Connor Bedard Leads Parade of Blackhawks in New Under-22 Rankings

Last week, Corey Pronman at The Athletic released his complete NHL organizational rankings for every team’s under-23 players (prospects and NHL roster players). The Chicago Blackhawks ranked first (No. 1) on that list, and we discussed his overall ran♛k of the Hawks as well as how he ranked the individual players and prospects in the Chicago pipeline.

On Monday morning, Pronman dropped another list of note. This time, he ranked . With the Blackhawks👍 rankings first on the previous list, we knew they would be well represented here. 🐼But how many players would make the top 150 overall? And where would they rank?

Here’s who made Pronman’s list, including the tiers in which each player arrived:

No. 1 overall — Connor Bedard, C

8 — Artyom Levshunov, RHD

48 — Kevin Korchinski, LHD

101 — Lukas Reichel, W
106 — Sacha Boisvert, C
109 — Oliver Moore, C
139 — Sam Rinzel, RHD
146 — Roman Kantserov, RW
148 — Colton Dach, C/W

Blackhawks Rankings: My Thoughts

So… yeah. I’ll open this up by reminding those who are actually reading this article (since I know of a few out there that only read the numbers next to the names): these are Corey Pronman’s rankings. His personal assessment of the players and prospects in the Blackhawks’ system. I’m sure there are a lot of the same eyebrows raising/bouncing here as there were before when he had Reichel as high as he does while Frank Nazar is nowhere to be found. Pronman has always been a big Reichel fan, and he’s never been high on Nazar. We know this going in, so we move on.

Regarding this actual list, Pronman had four playe๊rs in his Tier 1 (elite players): Bedard, Tim Stützle, Macklin Celebrini and Adam Fantilli. I will be very honest with you: I was surprised only four players made it into that category, and that Fantilli remained one of them after missing a huge part of his rookie season because of injury.

T🐈he next three players he had at the top of his Tier 2 (bubble elite NHL player and NHL All-Star) category before we get to Levshunov are Leo Carlsson, Luke Hughes and Matvei Michkov. For those still looking for justification for the Blackhawks selecting Levshunov over Ivan Demidov this year, Pronman has the young Russian at No. 17 on this list at the bottom of his third🌼 tier.

I was interested to see what Pronman had to say about Kantserov. He ranked the young Russian as “Above Average” in Skating, Puck Skills, Compete and Shot. Here’s what he had to say about Kantserov:

Kantserov had a promising first KHL season. He steadily became a regular player on the eventual KHL champion and had a big playoffs for them. Kantserov isn’t very big, but everything else about his game is a plus. He’s a very quick skater with high-end skills who projects to be able to create offense at high levels. He gives a good effort, creates in hard areas and is responsible both ways. He has the tools to score and make plays versus men and will earn a coach’s trust. He projects as a middle-six wing.

And here’s what Pronman wrote about Dach, who made the list ahead of Nazar:

Dach had a quality rookie pro season. His numbers don’t wow you at any level, but Dach’s pure toolkit looks like an NHL player. He’s a tall forward who skates very well for a big man. He has good hands and can make plays at quick tempos. With Dach, the biggest issue in his game is consistency. When he’s on he looks like a no-doubt NHL player, but I haven’t always seen that player and he’s not a true natural scorer. The pure tools should get him to the league, and I think he’s just skilled enough to be a middle-six type, although it may be on the wing.

So what are my takeaways? The Blackhawks have a lot of really good prospects coming. Rockford could be an absolute wagon this year. While we might disagree on the placement of individual prospects on lists like this — I would have Nazar closer to Korchinski personally and I would have included both Marek Vanacker and Ethan Del Mastro — the fact that the Blackhawks have nine players/prospects among the league’s top 150 is tremendous. And seven of those nine were drafted by Kyle Davidson’s front office over the past three years.