A very deep draft class. Those outside of the Top 10 were still taken in the first round (and Sam Colangelo at the beginning of the second). Lucas Raymond's scouting reports talked about his high skill levels; he just hasn't translated those into points so far in his career.

Vasili Podkolzin looks like a big swing at No. 10, but Russians are tricky to predict.

Grigori Denisenko was playing in the KHL as an 18-year-old. He didn't put up big numbers. As a 19-year-old he didn't improve on his numbers much. He's one to watch, but the trend isn't good so far.

Elias Pettersson was taken after 4 other players, despite elite numbers. Nick Suzuki was on the board until Pick 13. Some things don't make sense.

Things look pretty good so far for the Top 10 forwards taken. The model was off on Matthew Tkachuk's point totals (he's reasonably close to a point per game in his NHL career), but still had him as the 8th best forward in the draft.

Jesse Puljujarvi is a big wild card here as he's stuck in Edmonton Oilers/trade request purgatory.

This group is just entering the Age 22-24 window for our performance measurements.

Connor McDavid is pretty good at scoring. He's the only player to hit 100 NHLdx in a season, and he cleared that threshold quite easily.

The Boston Bruins had 3 straight picks starting at No. 14. Jake DeBrusk looks to have been a good choice. Should they have taken Connor and Barzal? There were plenty of other excellent options as well. Zenyshyn and DeBrusk had a *combined* NHLdx of 36. If selecting just forwards, for NHLdx it would've been Connor, Robin Kovacs (oops), and Brock Boeser.

Kirill Kaprizov, Travis Konecny, Daniel Sprong, Barzal, and Colin White are next on the list just below 30 NHLdx. Incredible depth to this draft class.

The Bruins picks aren't the only things that seemed obvious - Pavel Zacha and Lawson Crouse never should've gone that high considering the options.

Jeremy Bracco is at 113 points in 119 GP in the AHL over the last 2 seasons. He still hasn't gotten a shot in the NHL. Selfishly, the model thinks he deserves one.

Robin Kovacs hasn't excelled anywhere outside of the Allsvenskan, and seems to have established himself as just a middle-6 forward in the SHL. There was obviously something in the scouting report that contradicted his stats and knocked him down to the 3rd round.

Draisaitl, Fiala, Pastrnak at 1, 2, 3. Would you take that over what actually happened?

The actual Top 10 averaged 46.2 points/82 GP. The model's Top 10 averaged 52.8 points/82 GP. That's a pretty significant improvement.

Josh Ho-Sang should probably be in the NHL.

The 2013 Draft was admittedly a mixed showing by the model. While it did show a 13% overall improvement in point output in ranking the top 20 forwards vs. the actual top 20 drafted, it didn't fare well in the 5-15 range.

Monahan and Horvat are interesting cases. Neither hit the 80-point mark in juniors, but made the jump to the NHL before they turned 20. Looking deeper, Monahan had great underlying numbers, with a EVGF%Rel of over 12 (the 67s were terrible - they won 12 games that year), while Horvat struggled in comparison to his teammates (-10% EVGF%Rel; in +/- he was +3; his teammate Max Domi was +30), so there's no singular answer to their immediate success.

Nichushkin's numbers would look better if he hadn't left for the KHL in his peak years. He's at 29 PTS/82 GP in his career.

Curtis Lazar as a bust was entirely predictable. Sorry, Ottawa. It just wasn't a strong year for the WHL - Nic Petan, who had a much stronger case, with 120 points for Portland, has never managed to secure a regular NHL roster spot.

Taylor Cammarata, even when adjusting for his height (5'7"), looked solid. It wasn't immediately apparent he'd be a bust, as after great numbers in the USHL in his draft year, he followed with a strong freshman season in the NCAA with Minnesota. The model definitely thinks that a 3rd-round selection was a worthy risk.

A strongly above-average performance by the model, at 20%+ improvement vs. the top 5 and top 20 selected.

Questions as to whether Yakupov was the right pick at No. 1 were legitimate in a sense. His numbers weren't strong vs. historical precedents at No. 1, but he was still the top F by the model.

Some may say Filip Forsberg should have obviously been the top F chosen, but his numbers in the Allsvenskan were pedestrian (17 points in 43 GP; for comparison, Alexander Wennberg nearly doubled that the next season).

Teams definitely missed out on Hertl and Teravainen - the model liked them both. Buffalo would probably want a re-do.

*Note that we don't include Alex Galchenyuk (No. 3 overall) here - he missed all but 2 games in the 2011-12 season. Extrapolating his numbers, he would likely be in the 45-point range.

Scheifele was a surprise to the model, but there was a good reason for that (similar to Ryan Johansen's poor projection in 2010) - he was only 6th in scoring among 2011 draft-eligible players in the OHL.

Armia was a surprise in the other direction - he put up excellent numbers (29 PTS in 48 GP) for an 18-year-old in the Liiga. That said, he might just be a late bloomer - over the past 2 seasons he's increased his production to 38 points/82 GP.

Johnny Hockey should have been drafted higher than No. 104. He wasn't predicted as near-elite, but NHLdx had him ranked No. 8 among F.

The model had no definitive choice in the Taylor/Tyler debate. Seguin was over a point/GP in from age 22-24, but over their entire careers both are in the low 70s/82 GP.

The model wasn't a fan of Johansen, but with good reason - he was 4th in scoring among 2010 draft-eligible players in the WHL.

Weal eventually did make it as an NHL regular, but didn't score his first point until his Age 25 season (he registered 0 points in 14 GP the year before), which means his production technically falls outside of our definition of "peak." He's put up 26 points/82 games so far in his NHL career.

Great job by St. Louis.