FlamesNation Top 20 Prospects: Wrapping up the full lists, rankings

It’s September! You know what that means? The Penticton Tournament is nearly upon us. Prospects camp. Actual training camp to follow soon after, and with it, preseason. We aren’t at the point where the Calgary Flames will be playing meaningful hockey – not yet – but we are this close to the point where they are actually playing hockey.

Thank goodness.

But before we move on to that, we should take a moment to reflect on the month that was. August, the scourge of the hockey calendar, wherein nothing happens so we spend the month visiting the Flames’ farm system and ranking the rookies – to much approval, angst, and debate, it would appear.

Let’s pull back the curtain for one last look.

At the very beginning, we visited the no-votes and runners up. Now, let’s see how those who made the top 20 placed where they did.

Points are determined by placement on someone’s list. So a vote for the top prospect gets a player 20 points, a second place vote gets 19 points, and so on, all the way down to 20th place, which allows for one point.

There are some clear levels here. While Parsons ran away with the list – how badly do the Flames need a goalie since Miikka Kiprusoff retired, anyway? – it should come as no surprise that a bunch of defencemen rank right at the top; after all, it’s probably the strongest position throughout the organization. Andersson, Valimaki, and Fox don’t have much separation between them.

Kylington, meanwhile, edged out Jankowski – the highest ranked forward – to stay in that defensive group. Jankowski was clearly the king of the forwards, though, with 13 points separating him from Foo. Not that Foo ranked clearly ahead of anyone else – he, Dube, and Mangiapane all ranked really close together, with Klimchuk bringing up the rear.

Right on Klimchuk’s heels, though – not to mention the heels of the top 10 – came Gillies, just one point back from making that cut. From there, the cutoff is much more steep. Phillips didn’t get any high-ranking love, but he got enough to clearly separate himself from the rest of the pack. Shinkaruk and Rittich ended up with a similar number of points, with a clear separation above Poirier, who in turn clearly separated himself from Ruzicka, who separated himself from, well, the rest.

Lindstrom, who finished 21st, was just three points back from Lomberg.

Here’s the part where you get to yell at us! Yayyyy.

I can’t speak to anyone else’s lists, just mine. I’m really not a good list maker – at least, I don’t think I am – so this was pretty tricky.

I basically had players grouped together, and decided how to order them from there. So, for example, Parsons, Valimaki, Fox, and Andersson made up one group for me, while Jankowski, Kylington, and Gillies were a second group, and so on. Depending on how I was feeling I used potential (group one) or NHL readiness (group two) as tiebreakers. It is all extremely unscientific and filled with gut feelings and biases (I think I’m more in Poirier’s corner than most of the other writers, and Tuulola will always have a place in my heart).

And there you have it! How closely do our lists match up against your own? What glaring errors do you see? Better yet, what did we get right? Share your thoughts in the comments!