDP) and is a Boston University commit. Before joining the USNTDP, he played for Team Illinois 13U AAA, Honeybaked 14U AAA and North Jersey Avalanche 16U AAA.

Hutson is slated to join Boston University for the 2023-2024 season. Interestingly enough by that point, Domenick Fensore (Carolina Hurricanes prospect), who has a similar body frame to Huston, will have just completed his senior year. Fensore is currently a junior. This is pure speculation, but I believe that the intent is to have Hutson essentially take Fensore’s spot when he is ready to make the jump to the AHL and/or NHL. Fensore’s development has gone according to plan and he’s become a far more efficient defender in all three zones at BU. BU head coach Albie O’Connell and his coaching staff have worked hard to get Fensore ready for the next step. I’m confident in their ability to develop Hutson, who plays a similar game to Fensore and has a similar build (as mentioned above). 

Player Profile

D.O.B – February 14, 2004
Nationality – USA
Draft Eligibility – 2022
Height –5’8″
Weight –148 lbs
Position – Defense
Handedness – Left

Hutson’s Style Of Play

Offense

Hutson is a very mobile shifty defenseman and he truly uses that to his advantage in the offensive zone. He uses his mobility to shift around attackers, get open ice, get closer towards the slot and attempt a pass to medium or high danger.

Hutson will use the same shiftiness on the blue line to get away from tight pressure.

Not only is Hutson shifty with his mobility, but he will also use body language and shrug his shoulders when trying to fake out the attacker right before he shifts around the attacker.

Hutson likes to use slap shot fakes on the power play to try to garner some more open ice for himself when working along the blue line. If he can confuse the attacker, that allows him to pivot out and grab some open ice to make a quick pass before the attacker manages to catch back up to him. 

As stated above, Hutson will pinch up with the puck and attempt to pass the puck down the boards to his teammate behind the net in the offensive zone. Will pinch up when he sees loose pucks coming down the boards and he has an opportunity to get to the puck before his attackers do to in order to keep the NTDP offensive zone play alive. 

There are times where he needs to be slightly more cautious as he will get caught up too high in the offensive zone, puck possession is given up and he is too far up which leaves his defensive partner in the lurch. The defender then has to solely handle the responsibilities of defending against the oppositional breakout.  

When it comes to puck possession and maintaining puck possession, Hutson uses his mobility to keep a tight hold on the puck. If pressure is coming for him, he will turn his back to the pressure and position the puck in front of his body. Essentially he uses his back as a barrier or a shield to make it a challenge for the attacker to strip possession of the puck. He does this because he doesn’t have the upper body strength to push the puck far enough to the side. So, he will turn his back to the attacker to make sure that he can hold onto the puck. Sometimes, he has some tricks up his sleeve to get away from pressure. Check out this clip of Hutson lobbing the puck above that attacker’s stick and then recaptures possession of the puck. Awesome move to dance around pressure.

Hutson is a quality puck distributor in the offensive zone. He has soft and quick hands. If he sees a gap and a teammate at net-front, he will exploit it and wire a crisp pass to his teammate. But, that doesn’t mean that he just sits back at the blue line and waits for opportunities. As mentioned above, he jumps up and skates down low. Hutson will skate up from the point to behind the net and try passes to medium danger or net front. If he is skating and sees that he has a passing option without going behind the red line, he doesn’t overthink it. He takes that lane and takes it quickly. That has led to quality cross ice feeds to open forwards. In those situations where he has an attacker directly on him in the offensive zone past the perimeter (towards the slot), he will try behind the back passes to a teammate. He doesn’t have any more room to exploit, so a behind the back pass to a teammate is a good attempt by Hutson to keep the cycle alive.

If you look at Hutson’s shot under a microscope, it is the area of his offensive game that needs the most development. His mechanics need to be rounded out slightly more. Ideally, he should be shifting more weight over the knee when attempting a shot and occasionally his wind-up is a bit too long. I’ve seen slight improvements over the course of the season and he managed to score a beautiful top shelf wrist shot goal against Madison in January. But, he simply isn’t consistent in deploying quality shot mechanics that would elevate his shot. Hopefully, we continue to see Hutson growing his shot. Given his mobility and shiftiness, if he can cut down on his wind-up a tad, he will have another weapon to utilize if he can’t find a passing lane after shifting around an attacker.

Defense

In the defensive zone, Hutson implements quality pressure to keep the attack in medium and low danger areas. Hutson has excellent gap control along the boards when defending the rush. He knows which lane to take to force you to stay in low danger and gets right in your face. He will stand in the puck carrier’s way. Keep him against the boards. Force the direction of puck movement and be in position to net interceptions when the attacker attempts to pass along the boards. If he can’t shut down puck movement, he will still stay rather tight in his pressure and extends his stick blade out to ensure that the attacker doesn’t have the ability to cut around him. 

Hutson has good reaction timing when he is in the slot and sees an attacker getting ready to take a medium danger shot. He drops to the ice just in time to block the shot. If the attack is coming down the left lane and he is in the slot with another attacker, Hutson turns towards his goaltender at the precise second that the attacker with the puck looks to pass to his teammate in the slot and then he extends his stick out to make it difficult for the attackers to complete the pass. 

From a positional stand point, Hutson reads his defensive partner’s movements well. If he sees that his typical partner, Ryan Chesley is working behind the red line, he stays aligned with Chesley but on the other side of the red line to offer a passing lane. 

The one area of his defending that needs to improve the most is his defending in 2 on 1 situations. He needs to center himself between two attackers when defending on a 2 on 1 in the defensive zone. Instead, he will try to commit to one attacker or will lower his body, lie down on the ice and look to take away a passing lane with his body. If he lies down on the ice and the attacker who has the puck is quick with puck movement, he can shift around Hutson with ease.

