A few of our lesser-known propects that I'll be watching closely next year:
Jesper Lindgren - A 20 year-old, 6'0" Swedish RHD (4th round, 2015) who's put up dominating offensive numbers in the Swedish junior league, and pretty good numbers for Modo, which plays in minor-league level of Swedish hockey. He's also had the misfortune of playing for a godawful, disaster of a team the past couple of years.
This coming season he's going to be moving to HPK, who were a top-5 team in the 15-team Finnish Liiga last season. I'm really curious how he'll do playing for a better team, and a league that's a step up from where he was playing last season.
Nikolai Chebykin - An about-to-turn-20-years-old, 6'3", Russian left winger (7th round, 2016). He split last season between three teams in three different leagues. In the Russian junior league, he scored 17 goals & 27 points in 17 games. In the minor-league VHL, he scored 5 goals & 8 points in 24 regular season games, before breaking out a bit with 9 points in 15 playoff games. He also had 8 games in the KHL, where he scored one goal.
Doesn't seem too impressive on the face of it, but he scored his lone KHL goal:
...in a game where he received a minute and thirty seconds of ice-time. And that was pretty typical of how much he played in any of his KHL games. His total in TOI for each of the 9 KHL games he dressed for last year: 5:13, 1:16, 0:22, 0:00, 1:30, 0:08, 5:33, 10:35, 0:09.
As for where he's playing in 2017-18...that's a little up in the air right now. His KHL organization, Dynamo Moscow, had its offices
raided by the Russian anti-corruption squad last month. Then it came out a couple weeks ago that they hadn't paid most of their players anything in several months, so 42 players (Chebykin included) have been released from their contracts, and are now unrestricted free agents.
So, he could go to another KHL team that'll hopefully give him more of a shot. Or he could come play for the Marlies on an AHL deal. Now normally a recently drafted prospect would balk at signing an AHL deal instead of an ELC. But for a kid who essentially played last season for free back in Russia, a guaranteed paycheque in US dollars from the richest hockey team in the world may look pretty attractive.
Dakota Joshua - A 21 year-old, 6'3 center (5th round, 2014) who scored 35 points in 33 games in his sophomore season in the NCAA. He is a bit older than the typical 2nd year NCAAer, since he played his draft year and his draft+1 season in the USHL before moving on to the NCAA.
But still, it was a nice step forward from the 17 points he scored in 29 games the year before. The fact that he, Adam Brooks and Freddie Gauthier are the only center prospects in the organization makes me especially curious to see if last year was his ceiling, or if he can take another step forward this year.
