Islanders prospect daily updates, today’s games, and rankings

Prospect Rankings and Movement

I’ve recently revamped how I rank prospects. Not only did I define what is and isn’t a prospect, but I’ve gone through, compared, and ranked every player’s data from across every league they’ve played in.

The ranking still needs a bit of work but I’m at a good starting point to release the rankings. I plan on discussing my method in a bit more detail in a later post. But here are the top five prospects in the system and where the players who played yesterday and will play today, rank:

1. Oliver Wahlstrom
2. Kieffer Bellows
3. Noah Dobson
4. Samuel Bolduc
5. Robin Salo

Prospects rankings who are in action yesterday and today:

• William Dufour 21st of 28
• Anatoly Golyshev N/A

Dufour is playing VERY well for the Voltigeurs so you might be wondering why he ranks so low. Unfortunately, my rankings are mainly based on two things (1) points-per-game and (2) translation factors. The latter is the one that matters the most here.

Translation factors are a way to see how a player’s scoring rate in their current league would translate to the NHL. Here’s a quick overview of translation factors from Robert Vollman from 2015. (Note I’m using update factors.)

What you’ll quickly decipher here is that the QMJHL is one of the lowest-ranked leagues only the NCAA ECAC league is lower. That’s why Dufour is so low.

Golyshev doesn’t have a rank for reasons I already stated.