When he is in control of the puck, but has an attacker on him, he skates in one direction and at a moments notice he pivots and the attacker loses pace. By doing so, Hutson carves out open ice for himself to exit the defensive zone and kick off the rush. He is constantly taking a deceptive approach with puck movement. Hutson will deceptively place drop passes to teammates, but it will seem so synchronized and routine that the attacker just doesn’t spot it. Hutson is quick with his decision making and that allows him to be rather elusive with the puck. In situations in which he draws a forechecker in front of his own net and he is behind his net, he’ll look to shake them off with pivots, generate open ice, skate out from behind the net and complete a stretch pass to an open forward in the neutral zone.

When Hutson is looking to create a quality rush for the NTDP, he will look to pass the puck over skating into the neutral zone with possession of the puck. Hutson can deliver quality crisp zone exit diagonal passes. He will attempt saucer passes into the neutral zone. But, his bread and butter is the stretch pass. In every single NTDP game, Hutson will complete a number of stretch passes. He spots a forward close to the offensive zone blue line and slings a well-timed pass to him. Hutson uses vision to pin-point open teammates and more often then not successfully kicks off the rush with a quality breakout pass.

While he does do extremely well with breakout passing, he will struggle to get a pass off quickly enough when facing a more dominant physically gifted attacker along the boards. For instance, he struggled quite a bit against Lake Superior State and other NCAA competition with his breakout passes. While Hutson is rather mobile and has the ability to shift around attackers, in situations in which he is facing bigger competitors, he doesn’t have the stick-handling reach in order to push the puck around the attack. So, when he isn’t quick enough with his mobility to shift around the attack, he gets sandwiched and turns over the puck because he can’t rely on reach to push the puck further out from the attack. 

Transitional Play

Hutson does a good job of quickly moving back into the neutral zone when he sees that the attackers are about to create a zone exit. When choosing who to defend against, Hutson focuses on the forward who is the furthest up in the neutral zone. Hutson is well aligned to the attacker, keeps pace when skating backwards and facing the rush. Sometimes, he will struggle with his acceleration when skating backwards, but he can make up for it with his shiftiness and excellent forward skate extensions to be aligned to the attacker.

Hutson won’t move the puck controlled from zone to zone that much. Instead if he is in the neutral zone with the puck, he is looking to identify a forward closer up to the offensive zone blue line and then wire a pass to him. 

I’m going to continue to rave about his passing. We aren’t done yet! His passing is so crisp. He can execute quality turn and cross ice feeds in the neutral zone to teammates at the offensive zone blue line. He can fire excellent passes from the edge of the blue line to a teammate on the opposite side of the ice at the offensive zone blue line. 

Hutson has the problem solver gene in his DNA. He won’t force himself into pressure in which he can’t dodge. So, he uses good pivots and turns that allows him to double back in the neutral zone when he runs into traffic. He will double back and completes a zone exit pass from the defensive zone to his winger on the far side. Hutson passes to far side as most of the attention had been turned to him. In situations in which one forward is being trapped by multiple attackers, he will pivot and try the other winger on the other side of the offensive zone blue line. 

Skating

Hutson has excellent posture. His knees are always bent. Good ankle flexion. He has lengthy straight line skate extensions. If he is slightly out of position and has to shift over from far half-wall in the neutral zone to the other half-wall in the defensive zone, he has excellent stride extension length to garner the necessary speed that the needs to catch up to the attacker who is vying with him for the loose puck in the defensive zone. In general, Hutson will generate quite a bit of speed with his extensions and that allows him to be rather quick on puck retrievals.

His backwards speed needs to be further developed, but I am content with his mobility and ability to hop into a forward stride nicely. His forward extensions can generate the speed he needs to have to be a defensive menace. Hutson knows when he skating backwards if he won’t be able to contend with the attacker’s speed. Then, he shifts to skating forwards.

I saved the best for last. 

Hutson has excellent mobility and its a credit to his crossovers and edge work. He can generate open space for himself and shake off attackers with his mobility. Good outside edges when doubling back in the neutral zone as he had ran into traffic the neutral zone and looks to double back to find an open teammate on the opposite side. Good inside edges to pivot out of pressure along the blue line. Hutson does a good job of leaning on his edges when turning his body to react to puck movement. By leaning on his edges, it allows him to retain speed and that makes him far more likely to generate open ice for himself.  

Projection

Lane Hutson will be a fun addition to your blue line. He is the kind of guy, who will be extremely fun to watch in all situations. 5v5 and on the power play. His mobility and soft passes make him an effective puck distributor and he will rack up assists. Defensively, he gives you solid gap control and keeps you in low danger with an active stick. I project Hutson as a second pairing defenseman at the NHL level.

Latest Update

February 18, 2022

stats from InStat and EliteProspects

Prospect report written by Josh Tessler. If you would like to follow Josh on Twitter, his handle is @JoshTessler_.

Looking for other scouting reports? Check out the Prospects tab for our other scouting reports.

Need a scouting report on a particular prospect, contact us today!

Scouting Report: Owen Pickering

Photo Credit: Keith Hershmiller / Swift Current Broncos

Scouting Report written by Matthew Somma

Any time I’ve watched Owen Pickering this season, I’ve been blown away by the pace he can play at given the fact that he’s 6’4″ and just starting to get used to his frame. There’s legitimate upside in his game, too. Pickering can see the ice better than most defensemen his size and his play in transition leads me to believe that he can play in the modern NHL. That being said, he’s raw in a lot of areas and will need a lot of polishing before he can earn a consistent NHL role. The overall uncertainty about his game led myself and the rest of the Smaht crew to rank Pickering 50th in our Winter Rankings. There’s plenty of room for him to move up, especially if he continues to develop over the course of the final months of the season.

Pickering has the potential to become one of the best defensemen out of the WHL in this draft class. He’s just starting to put the pieces together and figure out how to be an effective puck mover and defender at his size, and while there can be hiccups, the prospect of what Pickering can become is going to entice NHL teams. To me, Pickering is one of the biggest “what if” players in this draft class, and I’ll be highlighting those “what if” areas in this report.

