Looking back at five years of Flames prospect rankings

We’ve just completed our annual @Calgary Flames prospect rankings here at FlamesNation. Since August is typically the quietest month for hockey news, it’s a nice time to take stock of the prospect pool. Now that the exercise is over, we can navel-gaze a bit on how this year’s list stacks up with prior editions – and see what we can learn from them.

Here are the past five summers worth of rankings:

Things have come a long way since Bill Arnold was a Top 10 prospect in the organization.

There’s a trend that you can probably see pretty clearly: if you’re a “top prospect” that slides down the rankings, even as new draft classes and their shiny new toys emerge, you’re probably not actually a top prospect.

Case(s) in point: @Jon Gillies, @Emile Poirier and @Hunter Shinkaruk. Gillies debuted at 2nd in this sample (he was 9th in 2013 and 5th in 2014, too) and then started to slide; he dropped to 3rd, then 11th, clawed back to 9th in 2018 and fell off the list entirely this year. Poirier went 3rd, 13th and 15th before he left the organization, and Shinkaruk went from 2nd to 15th to gone. A much better trajectory is starting in the middle and climbing, ala Dillon Dube or Andrew Mangiapane.

The most resilient prospect we’ve seen is @Oliver Kylington, who was 4th, 5th, 5th, 5th and then graduated by virtue of playing too many NHL games to be considered a rookie anymore. Shiny new toys entered the organization, but Kylington’s performances continued to stack up well against them.

As mentioned, we use Calder Trophy eligibility to determine who counts as a prospect. Once somebody’s too old or has played too many NHL games, they can’t make the list. Being too old is “ageing out,” while playing a lot of NHL games is a graduation.

Here’s each rankings’ graduating class and their last ranking on the list:

The interesting thing here is the team has gotten some contributions from all over the place, notably the graduations of Hathaway (a grinder), Kulak (a depth defender) and Rittich (at the time the backup goalie). Progression into an NHL depth role is still, in fact, progression.

Who is the most likely prospect to graduate this year? With Valimaki out with an injury, it seems like Dube is the obvious candidate. But my dark horse is Matthew Phillips, who has quietly and consistently nudged his way up the rankings every season.