Article: It's Impossible To Ignore Adam Benak's Ceiling As A Prospect

[Neil Urbanski]

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[Pewterschmidt]

Let's go short king!!!

[MNCountryLife]

People rarely talk about the upside of being short.  Shorter legs allow you to place your feet faster with less distance to travel.  Meaning you are capable of being quicker.  Same with hands. Shorter people can drive up on larger player taking away their leverage.

Downside:  A smaller frame makes it harder to put on muscle and more muscle can limit flexibility.  Shorter stride means top end speed is typically slower.  Less weight means harder to maintain position.

Spurgeon is 5' 9'' and only 166 pounds.  Brad Marchand is also 5' 9'' and 180 pounds.  Neither weighs a whole lot.  Both are willing to go to the dirty areas and use their size "advantages" tremendously.  

Not every player needs to be 6' 3'' and 220 pounds. (some do) Gaining too much weight and not being able to use it properly can have the opposite desired effect.  

[BillieGismylover]

If we can find PM Bouchard and get him on a line with this kid and Rossi!!! Imagine the possibilities. They’d skate between the legs of any Dallas or Vegas player in the first round. They’d never see it coming. Gotta think outside the box once in a while.

[1Brotherbill]

Why did he go in the fourth round?  101 other players were taken before him.  When you realize that about 60 players from each draft make it to the NHL in some form and of those around 40 play at least 300 games and few play more than 500.  You realize that it doesn't matter how much you like this kid the odds are extremely high that he won't make it to St. Paul. This is where everyone is going to say Kirill was drafted later and Dustin Byfuglien was drafted later.  Yeah sure, there is always someone who makes it from a later round.  When you look at the number of early round player success over the later round player success you instantly see that players from the later rounds are extremely rare. 

[Imyourhuckleberry]

11 hours ago, 1Brotherbill said:

Why did he go in the fourth round?

Similar reason to Stankoven going middle of the 2nd round despite having top 15 skill, or Spurgeon going late rounds. A lot of GMs don't want to bet on the short players being able to find success against the strength of the NHL

A number of fun success stories out there, but countless others who failed to make an impact when elevating to the best league in the world, and many others who didn't make it beyond the AHL. Lots of speed and skill though, generally the best player on most teams he's been on, so he could be the success story, but people understand the odds are against him.

[mnfaninnc]

I'm really hoping for a late growth spurt that allows him to keep his skill and skating. Things like that can happen, see Graovac. He doesn't need to come in at 6'5", but he could put on about 5" and be 6'.

[Need4speed99]

So he's short, wont be playing for Billy, no matter how well he does... Unless he's trade bait. 

 

With Billy and Hynes, no way he gets a shot. Unless it's on the 4th line and even then, doubtful.

At best, trade bait.

[Patrick]

On 8/15/2025 at 11:39 AM, MNCountryLife said:

People rarely talk about the upside of being short.  Shorter legs allow you to place your feet faster with less distance to travel.  Meaning you are capable of being quicker.  

Downside:  .... and more muscle can limit flexibility.  

I didn't realize tall people were required to take full strides on every stride.....😭😭😭.

And muscle only limits flexibility on the extreme. It would never impact a hockey player.

 

[FredJohnson]

On 8/15/2025 at 11:39 AM, MNCountryLife said:

Not every player needs to be 6' 3'' and 220 pounds.

I’ve seen many posts on this site stating that every player that’s not at least 6 foot and 200 lbs is a bust. #HWExperts

[FredJohnson]

On 8/15/2025 at 8:06 PM, 1Brotherbill said:

When you look at the number of early round player success over the later round player success you instantly see that players from the later rounds are extremely rare. 

Too many people think drafting is easy.

[MrCheatachu]

38 minutes ago, FredJohnson said:

Too many people think drafting is easy.

First rounders don't even always pan out...

For every Joe Pavelski (7th rounder) or Anders Lee (6th rounder) you're going to get a Lias Andersson(1st rounder) or Charlie Stramel (1st rounder) 

(edit: i guess Lias Andersson made it 110 NHL games...maybe a bad example, lets just go with Filip Johansson(1st rounder) instead)

https://dobberprospects.com/2020/05/16/nhl-draft-pick-probabilities/

Edited Monday at 05:02 PM by MrCheatachu

[FredJohnson]

27 minutes ago, MrCheatachu said:

First rounders don't even always pan out...

For every Joe Pavelski (7th rounder) or Anders Lee (6th rounder) you're going to get a Lias Andersson(1st rounder) or Charlie Stramel (1st rounder) 

(edit: i guess Lias Andersson made it 110 NHL games...maybe a bad example, lets just go with Filip Johansson(1st rounder) instead)

https://dobberprospects.com/2020/05/16/nhl-draft-pick-probabilities/

Thanks!!