Player Profile

D.O.B – January 27, 2004
Nationality – Canada
Draft Eligibility – 2022
Height –6’4″
Weight –179 lbs
Position – Defense
Handedness – Left

Pickering’s Style of Play

As I mentioned earlier, the defining trait in Pickering’s game is his skating. His straight line speed allows for him to carry the puck out of the zone and initiate a breakout at a fast pace. His stride is unlike most of the players I’ve watched in the past. He’ll get up to speed and will occasionally stop moving his feet for a split second. Then, he winds back up with a few strides and he’s able to move through the neutral zone with ease. His speed never changes, but it’s fascinating to watch. Here’s a rush on the power play.

And here’s an example of how he can carry the puck at even strength. His stride is clean and it doesn’t take him very long to get up to top speed.

Pickering does tend to glide, especially when carrying the puck into the offensive zone. He loses a lot of his momentum with the puck and needs to work to get that momentum back, which can lead to turnovers or rushed decisions. You can see it towards the tail end of this clip. He stops moving his feet on two occasions and moves his feet to reestablish the momentum that he lost in that split second of hesitation.

Pickering’s turns can be a little choppy and his backwards skating could use some refinement, but these appear to be due to Pickering adjusting to his height. A lot of taller defensemen have what I’d call “giraffe legs,” where they have a bit of a wonky stride due to the length of their legs. Pickering has those same issues, and a lot are able to be worked out of his game after time with an NHL skating coach. Right now, I’d consider Pickering’s skating to be above average. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, especially with his backwards skating. Pickering can get burned when matched up against quicker forwards because his backwards skating is nowhere near as strong as his forward skating is. I’ve noticed improvements throughout the season, and once again, NHL skating coaches can help Pickering improve in that regard.

Throughout the year, I’ve been up and down on Pickering’s game. Most nights, he’ll make some great plays with the puck on this stick, have some fantastic reads in the defensive zone and be a consistent threat. But he’ll also have those moments where you see the raw aspects of his game start to make their presence known. Those can derail some of his shifts, so I’ve grown to call Pickering a “Jekyll and Hyde” type player. I’ve noticed that there are two areas of his game that can be great one moment and not as great the next: puck skills/passing and defensive awareness.

First, let’s talk about the good parts of Pickering’s puck skills and passing. A lot of the time, he’s a confident puck carrier that sees the ice well. He spots open areas of ice to thread a pass to and can usually do so without the opposition picking up on what he’s trying to do. Pickering isn’t limited to simple passes and I appreciate that he actively seeks to thread passes through a defender or two. His success rate on those is still a little iffy, but as he grows more confident in his abilities, there’s a good chance that he’ll see improvement in that regard. I’ve seen Pickering protect the puck when pressured and moving the puck to a teammate if he cannot press on further down the ice. A lot of the time, Pickering will take the safest option. It’s not always the most exciting option, but I appreciate a player that knows what the safest option is. As a fan of a team whose defense made many, many errant passes in front of their own net in the early 2010s, sometimes it’s nice to see a safer pass.

Take a look at this pass, for example.

Pickering receives a pass and immediately looks up the ice after he notices that they’ve caught Edmonton making a bad change. Then, he makes a great stretch pass to a teammate for a primary assist. It’s a great play.

Now, the good in his defensive positioning. I’ve noticed that Pickering once again leans heavily on what he believes to be the safest position. He’ll try to battle in front of the net and move a player out of the way, he’ll put his stick in passing and shooting lanes and he’ll move to intercept a pass if he sees an opportunity. There are shifts where he’ll think two or three steps ahead of the opposition and time his movements perfectly, moving at the right time to block a shot or intercept a pass. He’ll safely move the puck out of harm’s way, nullifying potential scoring chance and changing possession. There’s also the fact that Pickering is a great stick checker and has an active stick in the defensive zone. He’ll disrupt passes and rushes using his stick, changing possession and getting in the way of the opponent’s rhythm in the offensive zone. Pickering relies heavily on his stick in the defensive zone due to the fact that he’s only average in puck battles. A lot of this is due to the fact that Pickering is still filling out. He’s 179 pounds according to Elite Prospects, which is light for a defenseman his height. Once he adds about 10-15 pounds to his frame, he’ll win more puck battles and improve in that aspect in the defensive zone. Here’s an example of Pickering being too reliant on his stick in the defensive zone.

Pickering freezes here and attempts a poke check much too late. It’s a tough play because you can see where he hesitates to play the body and instead decides to use the poke check.

Before I get into the bad, I feel that I should say that every time I watch Pickering, I can tell that he knows what he needs to do in each situation. The problem is that his execution is off. The fact that he is smart enough to know what to do in these situations leads me to believe that a lot of the problems I have with his game will slowly disappear as he continues to develop. Last year, Pickering played in 23 WHL games, just over a third of what he would have played in a normal season. Had Pickering played in a normal year, one would imagine that he would be further along in his development than he is now.

So, let’s talk about Pickering’s execution of his passes. It’s the crux of his issues in transition. Often times, he’ll initiate a rush up the ice and will look to dish the puck off to his wingers. He’ll either connect, miss the player entirely, or make a slow pass that’s easy for an opponent to intercept. Those turnovers can frustrate the hell out of you because you can see that his intentions are good and that the decision he makes is the right one. Again, it boils down to the fact that Pickering is in the early stages of his development. Those passes are costly now, but once he grows more confident he’ll make less of those mistakes.

The same can be said for Pickering in the defensive zone. Often, I notice that he’s at least considering attacking the puck, but he either prefers to play it safe or he decides to push a split second too late, resulting in him getting caught out of position. Swift Current as a whole is prone to defensive mistakes since they’re such a young team, but it doesn’t excuse Pickering’s defensive lapses.

