The best prospect of the 2022 draft is now known and it is not Juraj Slafkovsky

In the 2022 draft, the Montreal Canadiens chose rising star Juraj Slafkovsky over consensus pick Shane Wright.

Almost everyone agrees that the big Slovakian will become a very good hockey player for the Tricolore. He should be a key part of the team's success for many years to come, despite a tougher-than-expected debut in the NHL.

There were three front-runners in this less-than-stellar draft: Wright, Slafkovsky and Logan Cooley. Under the circumstances, Kent Hughes chose the best player available at the time, based on his scouting team's assessment.

However, a few months later, the picture would have changed, as the 18-year-old forward is no longer seen as a future NHL star, according to some experts.

Alexandre Pratt, a journalist for La Presse, took a look at this subject by consulting a proven model, that of Byron Bader, from the Hockey Prospecting site.

This site evaluates the chances that an NHL prospect will one day become a superstar based on many variables and comparisons. His analytical model is a reference in the field, and even NHL teams use it.

A little over six months later, let's just say that the Canadiens' number 20 doesn't score very well. Here is the ranking of the first seven players selected in the last draft.

According to Bader's tool, there is only a 5% chance that Slafkovsky will become a star, still incredible!

Here we see that young Logan Cooley gets the highest score, followed very closely by Chicago Blackhawks prospect Kevin Korchinski, the defenseman we saw with Team Canada at the last World Junior.

We must add to this the nuance that the development of a player can become very unpredictable. The best example of this is the sudden explosion of Tage Thompson this season. He became a star at age 25, when there was no reason to believe he would ever reach that potential.

At 23, he was traded for a fourth round pick and two years later, he is one of the best center players in the National League.

Of the rest of the Habs players, Filip Mesar is at 25%, but it's Lane Hutson's grade that will do the team's fans good as he's at 72%. Frankly incredible, especially coming from a player drafted 62nd just six months earlier.

As for Owen Beck, he has the same grade as Slafkovsky at 5%.

As I mentioned above, this is a model that analyzes many comparables and variables, but it doesn't take into account the development of a player which is an unpredictable element, especially for players with big frames like Slaf.

Even if I thought Logan Cooley had the biggest offensive potential in the long term, I still believe that the CH's first overall pick will have a great career in the NHL.

It is important to remember that he is only 18 years old. It's often after four or five years that we can really analyze a draft of a selected year, so we'll have to be patient before knowing if the Habs will have bet on the right player at the very first rank.

Credit: HabsetLNH.com

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