After previewing the CHL prospects earlier in the week, now I’m taking a look at previewing this coming season for Toronto’s prospects playing in Europe or in the NCAA. So let’s get to it!
Tinus Luc Koblar and Victor Johansson
Koblar and Johansson will very likely be starting the season together on Leksands’ U20 junior team. And, so far, they’ve been suiting up for the junior team in the pre-season games.
Last year, Leksands’ junior team finished with the best record in the regular season, but fell just short in the semi-finals of the playoffs. This year, they should again be one of the top teams with a lot of their top players returning – in fact, only their 2C from last year (aged out, playing for another pro team), and one of Koblar’s wingers on the third line from last year (left for the USHL/NCAA) are the noteworthy players who are gone. But they will also have some good young players coming in to play in their place. Adam Andersson is a 6’4″ centre who played for Sweden at the Hlinka and I already have my eye on him for this year’s draft from his pre-season play, and William Lundqvist is a 6’4″ defenseman also eligible for this year’s draft who has looked good in the pre-season too. The big question for them will be in net.
Both Johansson and Koblar should be among the top players of the team – Koblar is more likely to spend most of this season in junior, where he will likely be their 2C or fighting with Lissel for the top centre spot. Koblar could follow what Johansson did last year and get a few games with very little playing time in the SHL, but that will only come in the lulls in the junior team’s schedule.
Johansson was already their top defenseman last year, and he’ll likely have an even bigger role as long as he’s still with the junior team. He already got a small taste of the SHL last year, and as a year older (with his dad as the SHL general manager) he’s more likely to get called up for longer stints this year. In fact, after starting the pre-season with the junior team, he’s been with the men’s team for four pre-season games since August 21st – one game on the third pair, one on the second, and two on the top pair with his older brother. That will be interesting to follow…
All in all, it should be a fun year to follow the two of them.
Alexander Plesovskikh
I’ve written about how confusing Plesovskikh is as a prospect, and his damn team assignment is not helping. I have no idea if he’s supposed to be with the MHL junior team again, or if he’ll get the bump to the VHL semi-pro league. He’s gotten short looks in the VHL for two years in a row now, so it doesn’t seem impossible, but the MHL team that won the championship last year was so deep with older and better players… if anyone makes the jump, it seems like it will be them before it’s Plesovskikh.
To start the season, he’s on the MHL team. If he winds up playing more of the year on the junior team again, I expect he’ll play a much bigger role. From that championship team, a lot of the top players look to have aged out and will move on to the VHL on one team or another. Plesovskikh already had the third most points on the team last year playing up and down the top nine, so he seems like one of the remaining guys who will be asked to lead the team as one of the older remaining players. I wouldn’t expect them to be nearly as good as they were last year though, given how many of their top/older players will be gone. Not unless they have a whole bunch of young superstars coming up.
On the other hand, if he does get the call to the VHL more often than not, it will likely be in a depth role. Only two of their top 10 scorers from last year are not on the roster for this coming season – that team finished 5th in the league, and got all the way to the finals before losing. As I mentioned, there will be a lot of the top players from the junior team last year who are still in the organization but are too old for junior. It will be a good sign if Plesovskikh can win a spot in spite of that, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Timofei Obvintsev
Obvintsev is coming off an unfortunate year where he lost his job to one of Russia’s top goalie prospects, and by the turn of the new year just kind of… disappeared. He dressed in five games as the backup for his (at the time) organization’s VHL team, but didn’t get into any games. These were scattered between January and March.
Thankfully and hopefully, he’s been given a chance to get into more games this year as he has moved to a new organization in the VHL: Gornyak-UGMK. The team has three goalies on their roster going into the season, counting Obvintsev. One is a 6’2″ 21 year old who looks to have been their main/best starting goalie, with a .934 sv% in 25 games. The other is a 6’0″ 23 year old who only got into 10 games and had a .902 sv%. It may be tough for Obvintsev to win a starter spot, but the team last year had four goalies get at least 10 games. They’ve played their first regular season game earlier this week and he was at least the main backup, so he can hopefully build from that.
I hope he does, because he looked so damn promising early on last year.
Hudson Malinoski
Shifting to the NCAA, I’ll start with who is my current favourite of Toronto’s prospects in college – though the bar for that is pretty low these days. Malinoski is a guy who plays a pro-style game and has really taken on the identity of Providence as a heavy, physical, defense-first team. He was tied for the team lead in goals with 11, and one point back of the team lead in points.
The roster for this season will be a lot different, in a good way. Their top point producer turned pro, but all of the other players in the top 10 on the team are returning. A lot of their depth that didn’t produce much offense turned pro, but in their place they will have younger guys playing a bigger role, like John Mustard, Logan Sawyer or Trevor Connelly who were freshmen last season, with an influx of guys from the CHL in Roger McQueen (10th overall pick last year), Beau Jelsma, Julius Sumpf (4th round pick as a 20 year old re-entry last year). Expect Malinoski, as a 21 year old third year player on the team, to play a big role this year – potentially a top line centre, all situations guy.