I would argue that Pickering’s hockey sense is above average. Sure, he makes mistakes and can have some moments where you question his decision making. That happens with most players. What stands out to me is that more often than not, Pickering knows what to do in all three zones. He reads the play well and can usually react accordingly. Those mistakes can be worked out of his game as he gets older. I’d much rather have him struggle with mistakes in execution rather than mistakes on the mental side of the game. Physical mistakes are a lot easier to correct.

The final aspect of Pickering’s game that stands out is his shot. Pickering has a booming shot that is utilized both as a scoring and playmaking option. That’s when I find him to be at his best in the offensive zone. He’ll shoot low to the ice and create a rebound for one of his teammates to put in the back of the net. Pickering can unleash some absolute scorchers, though. Out of the defensemen I’ve watched this season, Pickering’s shot stands out as the best. It’s not the end all be all to his game, but it’s a nice asset that allows for Pickering to be a more effective player in the offensive zone.

Projection

Had Pickering gotten the opportunity to play in a full season last year, it’s possible that his game would be a little more refined. As it stands right now, however, he’s a raw prospect with a lot of potential. Admittedly, we were harsh on Pickering in our Winter Rankings. Pickering’s passing is a major concern, causing me to be more cautious of ranking him too high on our board. It’s my belief that, in order to be a top defenseman in the NHL today, defensemen have to be able to move the puck in transition and in the offensive zone. I get glimpses of that from Pickering, but nothing on a consistent basis. That and his average defensive zone play have me worried about his odds of becoming an NHL player.

Still, it’s unfair to talk about the bad aspects of Pickering’s game without also acknowledging that most, if not all of these areas are teachable. Pickering can be molded into a top four defenseman capable of seeing time on a power play unit and, with enough development, maybe even the penalty kill. I mentioned at the beginning of this report that Pickering was one of the biggest “what if” players in this draft class, and it’s true. What if he becomes a better passer? What if he becomes a dominant force in transition? What if Pickering becomes an elite two way defender? All of these are possible when you look at his current skill set. It’s going to take the right team and the right development path for Pickering to get to that point, though.

Teams should avoid trying to turn Pickering into a shutdown or stay at home defender. That’s not how he plays, and he’ll plateau in the minors if that happens. The team that will get the most out of Pickering is the team that lets him continue to move the puck in transition and quarterback a power play unit. Keep teaching him defensive responsibility and work with him on his passing and you’ll reap the rewards in four to five years.

So, what does Pickering’s projection look like? I see a 4+ year timeline to the NHL. At his peak, Pickering can be a top four defenseman seeing power play time for an NHL team, providing solid two way play and roughly 30-40 points. This timeline is contingent on Pickering improving on his passing and defensive positioning while climbing the ranks in the pros, however. It’s a good reminder that development isn’t linear. If a player is drafted in the top 50, it doesn’t mean that they need to be ready for the NHL immediately after juniors or after one pro season. Sometimes, it takes more time than that. Pickering’s development will be a slow cook but the team that drafts him will be very glad they waited.

Latest Update

February 9, 2022

stats from InStat and EliteProspects

Prospect report written by Matthew Somma. If you would like to follow Matthew on Twitter, his handle is @Mattsomma12.

Looking for other scouting reports? Check out the Prospects tab for our other scouting reports.

Need a scouting report on a particular prospect, contact us today!

Scouting Report: Isaac Howard

Photo Credit: Rena Laverty

Scouting Report written by Josh Tessler

Isaac Howard is an American 2022 NHL Draft eligible prospect and he hails from Hudson, Wisconsin. For those unfamiliar with Wisconsin, Hudson sits on the Minnesota/Wisconsin state line and is a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul. 

Howard’s older brother, Anthony Howard is a former goaltender, who played high school hockey for their hometown high school, Hudson High School. Anthony won the Kirk Daubenspeck Award / USHS – Wisconsin Best Goaltender Award for his play in the 2016-2017 season. 

Before joining the USNTDP U17 squad in 2020, he played prep school hockey for Shattuck St. Mary’s and played U15 hockey for MN Kings 15U AAA squad in the Minnesota Bantam Elite League 15U. Throughout his time with the MN Kings 15U AAA and at Shattuck St. Mary’s, he played alongside current USNTDP teammate Ryan Chesley.

Last season (2020-2021), Howard was the second highest point producer for the USNTDP U17 team. His teammate Frank Nazar had slightly higher production rates. This season, Howard again is one of the top producers for the USNTDP, but this time he is on the U18 squad. Howard, Nazar, Jimmy Snuggerud and Logan Cooley all have high point totals and have been instrumental in the USNTDP U18’s success this season.

Howard is committed to the University of Minnesota-Duluth and will be joining the Bulldogs next season (2022-2023). 

Should he choose to go play in the CHL (Canadian Hockey League) at any point, he would report to the OHL’s (Ontario Hockey League) Owen Sound Attack. The Owen Sound Attack obtained his CHL rights when they selected him in the fifth round of the 2020 OHL Priority Selection draft. 

Player Profile

D.O.B – March 30, 2004
Nationality – USA
Draft Eligibility – 2022
Height –5’10
Weight –183 lbs
Position – Left Wing
Handedness – Left

Howard’s Style Of Play

Offense

When you look at Howard’s puck movement in the offensive zone, he appears to be very inconsistent with puck control. There are tools in the toolbox that he uses every now and then to create space for himself, but he doesn’t always use those tools. With that said, Howard has the ability to be slippery and deceptive with his puck movements. There are situations in which he will appear as if he is looking to take a wrist shot from the perimeter, fakes out the defender and then cuts to the net. Howard has quick hands that allows him to adapt well to pressure and that allows him to claim open ice quickly after being deceptive. But, he does struggle with consistency as mentioned earlier. When pivoting on the fly, in the offensive zone, he will struggle to retain control of the puck. He typically plays the puck closer to his body and doesn’t extend the puck further out. The puck control and reachability issues hurt his ability to swing the puck from left to right around defenders. There have been plenty of sequences in which Howard is facing a defender dead on and simply can’t shift the puck far enough to cut around pressure. His lack of reachability isn’t only present when controlling the puck, but it also present when he looks to gain control of loose pucks. He has a limited wingspan and his reach doesn’t allow him to net possession of pucks that are slightly further out from his body. That also means that when passes are coming slightly wide of him, Howard’s reach prohibits him from trapping possession of the puck. Howard seems to be well aware of his puck control issues and tends to find open ice in the slot instead of cycling the puck himself. Usually, he is paired with Frank Nazar and Logan Cooley. Both, Nazar and Cooley are stronger at puck control and stick-handling then Howard, so it makes sense that Howard is instead looking to find an open ice to set up Nazar and/or Cooley with passing lanes to high danger.

