The Unclaimed: Execs & Scouts Dish on why EliteProspects European Ranked Players Passed Through the 2020 NHL Draft

EliteProspects ranked 129 players for the 2020 NHL Entry Draft, and 20 of them passed through the draft unclaimed.

That’s pretty much par for the course. The average team ranks somewhere between 80-120 skaters a year, and I’ve yet to encounter one that’s exhausted their board. It just doesn’t happen.

We’re not in control of the levers of power — our draft rankings are purely an academic exercise — but in this sense perhaps more so than most, our work reflected that of an NHL team.

October 7th was hardly the end of these player’s stories either. The NHL Draft is about as imperfect as it gets. The industry’s best are batting about .300. That re-entries find teams in their draft-plus-one and draft-plus-two seasons is proof enough, but the existence of undrafted free agents really sends the me