5. Ty Voit
Age: 19
Height/Weight: 5’9 150lbs
Position: Centre/ Right Wing
Shoots: Right
Draft: 5th round 153rd overall 2021
The 2021 draft was insane.
Instead of watching a year’s worth of hockey games and crunching scouting reports, NHL teams were left to pretty much guess what players would be good in the future.
To be sure this is pretty much what they do every year, but in 2021 it was even worse.
The 2020 draft was unusual, but it happened at the start of the pandemic and most of the previous season had happened as scheduled.
The 2021 draft featured players who’s draft year was the 2020-21 season, much of which was cancelled, postponed, or played under unusual circumstances.
I am sure that as time goes on, the 2021 draft will feature many more players from the lower rounds who make the NHL and many less from the higher rounds.
An example of how this might play out can be seen in Ty Voit. He didn’t even play in the season he was drafted. The Leafs based their selection on what they saw the previous year.
Voit then rewarded their faith by going from 28 to 80 points while playing in the OHL last year.
He wasn’t even on the Leafs original training camp roster this year, but they brought him in after a few players couldn’t play due to injury. (Assumedly, they don’t want to go over 50 players in camp).
Voit was a late arrival, and the first cut, but don’t let that cloud your view of him as a prospect. He’s a long-term project, and will be back in junior again this year.
But he’s fast, he can score, he isn’t afraid to go to the net or into the corner, and yup, he’s also known as a smart player with a great competitive nature.
I rank Voit much higher than pretty much anyone and the reason is because I saw him play live and I really thought he was great. Perhaps I’m overrating him, but he seems pretty similar in a lot of ways to everyone else on this list, but he seems to have more offensive potential (was 18th in the OHL last year).
I think small players get really underrated, especially when they play centre and almost certainly won’t do so in the NHL. Doubly so when they are small and play like they aren’t.
That said, Voit probably has less chance of making the NHL out of everyone on this list. But if he does make it, it will be as a very unlikely star.