From a positioning perspective, Howard likes to go to the low slot and once he has open ice, he then communicates with his teammate by raising his stick. The goal is to generate one-timer passing opportunities for his teammates to exploit. Howard does a good job of identifying where the attack is and if they are puck watching. If he sees that attacker are paying attention down low or puck watching one of Howard’s teammates, he will react quickly, skate to the slot and find unattended ice. For instance, check out this clip from a game against the Madison Capitols on January 22, 2022, in which he observed that the defenders were not paying attention to Howard’s movements and thus he captures open ice towards the net and scores on a quality cross ice pass. 

While this might seem like small potatoes, it isn’t. I’m quite impressed that he was able to pick up on facial cues and at that moment he quickly decided to skate up and net open ice for himself. Not every draft eligible prospect does that. 

But, in general, Howard looks to create passing lanes in medium danger for his teammates who are behind the red line, in the corner or stuck in puck battles along the half-wall. He likes to position himself further back past the last defender to have as much open as possible and ultimately that keeps the goaltender on his toes as when Howard receives the puck from a teammate, it’s just the goaltender and him.

Howard is a very quick decision maker. Once he receives the puck, he doesn’t hold onto it for way too long. However, there are plenty of shifts where his quick decision making leads to turnovers. Howard will struggle with identifying teammates and passing lanes. But, it is more than that. He will struggle at reading the route / path that his teammates are taking and thus will miss the mark when attempting a pass. Howard will mistime cross ice passes and will send passes that go slightly behind or wide of intended target. From a pure vision standpoint, there are plenty of pass attempts in which he had no teammate in the vicinity, but still attempted a pass. For instance, I’ve seen him attempt a pass when he had an attacker keeping him at bay along the boards. Instead, of targeting a teammate, the puck went right to the attacker and bounced off of the attacker’s skate. 

Even though there are issues with mistiming passes, Howard is constantly looking to attempt dangerous passes. If he spots a teammate in the slot and he has the puck beyond the perimeter, he will attempt to pass to the teammate in the slot. He knows that his teammate has a far better chance of generating a scoring chance based on his positioning than him when he has at the perimeter. If he doesn’t have a teammate in the slot, but has a teammate in medium danger, you can expect him to deliver passes to his teammates in medium danger. Howard knows that it is all about where he is on the ice in comparison to where his teammates are. Even if his teammates aren’t in the slot and are in medium danger, they are still closer to net-front then he is.

We will touch on his forechecking in a bit, but one of the things that makes Howard so appealing is his ability to jump on loose pucks behind the net, get himself in position behind the opposing net and then attempt passes to the slot. As mentioned above, he loves getting pucks to the slot and his forechecking allows him to do so.

In situations where he is the F1 and carries the puck into the zone, but doesn’t have a clear skating lane to exploit. You will see him shift laterally over to one direction once he has entered the zone to buy time for his F2 to enter the offensive zone. Once his F2 has entered into the offensive zone, he will look to complete drop passes to get the puck to his teammate and then skate towards the slot to net open ice and a passing lane for the F2 to utilize. 

When it comes to Howard’s shot, he prefers quick shot. He doesn’t like to hold onto the puck for long and thus he looks at create a lot of one-timer opportunities. With that said, Howard does struggle when following through on his one-timer. He will struggle with his one-timers no matter where he is in the offensive zone. There have been opportunities where he sets himself up backdoor at net-front and cant connect on a one-timer feed that came right to him. There have also been plenty of one-timer opportunities from range in which he struggles with. 

On routine wrist and snap shots from range, Howard will struggle to raise his shots from range. There will be shot attempts where he struggles to get enough height on his shot and goaltenders nab the puck with their glove cleanly. But, then Howard will scored long range bar down goals. Ultimately, when you look at his shot mechanics there are reasons why he struggles with accuracy. For instance, he needs to work on his weight transfer. On quite a few shots from range, Howard struggles to push his body over his knee for maximum power. Howard also needs to work on where his stick blade is in comparison to the net. If his stick blade aligns with the net, then he has far better chance of getting a quality shot on net. But, there are plenty of situations in which he is preparing to take a shot but the stick blade isn’t aligned with the net and thus his accuracy is off.

Howard has good presence on the forecheck. The Wisconsin native uses his speed to bolster his forechecking game. He keeps good pace on the puck carrier and uses quality crossovers to keep his motor running. Off the draw, he will jump up/hop up and extend out his stick blade to force the attacker to lose possession of the puck, pushes the puck towards the boards behind the red line, skates to the puck and attempts a pass to the slot. If he is hunting from a loose puck in the corner and skating toe to toe with the attacker, he goes for the inside lane, pushes the attacker out, but he doesn’t forget that the attacker has good presence on him, so he does a backhand tap pass to a teammate coming down towards the corner. He does so to keep the cycle alive. When engaging in a puck battle in which the attacker his possession of the puck, he will extend his stick blade out when he sees that the attacker has pushed the puck all the way to his limit. If he is skating from behind on the forecheck, Howard will try to stick lift attacker’s legs to disrupt them when skating from behind on the forecheck. 

