The Athletic

With the CHL Top Prospects Game in the rearview mirror, and the CHL playoffs and World U18s coming up shortly, it is time I update my 2022 NHL Draft board. Since my last update, Juraj Slafkovsky had a fantastic Olympic tournament and has become a legitimate candidate to go right at the top of the draft. Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is obviously a very significant event and its implications on hockey are trivial comparatively, but it likely will affect the draft. In discussions with team personnel over the last month, there’s been a wide range of opinions about how they think their team will approach selecting Russian players — from saying they won’t draft any Russians period, to saying the risk of getting visas will lower Russians significantly on their lists, to the situation in Ukraine not making a difference at all. The most common reply is: “We’ll see what the situation is in July,” which makes sense to me, so for the most part that is my approach to this list, but I did make some mild adjustments given the short-term visa risks at a minimum.