New Jersey Devils: One Tier-Five Looks Like A Superstar
The New Jersey Devils should always be evaluating tier-five prospects.
The New Jersey Devils 2020-21 Prospect Pyramid is the gift that keeps on giving. It has proven that the future will be bright in New Jersey if they continue drafting and developing a lot of these great young prospects. In the first four tiers, there have been players to discuss that could absolutely be impact players in the NHL one day. Tier five has a few more long shots but some names that could have awesome careers if they keep it up.
Listed in tier-five, there are a couple of players that could all rise up or fall down as the years go on. If any tier was the biggest Wild Card, it would be this one. Aarne Talvitie, Nico Daws, Nikita Okhotyuk, Michael Vukojevic, Arseni Gritsyuk, Marian Studenic, Graeme Clarke, Jaromir Pytlik, Daniil Misyul, and Yegor Sharangovich all make up this tier.
Of all these players listed, Sharangovich has garnered the most conversation. There are a lot of people who believe that he should be placed in a higher tier. He was placed in tier-five because of his slow but steady progression as a prospect. His 2020-21 KHL season has been a breakout. If it weren’t for COVID-19, we would not have even seen him play a game before the Prospect Pyramid came out.
Sharangovich became a goal-scoring machine in the KHL on loan. He has been with the Binghamton Devils for the past couple of seasons and has gotten progressively better as the years went along. If he can keep it up, he might be in the NHL before he even has a chance to climb the pyramid.
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Aarne Talvitie is another prospect who had some discussion about his placement here. He was in tier three in 2019-20 because he is a fantastic hockey player. However, an injury has derailed his development a little bit. He can still climb his way back up the ranks but the injury certainly set him back. It would be awesome to see him as a New Jersey Devils forward someday but there is a lot of work to be done.
The rest of the prospects are all lower drafted players that need a lot more development. This isn’t a bad spot to be in for a lot of them but there is a bit more learning to do before they play pro hockey or advance in the pro game.
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The same thing can be said for tier-six of the Prospect Pyramid. No individual players are listed here, but you can describe it as the “everybody else” tier. All of the prospects in the organization that aren’t one of the 25 listed in the first five tiers are in this group. If they are there now, that doesn’t mean that they have no chance of being in the NHL. They just need to work hard to make a name for themselves and advance up the pyramid.
As mentioned before, the Devils have a very good farm system right now. It doesn’t have a guaranteed superstar but with guys like Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes in the NHL already, they are in great shape. They need to just continue developing them the right way. Some of them are already playing overseas but now we have to just wait for pro hockey to return to North America. The 2020-21 World Juniors are right around the corner to get a look at a bunch of these guys as well.