Edmonton Oilers Prospect Pyramid

If you didn’t see the video, LeafsNation vlogger and Sportsnet super personality Steve Dangle got fed up with prospect rankings, and decided to create his own method to rank prospects by using the Prospect Pyramid. I thought it was an interesting way of ranking prospects, as evaluating players who have never played an NHL game before can be difficult and subjective. 

The Prospect Pyramid groups players together in tiers. Players who share similar skill sets and potential are grouped together on the pyramid, and are separated from players who are not comparable. It is a platform that someone could look at and understand who they should pay attention to in the system and who they shouldn’t. I wanted to do something similar, so here is my modified version of the Edmonton Oilers Prospect Pyramid. 

The reason the prospect pyramid is such a beautiful thing is because it’s easier to make the decision on whether David Musil or Matthew Benning is more valuable to the organization, even though it’s way too early to decide. 

Another aspect of the Prospect Pyramid to note, is, what exactly does it mean to be a prospect? This idea created some debate here at Nation HQ this morning. Is Anton Slepyshev a prospect even though he was in the 2015-16 opening lineup? I’d say yes, he is still fighting for a roster spot. Is Griffin Reinhart a “prospect” even though he’s played 37 games in the NHL? Sure. BUT, is Darnell Nurse a prospect? Possibly, but I decided to leave him off the pyramid this time around. Yes he has a year of NHL experience under his belt, but the fact that there’s a chance he may not begin the year as an Oiler hints that he’s still working to earn a legit spot, therefore, prospect? You decide. In a perfect world, he should have never played as many NHL games as he did last year, so his case is special. 

Behold the pyramid! Note that it’s not in pyramid shape (fight me). As you can see it is separated into four groups. From top to bottom I have named the tiers as follow:

The top tier includes six players that I think will likely be playing in the NHL in the upcoming season or seasons. Most of these players have some NHL experience, and will be coming into training camp all fighting for a shot on the team. Jesse Puljujarvi is most likely to appear on the opening night roster out of all the guys in this tier. Depending on the way McLellan utilizes centremen this season, JJ Khaira could be fighting for a fourth line centre position as well. Jujhar’s chances of playing will increase if McLellan chooses to move Leon Draisaitl to the wing, potentially opening a spot on the roster for the big centreman. 

Drake Caguilla is the only guy in my top tier prospect without any NHL experience, and also wasn’t a first round draft pick. Caguilla is arguably Peter Chiarellie’s most interesting signing from this past summer as he was a sought after prospect coming out of college. Caggiula won an NCAA championship and is one of the most promising un-drafted prospects the Oilers have in their system. 

My second tier contains players who have little to no NHL experience, but have a world’s worth of potential for the Oilers in the upcoming years. Ethan Bear, Caleb Jones, Tyler Benson, Matthew Benning, and Patrick Russell were/are all expected to make huge impacts in their respective college & junior teams. They will likely see no NHL time this year but could all be destined to be prominent contributors in the future. Peter Chiarelli obviously devoted time this summer into signing some defensive prospects, as Bakersfield is now loaded up. 

Tyler Pitlick and David Musil are fringe NHLers, just falling in between my first and second tier. I should add that the order that my prospects are listed within the tiers do not matter! *waits for comments complaining how Musil is at the end of the second group*. Both players have had short stints with the Oilers. Pitlick seems to be constantly running into injury woes, and Musil still working on making the jump to the big leagues. We may see these guys in blue and orange briefly this season, time will tell. 

My third tier contain guys who are still trying to get noticed in Bakersfield. They all seem to have good and bad stints with the team but fail to get noticed on a higher scale. There is nothing wrong with being in my third tier. The guys still have time to turn it around and prove themselves, however they have quite the competition ahead of them, especially with all the NCAA signings this summer. 

My final group of prospects contain mostly guys who were drafted deep this past year. This tier is essentially a crapshoot and is next to impossible to evaluate at this time. 

There seem to be an ENDLESS amount of prospects in every team’s system. I’m 100% sure I missed some pretty significant guys in my pyramid so don’t yell at me. This list is 100% subjective but does a really good job of categorizing prospects, while reducing some argument. We could go on for hours debating whether Dylan Wells or Matthew Cairns should be rated higher, OR, we can just group them together on a pyramid! 

I would like to hear your beautiful opinions on what you would change with my pyramid so lay it on me!