Generally speaking, he isn’t a physical guy, but he will lay a hit if he has kept good pace and he can follow through on the check. If he does go in for a check, he likes to lean on shoulder checks.

Defense

In the defensive zone, he drops to the face-off hash marks when the puck is being moved about down low. Howard will position himself near puck battles down low in the corner to provide a passing lane and stay on guard incase the attack nets possession. When there are puck battles along the other half-wall, he moves to centered ice to man the slot. He implements good presence at the point, skating towards the puck carrying defenseman and forcing them to make a rash puck movement decision. 

Routinely, Howard keeps an excellent eye on the puck and aligns his positioning to where the puck is. In addition, he has the speed with his crossovers to keep quality pace with his puck carrying attackers. His vision and speed compliment each other nicely as he is always on the move, attentive and puts himself in a position where he can be impactful.

Howard has quite an active stick. He will extend his stick out towards the attackers stick and fight for the loose puck with his stick blade at open ice. He can be rather quick to loose pucks, extends his stick blade out towards the puck, tries to cut inside and box the attacker away. If a zone exit pass from a teammate comes slightly wide of where he is and the puck becomes loose when he is skating towards the blue line, he will extend his stick blade out and win the puck battle before the attacker grabs a hold of the puck. 

When it comes to generating the rush, Howard likes to pass the puck to teammates further up in the defensive zone, but he does have similar vision struggles that we talked about with his offensive game. Howard will attempt centered breakout passes when looking to instill a rush, but never truly looked for his teammate and just assumed he was there, missed the mark. There are also situations in which he had an attacker skating towards him when he was almost at the blue line, Howard then tried a pass between the attacker’s legs. But, he didn’t realize that the attacker was going to extend his stick blade out towards the puck to shut down the pass. That led to a turnover. Ultimately, Howard needs to be more cautious when identifying passing lanes. 

While there are plenty of situations in which Howard doesn’t get a clean pass off, there are plenty of other situations in which he does. If he has a clear stretch passing lane to a teammate at the offensive zone blue-line, he will pass along the boards to his teammate. Howard will look to complete route / trajectory zone exit passes at the blue line if he spots Logan Cooley and Frank Nazar (his regular USNTDP line-mates) with open ice and he doesn’t have much open ice to use. If he has traffic in front of him when he is skating along the half-wall, but he sees a teammate slightly further down the boards, he passes the puck along the boards to the teammate to help create a zone exit. 

When capturing possession of a loose puck and he is facing the direction of his goaltender, he will feed a backhand pass to a teammate who is skating up towards the blue line. He doesn’t like to hold onto the puck for too long, so if he sees a teammate with open space and it appears that he has a good route to the neutral zone, Howard won’t hesitate. He will pass the puck.

Transitional Play

In the neutral zone, Howard does a good job of finding open ice for himself towards the blue line. He establishes a passing lane at the blue line and that allows his defensemen to use stretch passes to facilitate the rush. His ability to identify passing lanes has led to breakaway goals this season with the USNTDP.

If he hasn’t created a passing lane at the blue line and is skating slightly behind his puck carrying teammate, he does a good job of finding separation for passing lanes and can motor up to those passing lanes. Howard uses his speed to skate past traffic and open up cross ice passing lanes for his teammates to use.

Similar to his puck control in the offensive zone, he has limited reach and that leads to inconsistent puck security. He struggles to push the puck slightly wide/further up to avoid an attacker stripping the puck from him. From time to time, he will bobble the puck but as long as the attack isn’t glued to him, he can maintain possession. When he faces stronger pressure, that is when his limited reach hurts his ability to move the puck up through the neutral zone with ease.

When it comes to moving the puck up the ice from zone to zone, he can be a passenger at times, but it depends on who he is being paired with. This season, he has spent quite a bit of time with Logan Cooley and Frank Nazar. Both, are a bit faster, slightly more mobile and have stronger puck control. With that said, Howard is often the one looking for passing lanes for Cooley and Nazar to use, instead of driving the rush. But, in the games in which he hasn’t been paired with his regular line-mates or just one of them is absent from the lineup, he was far more involved in transitional puck movement. 

Should he carry the puck into the neutral zone and drive towards the offensive blue line, it’s a mixed bag on each shift, sometimes he’ll skate up without much concern of traffic, but there are shifts where he draws the attack to him and will then look to pass the puck to an open teammate who is slightly closer to the blue line. When driving the rush but slightly behind a teammate who is closer to the offensive zone blue line, he will look to pass to that teammate. But, unfortunately, he will mistime the route and pass the puck slightly behind the intended target. 

When defending in the neutral zone, he is skating behind the rush in the majority of his shifts. With that said, Howard is a winger not a center and that shouldn’t be held against him. He is being paired with Logan Cooley and Frank Nazar in most USNTDP games. At the end of the day, that line has three skaters with explosive speed. Nazar has a lovely blend of speed and being a true bulldog when it comes to fighting for the puck. With that said, Howard doesn’t have to be the guy fighting the rush in the neutral zone. Also, keep in mind that Howard loves to garner open ice in the slot, so if a turnover should happen at the perimeter in the offensive zone, it is a tall order for anyone to keep pace with the rush. With that being said, I can’t fault Howard on skating behind the rush.

Skating

Howard has good skating extensions. They are crisp and well-aligned. He has good ankle flexion. His knees sit above the toe of his skates when in stride. But, he doesn’t have a power skating stride extension. Instead, he has a standard shorter stride extension stride, but the length of the extension is consistent across the board. When beginning his stride extensions, he activates those extensions on quality hops. Howard nets his speed by implementing a blend of crossovers and stride extensions and will use that blend when skating hard after loose pucks in the corner or aiming to create passing lanes in all three zones. 

Similar to when he activates stride extensions and uses a hop to push off, he also uses quality hops when activating crossovers from a stand-still position. His crossovers allow him to generate top speed and it aligns himself with his puck carrying teammate in the neutral zone and the offensive zone. That speed allows him to constantly be in position to accept a pass.

