Hockey Prospectus Releases 2012 NHL Draft Top 100

Corey Pronman is one of our favorite NHL Draft Gurus. His insight is particularly helpful because he uses a scale, rather than traditional cliches, to rank and discuss prospects. His rankings have been included in our Consensus Top 100 list since September.

On Monday, Pronman released his May Top 100 list for the 2012 NHL Draft at Hockey Prospectus.

According to Pronman, his rankings are a compilation of information gleaned from his own scouting and conversations with the people on the draft floor. He explains here:

While the reports are based somewhat on my personal viewings of most of the prospects profiled of whom I have seen most play at least once, predominantly though video scouting, a significant portion of my notes come from talking to scouts and NHL execs and accumulating a lot of information from different sources throughout the year.

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I am a fan of something I've borrowed from the baseball scouting world and have adapted to hockey scouting called the 20-80 scale. In short, it is a distinct scouting language, derived originally from using standard deviations to assess talent distributions. To avoid confusing readers, I do not use number grades at all due to the lack of popularity of the scale in hockey circles, however the language I use throughout my reports have a rhyme and reason to which you should be informed about.

There are some interesting items in his rankings, among them:

• Pronman has five forwards in his top five, though it isn't a surprise. He was the first Draft Analyst to push Teuvo Teräväinen into the top 10, and during his frequent Q&A sessions on Twitter, he's stated that had it not been for his knee injury, Alex Galchenyuk might be the #2 prospect in the draft behind Nail Yakupov.
• What is surprising about #6 is that it's not Ryan Murray. A number of Draft Analysts have quietly moved Murray down their rankings, Pronman among them. As recently as March, he had Murray ranked 4th, but according to Corey: "I struggled a lot with ranking Ryan Murray. He's been on the prospect scene for a while, but I still got very diverging thoughts from scouts and from my own viewings about how good offensively he will be. Depending who you talk to, one scout will praise the elite vision while another will say he lacks the puck skills and doesn't play that much of an offensive style."
  
• For that contingent of fans that want to trade the #1 overall pick and draft Ryan Murray with the return should take note. Pronman is not the only Analyst with other defensemen in front of Murray. He remains neck-and-neck with Matthew Dumba, but I've seen Griffin Reinhart, Morgan Rielly and Jacob Trouba all ranked in front of him as well.
• Countrymen Pontus Åberg and Sebastian Collberg have been ranked within two spots of each other for the last three months, but both are slowly rising through the rankings. Pronman's #9 for Åberg is the highest of anyone on the Consensus 100 list.
• Oilers' fans take note of Tim Bozon and Mike Matheson - both are in the range for the Oilers' second round pick and both are in the range in the upcoming May Consensus 100.

Find Corey's Top 100 here

Follow Corey on Twitter @coreypronman