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Figuring Out Central Scouting

NHL Central Scouting will release their final rankings on April 7th. In the meantime, Mike Morreale of NHL.com has an interesting live blog that chronicles Central Scouting's big meeting to assemble their final rankings. He can't get too into specifics and give much away, but there's some interesting stuff in there.

He lists the top 10 players from all 6 North American regions, alphabetically, and also the number of potential first round picks in each region's top 10. Though it's worth keeping mind that their numbers add up to 36 potential first round draft picks, and that's before getting in Europeans and goalies(though both will be a small group of 2 or 3 each in the first round this year) and any players outside of the top 10 in the OHL or WHL that are still potential first round draft picks. It's probably fair to say that those players are likely to be drafted in the first two rounds of the draft.

Here's what it looks like...


USA West (10)
Mark Alt(MInnesota)
Bill Arnold(Boston College)
Nick Bjugstad(Minnesota)
Derek Forbort(North Dakota)
Stephen Johns(Notre Dame)
Jon Merrill(Michigan)
Brock Nelson(North Dakota)
Tyler Pitlick(Minnesota State)
Jaden Schwartz(Colorado College)
Riley Sheahan(Notre Dame)

Mark Alt recently affirmed that he will be playing hockey, which helps his draft stock immensely, though I think the first round is still too high of a projection. Bill Arnold's name hasn't been mentioned much as belonging in this group, so it's interesting to see him there. I think the other eight names are first round players, though it wouldn't surprise me if one or two slipped just outside the first round on draft day with a deep pool.

Canadian Juniors/Midgets (1)
Jesse Beamish(Dartmouth)
Beau Bennett(Denver)
Colin Campbell(Lake Superior)
Luke Curadi(RPI)
Grayson Downing(New Hampshire)
Alexander Guptill(Michigan)
Isaac Macleod(Boston College)
Mark MacMillan(Northeastern)
Julian Melchiori(UMass-Lowell)
Peter Stoykewych(Colorado College)

I believe it's fairly obvious that Bennett is the one potential first round pick out of this group, though I'm not necessarily convinced he'll go in the first round.

USA East (2)
Kenneth Agostino(Yale)
Danny Biega(Harvard)
Charlie Coyle(Boston U)
Garnet Hathaway(Brown)
Kevin Hayes(Boston College)
Raman Hrabarenka
Patrick McNally(Harvard)
Mike Pereira(UMass)
Casey Thrush(New Hampshire)
Matthew White(Vermont)

Coyle and Hayes would appear to be the two potential first round picks out of this group.