[dustygoon]

Cool survey on The Athletic. They asked draft prospects who they thought the most talented non-teammate they played against was excluding Bedard. Not a perfect survey....skewed depending on where the 61 kids interviewed came from (e.g. not many played against Reinbacher i assume). Interesting comment and results about Barlow.

Ethan Gauthier called Zach Benson “the best player I’ve played on a line with.” ....Multiple players credited Colby Barlow for how hard he is to stop. One said they told an NHL club in an interview that they’d take Brayden Yager with them to the NHL if they could pick. Only nine of the 60 votes went to defencemen because of the nature of the question, and five of those were for Axel Sandin Pellikka, who was most popular among U.S. NTDP players in what I thought was a notable sign of respect.

Here was the final tally, ranked by most common (number of responses in parentheses).

1. Will Smith (8)
2. Zach Benson (7)
3. Colby Barlow (6)
T4. Calum Ritchie, Axel Sandin Pellikka (5)
T6. Leo Carlsson, Andrew Cristall, Dalibor Dvorsky, Otto Stenberg (3)
T10. Adam Fantilli, Jayden Perron, Brayden Yager, Etienne Morin (2)
T14. Eduard Sale, Quentin Musty, Luca Cagnoni, Luca Pinelli, Gracyn Sawchyn, Ryan Leonard, Nick Lardis, David Reinbacher, Riley Heidt (1)

https://theathletic.com/4552823/2023...edard-michkov/