Continuing an annual series that now dates back a few years, I’m looking back at the draft from five seasons ago to try to glean what key lessons we can take away from it. The 2021 NHL Draft was — and will likely remain — one of the most unique and difficult classes to evaluate I’ve ever been involved with.

1. Playing games matters

The 2020-21 hockey season was marred by leagues stopping and restarting due to COVID, with players missing large swaths of time at unpredictable moments, and most notably, the OHL not playing a single game. It led to one of the most disastrous first rounds I can recall. The 2003 age group was never the strongest, especially for Canada, so that was a big contributor, but the first round after Matt Coronato was picked 13th was nothing short of abysmal, with only a handful of NHL regulars picked in the second half of the top round. It’s impossible to know what would be different if there had been a normal season, but it’s hard not to look at the circumstances surrounding this draft class and the results and connect the dots.

2. The Boucher reach

When the Ottawa Senators drafted Tyler Boucher at No. 10, it was somewhat shocking at the time, but I understood what they were thinking, even if I disagreed with it. Boucher was a super physical force with decent offensive skills. He had been injured all season, though, and when he was healthy, his hockey sense was in question. Teams chase this trait all the time, but this was probably the biggest reach since the Rangers took Dylan McIlrath in the top 10 in 2010. It was especially egregious because a hyper physical, substantially more skilled forward was on the board in Cole Sillinger, although Boucher skated better. As desirable as a pure brute is for an NHL lineup, you still need a requisite amount of talent.

For this draft, teams are going to be drawn to players like wingers Oscar Hemming and Gleb Pugachyov and defenseman William Hakansson for their size and physicality, but I’m not sold that any of them are high-end offensive types.

3. Keeping an open mind on re-entry players

Five years since the 2021 draft, one interesting observation is how many of the best players from that class were not first-year draft-eligible. In particular, defensemen Ryker Evans and J.J. Moser and winger Josh Doan are all arguably top-20 players from this draft despite being re-entry players. It’s probably too easy at times to write off those types of prospects. After all, if they weren’t drafted in previous years, there is probably a good reason, right? But everyone’s path can be a little different. Moser and Doan were not great skaters and needed physical development. Evans’ puck play and decision-making took notable steps as he aged. Those are outlier cases of significant year-over-year development, and often, some players perform well at older ages but don’t display NHL traits that will translate, but the point is more that every prospect should be given the benefit of the doubt to have their case analyzed for what they’re showing right now.

4. Start tracking prospects early

Because of the pandemic, it never mattered more than in 2021 to have strong knowledge of prospects before their draft season. That applies to almost every prospect from this class, but two come to mind: one who played all season and one who played a handful of games.

Matthew Knies had a disaster of a draft season. Scouts were skewering him for his play at times in the USHL after being extremely impressive as a draft-minus-one. His offense, reasonably, came into question. The body of work was still overall impressive, though, and his toolkit was rare. I think of him when it comes to someone like Ryan Roobroeck this season. While Knies competes way harder than Roobroeck, Roobroeck also had a bad draft year by his standards, but will enter the 2026 NHL Draft as a 6-foot-3 forward who can skate with over 100 OHL goals on his resume.

The other name that came to mind was Wyatt Johnston. Johnston’s only games were as Canada’s third-line center at the U18s where he PKed and didn’t get any power-play time. At the U17s the year prior and with Windsor as a 16-year-old, he was a prime creator, running the power play and displaying very impressive vision. I think he got unfairly pigeonholed by teams as a low offensive potential guy based on his U18s. 

5. The drop-off can be and often is steep

I’ve often felt that a draft is defined by the top of the class, and often the very first few picks. This class was even more pronounced on that front. Most evaluators felt going into the draft that the top group at a minimum comprised the centers Mason McTavish, Cole Sillinger, Kent Johnson (considered a center at the time) and Matty Beniers; defensemen Owen Power, Luke Hughes, Simon Edvinsson and Brandt Clarke; and wingers William Eklund and Dylan Guenther. Fast-forward five years and save the ascension of Johnston into arguably the best overall player from this draft, the top 10 or so players are basically the same.

It’s illustrative of the illusion people sometimes think of with the draft that you can often get a really good player at No. 15, or No. 25, and often the case is the legit players are so clearly superior to the rest of the field, so few in number, and they go right away.