I’m actually surprised that many 1st rounders play over 100 games. No way to tell if they are playing top-6 or top-4 (defense) minutes either. Pretty sobering that 66% of those coveted 2nd-rounders don’t play 100 games and it gets 4.6% worse each successive round (on average). Cool little jump ⬆️ in the 6th!

[MrCheatachu]

2 hours ago, FredJohnson said:

Thanks!!

I’m actually surprised that many 1st rounders play over 100 games. No way to tell if they are playing top-6 or top-4 (defense) minutes either. Pretty sobering that 66% of those coveted 2nd-rounders don’t play 100 games and it gets 4.6% worse each successive round (on average). Cool little jump ⬆️ in the 6th!

That article is 5 years old now, I'd be interested to see if those probabilities are changing over the years as scouting and advanced analytics progresses.

There are always going to be exceptions to the trends, and it's always easy to look in the rear-view mirror (Jeremy Swayman was available and the wild picked Mason Shaw?!), but it kinda puts into perspective the value of those higher round picks.

[FredJohnson]

32 minutes ago, MrCheatachu said:

and it's always easy to look in the rear-view mirror

Oh sure, just like every team can say they could’ve drafted KK97. It still takes a bit of luck, but I’m surprised the first rounders play >99 games that often.

[SkolWild73]

2 hours ago, MrCheatachu said:

That article is 5 years old now, I'd be interested to see if those probabilities are changing over the years as scouting and advanced analytics progresses.

 

There are always going to be exceptions to the trends, and it's always easy to look in the rear-view mirror (Jeremy Swayman was available and the wild picked Mason Shaw?!), but it kinda puts into perspective the value of those higher round picks.

Here is a good article that is from this year.

 

https://thehockeywriters.com/success-rates-of-nhl-draft-picks/

[FredJohnson]

3 hours ago, SkolWild73 said:

Here is a good article that is from this year.

 

https://thehockeywriters.com/success-rates-of-nhl-draft-picks/

Thanks! Bookmarked this one, too.

[Neil Urbanski]

10 hours ago, FredJohnson said:

Too many people think drafting is easy.

Ain't that the truth!

Food for thought: the studies smartly cited in the comments, and the many others like them, all generally show that a 4th round pick has a roughly 1/5 or 1/6 chance to have some sort of NHL career.

The Wild have more than that number of 4th rounders that would still be considered "prospects." So, if we just go by the math, it stands to reason that at least one of them will make it. Which one, if any? I know I wrote the Benak article, but if I had to bet money right now on only one player, I'd put it on Amidovski. Second would be Benak or Kiviharju. 

Time will tell! Guess that's why they call them "prospects" and not "sure things" 

[FredJohnson]

6 minutes ago, Neil Urbanski said:

that's why they call them "prospects"

Zactly! 😁

[MacGyver]

Man if there's a team in this league to give you prospect fatigue it's the Wild. When a team does not win year after year after year all the hope gets pinned on the prospects. Prospects have become the entire focus of the Wild since the Matt Dumba, Charlie Coyle and Makial Grandlund coming who were going to turn this team into a dynasty. 

[MrCheatachu]

15 hours ago, FredJohnson said:

Oh sure, just like every team can say they could’ve drafted KK97. It still takes a bit of luck, but I’m surprised the first rounders play >99 games that often.

And there's one team who was offered the choice of Tuch, Greenway or Kaprizov so they wouldnt pick Haula in the expansion draft instead of Dumba...could you imagine the alternative universe where Kaprizov was in Vegas?

[raithis]

21 hours ago, FredJohnson said:

Oh sure, just like every team can say they could’ve drafted KK97. It still takes a bit of luck, but I’m surprised the first rounders play >99 games that often.

Well, think about it.  If a team picks a player in the first round, they are more likely to keep giving that player chances.  Even notable busts like Daigle and Yakupov played well over 100 games.  Daigle played over 600 games.  100 games is only like 1.25 seasons. 

The 20% who don't do that are probably largely from teams that have rosters that were good enough where the prospect was just kept in lower leagues hoping they would develop.  When it became evident that they wouldn't, the team moved on.

It would be far more interesting to know average games played by draft position.

Edited Tuesday at 05:41 PM by raithis

[raithis]

6 minutes ago, raithis said:

It would be far more interesting to know average games played by draft position.

I hadn't clicked SkolWild73's link yet when I typed this. 

[raithis]

19 hours ago, SkolWild73 said:

Here is a good article that is from this year.

 

https://thehockeywriters.com/success-rates-of-nhl-draft-picks/

It's kind of amazing how bad 15th overall is compared to the rest of the draft order.  The rest of the draft order percentages are mostly trending in the same way, but for whatever reason, 15th specifically is as bad as picking in the late 20s. 

I know the Wild aren't exactly known for their ability to develop players and they often pick around that, but I didn't know it was so bad that it skewed data for the entire draft.  😛

[FredJohnson]

2 hours ago, raithis said:

If a team picks a player in the first round, they are more likely to keep giving that player chances.

So very true.