Who will represent the next wave for the hockey-mad nation? Plus, what scouts are saying about 2023 prospects Tyler Peddle and Andrew Cristall.
Back in the day, Canadian goaltenders dominated the NHL. But put together a prospective Olympic team right now and who is your starter? Carey Price was the easy answer for a decade but now someone else will have to step up internationally (and I do wonder if the World Championship in the spring is the perfect test for Carter Hart). At the prospect level, things aren't looking much better.
To give you a little insider info on Future Watch - our famous annual prospect issue that closes this week - only one Canadian goaltender made the top 100, as voted on by a broad panel of NHL scouts and execs from across the league. That would be Sebastian Cossa, the Detroit Red Wings prospect.
So what's the deal? Development seems to be a big part of the problem. The majority of top-end Canadian netminders go the major junior route and though the CHL has been excellent at developing forwards and defensemen, netminders have been a different story. Part of the problem is reps: How many 16-year-olds can hold their own in a major junior crease?
Even highly touted Gabriel D'Aigle, who was taken second overall in the 2022 QMJHL Draft, has been the backup with Victoriaville this season, playing 15 games to veteran Nathan Darveau's 41 appearances. And most rookies don't even see that kind of action. A lot of 17-year-olds still have to battle for crease time and teams have to balance development and winning. You can send the kid off to a lower level of competition, but you need to find the right spot.
"Where do they go?" asked one OHL GM. "It's tough to find them good shooting moments."
The WHL seems to have a slight advantage, with two 2005 birth year goalies (Seattle's Scott Ratzlaff and Red Deer's Rhett Stoesser) in the top-five of league goals-against average and another, Brandon's Carson Bjarnason, ranking top-five in games played. Is there something to be said for the WHL bantam draft and its longer development path in this instance? I wonder.
Whatever the case, only three Canadian goalies ranked in Central Scouting's mid-term top-10 for North American goalies: Bjarnason, Ratzlaff and Quebec's Quentin Miller.
And to give you a little teaser on Future Watch, Ken Campbell has a fantastic article on this very subject in the issue.
With 35 points in 65 games on a middle-of-the-pack Drummondville team, Tyler Peddle put himself on the radar as a rookie in the 'Q' last season. So expectations were high for this year, with Peddle a prospect for the 2023 draft. The right winger got off to a solid start, but his production fell off a cliff after the holidays: Peddle posted just two points in all of January and none through the first week of February. But there is a pretty good explanation: He had been trying to play through a shoulder injury for a while. Peddle is now out of the lineup to heal, and scouts still like what he brings to the table when he's at 100 percent.
"He's competitive, he's aggressive and he has a great shot, though since his shoulder got hurt he hasn't shot as much," said one scout. "He could be a third-line guy that plays hard, goes up and down his wing and knock in some goals as a complementary guy."
Out in the WHL, Andrew Cristall has been one of the more fascinating players to follow for the 2023 draft. The Kelowna Rockets right winger also missed time due to injury, which is why he is no longer right behind Connor Bedard in league scoring and "only" top 10. But when you look at draft boards, Cristall is all over the place. Why? Lemme paraphrase/butcher an old AC/DC classic: He ain't exactly fast/He ain't exactly tall/30-39-69 you could say he's got it all.
So yeah; Cristall needs to work on his skating and at 5-foot-10, 165 pounds, he doesn't have ideal size. But what I see are two things that can be fixed with time: Skating coaches do wonders, as do nutritional programs that help players get stronger and, often, faster. What Cristall already has is something you can't teach.
"It's the vision, he sees the ice so well," said another NHL scout. "As soon as he gets in the offensive zone, he's creating. He's finding time and space among bigger bodies and he's not surrounded by a lot of prolific scorers in Kelowna."
Cristall has seven points in three games since returning from a lower-body injury after 14 games on the shelf.