While his crossovers have been rather fruitful at generating the necessary acceleration to grab a hold of loose pucks and create passing lanes in all three zones, his crossovers allow him to shift his body from left to right when moving the puck through the neutral zone and into the offensive zone. He can depend on his crossovers when shifting away from traffic in the neutral zone.

Howard has good edges. Leans on his edges nicely and that allows him to retain speed that he built up through crossovers and stride extensions. Sometimes, he will have difficulty maintaining balance with his edges on tight turns and should look to utilize his crossovers slightly more to facilitate those turns.

Howard has good posture and bends his knees when in stride. His posture also allows him to widen his body to take up space when facing an attacker with the puck and it is especially useful in the defensive zone when he looks to keep puck carrying attackers in low danger. 

Projection

Howard has a lot of the fundamentals that I love and cherish. His speed is excellent and he can play a high-tempo competitive game, especially behind the red line and the corners. In addition, he does a great job of finding open ice in the slot and keeps himself well aligned with puck movement.

Over the next few years at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, I would like to see Howard continue to grow his transitional game and work on identifying optimal passing lanes to exploit. But, I do love his ability to generate passes to high danger. At the same time, I just want to see the number of completed dangerous passes go up. So, if he can work on identifying the optimal lanes to use, you have to imagine that the dangerous passing rates will go up. In addition, I’d like to see bolster his shot mechanics.

If Howard continues to develop his game nicely, I do believe that you are looking at a top nine forward at the NHL level.

Latest Update

February 2, 2022

stats from InStat and EliteProspects

Prospect report written by Josh Tessler. If you would like to follow Josh on Twitter, his handle is @JoshTessler_.

Looking for other scouting reports? Check out the Prospects tab for our other scouting reports.

Need a scouting report on a particular prospect, contact us today!

Smaht Talk: The Habs at the Draft Table

On Episode #8, Smaht Scouting’s Josh Tessler is joined by McKeen’s Hockey draft analyst and video scout Sam McGilligan and they talk about what the Montréal Canadiens should do at the 2022 NHL Draft. Several players are discussed including David Jiricek, Brad Lambert, Logan Cooley, Isaac Howard, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Filip Mešár, Seamus Casey, Calle Odelius, Gleb Trikozov, Noah Östlund, Kirill Dolzhenkov and Lane Hutson.

If you would like to listen to this episode, you can find an embedded link from SoundCloud below. Our podcast can also be found on iTunes, Spotify and Google Podcasts.

Scouting Report: Matthew Seminoff

Photo Credit: Allen Douglas / Kamloops Blazers

Scouting Report written by Matthew Somma

When I first started watching the Kamloops Blazers this season, I was more focused on what Mats Lindgren and Fraser Minten were doing. I didn’t pay much attention to Seminoff at first. However, as time went on, one player stood out above all the rest on the Blazers. Every shift, Matthew Seminoff was making something happen, hounding the puck and becoming a legitimate nuisance for opposing teams trying to execute a breakout. Seminoff grabbed my attention almost immediately with his work ethic and speed, and I’ve been a fan since that moment.

One of my colleagues at Smaht Scouting, Jordan Malette, described Shane Wright as an airport. If Wright is an airport, Seminoff is a Formula 1 car. He’s constantly moving, but the slightest deviation can knock him off track and be disastrous. With time and some fine-tuning, though, those problems will become a thing of the past. You’ll just have to be patient. In our preliminary rankings, I didn’t list Seminoff in our top 50 or as an honorable mention. Part of that is for the reason I stated earlier, in that I hadn’t watched Kamloops for Seminoff at that point. As of right now, I’d consider Seminoff to be a fringe 2nd/3rd round pick.

Seminoff’s work ethic is something that will carry him a lot further than it probably should, which is a good thing. There are always going to be players more skilled than Seminoff that don’t make it as far because he’s willing to out work all of them. The work ethic won’t be everything, though. There are a lot of areas in Seminoff’s game where he’s just starting to develop and improve upon, and as a result, he’s fairly raw as a prospect. In this profile, I hope to paint a picture of Seminoff as a player and give my assessment as to why I believe that Seminoff will be an NHL forward in the future.

Player Profile

D.O.B – December 27, 2003
Nationality – Canada
Draft Eligibility – 2022
Height –5’11″
Weight –182 lbs
Position – Right Wing
Handedness – Right

Seminoff’s Style of Play

I’ve already mentioned what stands out about Seminoff from the get go. His speed is close to elite, he has good crossover speed and mobility and can accelerate to top speed quickly. Seminoff’s straight line speed makes him a weapon for Kamloops both in transition and on the forecheck. He’ll exit the zone with possession and ensure that his zone entries result in either shots or passes. Give Seminoff the puck and he’ll ensure that your team at is at least able to generate some offense off of the rush.

Part of what makes Kamloops so dangerous is that Seminoff will work his absolute hardest to create some offense, and even if the puck doesn’t go in, he’s still creating scoring chances. They’re a team that can beat you off the rush, and even though they’re a young team, they have the talent to burn you if you’re not careful. The only complaint that I have about Seminoff’s skating is that his turns could use some work. Occasionally, he’ll be going too fast and have to turn around with the puck in order to establish better positioning. If that happens, he won’t be able to make a tight turn. He’ll have to kick it out wide and take a slower turn, slowing the play down or allowing attacking players to get past him. Some time with an NHL skating coach should iron that issue out, but it’s worth mentioning.

Seminoff’s forechecking ability is something I could see frustrating teams for years to come. He constantly looks to establish an inside presence and get to loose pucks quicker than a defender. At that point, he’ll already be on the inside and have a clear shot at the net or an open teammate. Seminoff is so effective at stealing the puck and immediately moving it to a teammate for a scoring chance. He’ll work or force the puck into the middle and create high danger scoring chances. Again, it comes down to his work ethic. He never gives up on a play and will actively try and force the opposition to make a mistake and cough the puck up. He’ll pressure the puck and force a bad pass or simply take the puck for himself and continue going to work in the offensive zone.