Problem is, they were not the only team to see an influx of new recruits from the CHL. Providence has been among the more competitive teams in the NCAA, but not among the top programs. They don’t have the star power of the Michigans, Minnesotas, or Boston College/Universities – the latter two are in their conference. But I am expecting them to again be stingy, physical, defensive, and tough to play against. Malinoski ended his season very strong down the stretch last year, so I’m hoping he has more of a breakout this season both in terms of any points that come with more playing time, but also a better and more complete game.
William Belle
Belle will be a young freshman this season for Notre Dame, who have been not so great in the Big 10 conference the past while. They’ve been in the bottom half of the conference each of the last three seasons, including dead last most recently.
On the other hand, that could in theory mean that Belle has an easier time to earn a somewhat significant role in his freshman year – they only had 6-7 players who had more than 0.5 points per game. Their second and third best scorers from last year have turned pro, but the rest are still around. They don’t have many noteable recruits or transfers starting with the team this year, though, aside from Belle and maybe one other.
If Belle doesn’t get used as an energy, forechecking, big body to support his linemates in the top six, he is potentially well suited for a bottom six role as well. I’m hoping for more than that, however. He may not have been drafted very high because his season was, on the whole, disappointing relative to expectations, but I do know some scouting people have still said that if he can just harness more of the good flashes he has and finds some consistency in that regard, he could still be an interesting player.
Nick Moldenhauer
Already said a lot about Moldenhauer in the T25U25. His first two seasons in the NCAA were meh and then disappointing. He had a chance to carve out a bigger role for himself last year with a lot of their previous stars leaving the team, and he didn’t. He missed chunks of time due to injury, and his offense just was never there. The team as a whole had a relative down year, relying too much on younger guys who were good, but hadn’t developed enough to carry a top college team. They finished fourth in the conference and bowed out pretty early in the NCAA playoffs.
This year, the team only added more noteworthy forward prospects: Malcolm Spence, Jayden Perron, Aidan Park, Cole McKinney, and William Horcoff. That’s almost two entire lines worth of forwards. If Moldenhauer cannot take a leap and show more of the promise he had in the USHL, I’m not even sure he’d be returning for a fourth and final season after it.
Joe Miller
Harvard’s conference has often been very weak, so when they’ve been a middling team in their conference you know they’ve been having a tough time. They didn’t even qualify for the NCAA playoff tournament, and really struggled for offense all season.
Harvard will have all of their top forwards returning, and lost only one of their better defensemen. On the other side, they will have three noteworthy new arrivals to the team, none are necessarily stars or top prospects but are definitely of a caliber to improve the team. Depth was their big problem last year, so those new incomers will help a good deal. Not enough to turn them into NCAA contenders, but they should at least be better than last year.
Miller is returning for his fourth and final season for the team, and has been given the “C” as the captain. He’s been a pretty good and reliable forward for them in each of the first three years, as the team went through a lot of changes. Even as the team struggled, he was one of the few players with a positive +/- if that’s your thing. Last year was a bit of a down season as he dealt with some injuries, but this year should be an improvement with better players around him. I’m not expecting him to get an NHL contract after this, which is a shame because I do like him. He’s just not good enough for his size.
Matthew Lahey
Lahey will be making his freshman debut this season for Michigan State, who won the Big 10 conference last season. But they were upset in the first round of the NCAA tournament. They’ll be in tough to repeat last season’s success, having lost their top two offensive players (one of them Isaac Howard, the Hobey Baker winner) and three of their other top 10 point producers. They will be keeping their top goalie, Trey Augustine who has been one of the NCAA’s top goalies.
There is a bigger turnover on defense, however, with four of their eight defensemen from last year’s roster moving on to pro hockey or other NCAA teams. Coming in on defense are Lahey, Sean Barnhill, and Colin Ralph as noteworthy prospects that were drafted by NHL teams. Given Lahey’s game, I’m guessing he’s more likely to be a third pairing depth guy to start. His size and defensive game aren’t big standouts compared to others, unless he took a big leap this off-season.
Thanks for reading!
I put a lot of work into my prospect articles here, both for the draft and Toronto’s prospects. I do it as a fun hobby for me, and I’d probably do it in some capacity even if PPP completely ceased to exist. But if you like reading my work, some support would go a long way! I pay for a few streaming services (CHL, NCAA, USHL, the occasional TSN options for international tournaments that are broadcast) to be able to reliably watch these prospects in good quality streams. I also pay for some prospect-specific resources, such as tracking data and scouting reports from outlets like Elite Prospects, Future Considerations, McKeen’s Hockey, The Athletic, and more.
Being able to get paid for this helps me dedicate more time and resources to it, rather than to second/third jobs. And whatever money I make here, a lot of I reinvest back into my prospect work through in those streaming and scouting services. Like I said, I’d be doing whatever I can afford for this anyway, so any financial help I get through this is greatly appreciated!