What makes Seminoff so frustrating to play against is how relentless he is. He’s undersized, but that doesn’t mean that he’s weak on the puck. Seminoff’s puck protection is among the best I’ve seen in draft eligible skaters in the WHL this year and is a major factor in his effectiveness on the forecheck. Not too much changes in Seminoff’s game when the puck is in the neutral zone, either. He’ll look to capitalize on bad passes and work an effective back check in order to prevent a zone entry. If he fails to do so, he’s quickly back in position in the defensive zone.

Seminoff’s hockey sense is average to above average. He is able to anticipate passes and predict where a play might be headed in order to create offense or play defense. He’ll be in the right spot at the right time in all three zones. There aren’t many times where I’ve noticed him out of position in the offensive zone, and even if he is, he keeps his feet moving and is able to recover. Defensively, Seminoff can take away some lanes and utilize the same tactics he uses on the forecheck in order to take the puck away in the defensive zone. Seminoff’s mind is usually able to keep pace with his feet when the puck isn’t on his stick. When he’s on the forecheck, you can see him think the game in unison with his feet and adjust to a play on the fly. Occasionally, Seminoff can make rushed decisions with the puck on his stick and either take a bad shot attempt or skate the puck into the corner. Those types of plays will occur less often as he matures, though.

When I’ve watched Seminoff this season, I’ve noticed that if he’s faced with a decision, he’ll choose the option that gets the puck on net nine times out of ten. He’ll do this even if it means taking a weak shot from a bad angle that the goalie can easily cover. I’d like to see Seminoff take smarter shots. Getting pucks on net is almost always a good thing, but not when the goalie has the post completely sealed. Seminoff isn’t a sniper and I can’t see him picking the corner very often. If he holds onto the puck a little longer or keeps it moving by passing it to a teammate, he might experience more success in the offensive zone.

Seminoff isn’t the most gifted passer, nor is he the most gifted shooter. He gets decent power on his shot and it’ll be good enough for the NHL, but I wouldn’t consider him a sniper. More like a player that can surprise a goalie on the rush. Where Seminoff excels, however, is when he has the puck close to the net. A lot of his scoring chances come from in close, like in this clip.

Seminoff elects for the high danger chances but too often tries to pick a corner instead of trying to shoot where the goalie may have a gap in coverage. In fact, his offensive game is average compared to some of the other WHL skaters in this draft class. What makes Seminoff stand out, however, is his work ethic. Seminoff’s work ethic is among the best in the draft class and he’ll never give up on a play. I mentioned earlier that his work ethic will propel him further than one might expect because he’ll quickly become a favorite amongst the coaching staff. Seminoff will outwork the opposition every play, dog the puck and create turnovers. I’ve found that this is where Seminoff is the most effective. He can make a team pay off of a turnover or at the very least, be the player to set up a goal by forcing a rushed decision and bad pass. It may not always show up on the scoresheet, but these types of plays are valuable.

Projection

I don’t think anyone can question Seminoff’s work ethic. That alone has me fairly confident that he’ll see at least a handful of NHL games over the course of his professional career. The biggest question that I have about Seminoff is his upside. His offensive skills don’t pop enough for me to confidently say that he’ll be more than a 40-point player at the NHL level. Seminoff is a player that will get by on his speed and determination, forcing his way into an NHL lineup and carving out a nice third line role for himself. It’s possible that he takes major strides over the course of his development, but given his current skill level, I feel that his ceiling is a third line forward with occasional power play and penalty kill time.

I see Seminoff fitting on an NHL third line because he has enough offensive IQ to contribute and a lot of NHL third lines blend a mix of skill and grit into a line that can wear the opposition down. And that’s what Seminoff is doing in the WHL right now. He’s wearing opponents down and forcing them to make mistakes. Seminoff could work on an NHL fourth line, but I believe that in most cases, that would be a waste of his talents. He doesn’t fit the style of an NHL fourth line in a lot of ways and will need some more skilled players on his line in order to maximize his effectiveness.

In our Winter rankings meeting, I pushed for Seminoff to be ranked. Although I tend to prefer players with high ceilings, I could see Seminoff fitting into an NHL lineup. We ranked Seminoff 57th, projecting him as a mid-to-late second round pick. Sometimes, a player’s projectable tools make them a more attractive option than a player with top six upside but also major flaws in their game. Seminoff’s projectable tools are his elite top speed, forechecking ability and play in transition. He utilizes his teammates effectively and creates offense off of the rush, something that more and more NHL teams are looking for. An NHL team can develop Seminoff into a player that will have a long NHL career. His stats might not jump out at you at the NHL level, but he’ll contribute in ways that won’t always show up on paper.

Seminoff is the type of player whose relentless drive could push him into a team’s top six on occasion. I don’t believe he’ll stick in that role for an entire season too often, but he has enough skill to compete on that line and not weigh it down. And like I said in the scouting report, it’s entirely possible that Seminoff takes some major strides in his development and turns into a legitimate second line forward. Right now, I see a middle six forward that can see time on a team’s second power play and penalty kill units.

It’s entirely possible that Seminoff falls on draft day due to his size. I think it’s a stupid and irresponsible decision to pass on Seminoff for that reason, though. Some team is going to be very happy when they draft Seminoff, and they’ll look smart if they take him later than he was expected to go. If you’re able to, watch one of Kamloops’ upcoming games. I guarantee that he’ll catch your eye as one of the hardest working players out there, even if he doesn’t show up on the scoresheet.

Latest Update

January 25, 2022

stats from InStat and EliteProspects

Prospect report written by Matthew Somma. If you would like to follow Matthew on Twitter, his handle is @Mattsomma12.

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