2022 NHL Draft Notebook: Volume 2
Thoughts and clips on Ryan Chesley, Mattias Hävelid, Elias Salomonsson, Isaac Howard, and Frank Nazar
Another draft notebook! Volume One covered Tristen Luneau, Seamus Casey, Conor Geekie, Brad Lambert, Matthew Savoie, and Shane Wright. This time, we look at Ryan Chesley, Mattias Hävelid, Elias Salomonsson, Isaac Howard, and Frank Nazar. I’m still introducing myself to this draft class— I watched three games for each player and these are my initial thoughts on their respective outlooks.
Ryan Chesley
Chesley’s transitional profile is an extremely promising one— so much so that I currently see him as the top defenceman in the draft. No other defenceman has displayed the consistently strong breakout reads that I saw from Chesley: Tristan Luneau struggled to headman the puck in my viewings, Simon Nemec can make some truly baffling decisions and seems a little Simon Edvinsson-esque, and the Swedish duo of Mattias Hävelid and Elias Salomonsson fail to match Chesley’s consistency and poise with the puck on the breakout.
Chesley is smart and deliberate in transition, getting his head up and looking to hit teammates in space rather than just finding the first stick he can see.
He will happily utilize the weak side, playing the puck to his defensive partner if the forecheck is overloading the strong side of the ice. This is a great example here— sees two forwards ready to angle him into the boards, so he curls back and hits his partner instead. Better execution on the pass and this is probably a clean exit.
Draws pressure, uses the weak side.
Chesley is very poised in the face of the forecheck and can make plays as he’s being checked. He retrieves this puck, doesn’t rush a play even with an opponent right in front of him, and slips an outlet pass through.
Watch him outmuscle this forechecker and then find the breakout pass. Beautiful.
Chesley offers some real offensive upside as well, eagerly choosing opportunities to activate from his standard defensive post and fully participate in the offence. My favourite iteration of that is the breakout activation, where Chesley will jump at the chance to act as an almost forward-like participant in the transition game when loose pucks fall within his range in the defensive zone. Usually, he’ll then hit a winger up ice.
And sometimes, Chesley will carry the puck forwards himself as well. This was a nice flash of puck skills moving through the neutral zone.
Within the offensive zone there’s the blueline activation, where a defender will move off the blueline into space in the o-zone to present a more dangeorus passing option. This is an awesome goal where Chesley recognizes the space in the middle of the ice and rips a big slapper into the top corner.
Chesley’s transition defence is also a strong point for him. Whereas many defencemen this age mostly concern themselves with forcing rush attackers to the outside of the ice, Chesley plays a close, aggressive gap and displays some proactive rush defence tendencies, looking to step up on passes at the blueline and deny entries altogether.
He doesn’t quite get his stick on the puck here, but I love how he anticipates this pass and tries to get the play moving the other way. He disrupts the pass angle enough to force an uncontrolled entry anyway.
The defender can be a little overaggressive with the NZ defence at times, but it’s better to be too aggressive than too passive, especially for a 17 year old. He delivers a nice hit here, but overconcerning himself with the initial puckhandler and forgetting to go stick on puck first allows the opposing team to sustain their attack.
Keen attackers can exploit Chesley’s eagerness to force turnovers— this forward sees Chesley turn his feet in an effort to go after the puck and manages to accelerate past the defender for an excellent chance at the top of the crease.
A tighter initial gap would have kept Chesley out of a situation where he needed to decelerate and close the gap, which is where he gets exploited, so this is actually an example of him not being aggressive enough earlier in the play— it’s difficult to set an ideal gap on every rush attempt. But generally speaking, Chesley is quite good with his gap control.
Mattias Hävelid
I have Hävelid a tier below Chesley among defencemen because he’s less polished and isn’t as well-rounded, but I think he could potentially bring a similar level of upside. Hävelid excels at offensive activation— doing some of the same activations that Chesley does, but more frequently and with greater involvement— and beats out Chesley in terms of offensive upside. He isn’t as poised or steady in transition, and projects to be less effective than Chesley in that area, but shows the ability to make advanced reads some of the time and flashes high-level forecheck evasion ability. There are also some instances of aggressive, proactive rush defence, but is not as consistent as Chesley there either. I see top pair upside here— there’s potential for Hävelid to be above-average offensively and in transition and strong enough at NZ defence to make up for the in-zone defensive issues that his size may bring.
My favourite part of Hävelid’s game is how frequently he looks to activate into the offensive play. He’s not done after making an outlet pass, he’s going to follow that up and present another pass option. It’s a terrific habit that enables a lot of offensive opportunities.
Hävelid forces a failed entry by closing out the puck carrier along the boards, gets it back, makes an outlet, and is right there as an option in the middle.
He makes a nice slip pass to his winger here, then busts his ass to stay in the play as a rush option.
Substitutes as a forward for this rush, controlled entry, and then does some work down low along the boards.
Here he is presenting an option in the middle of the ice as the weak side defenceman— skates it out for an uncontrolled entry and chips it in when he runs out of space.
Hävelid’s ability to activate off the offensive blueline to make plays in the o-zone is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, I saw him make several solid plays within the offensive zone. Two assists here stemming from blueline play.
And here he activates for a shot from the high slot.
But I also feel that Hävelid views his offensive role primarily as a generator of point shots— if he gets the puck on the point, he should look to loft it into traffic, and only look to pass if the opportunity is glaring. This is the wrong mindset, because point shots are a very inefficient method of offensive creation. When you recieve a puck at the blueline, the objective should be to try to work the puck into the slot through either skating or passing. Once it gets there, then you can shoot it. Hävelid passes up plenty of opportunities to work off the blueline into the slot in favour of low-percentage point shots. Ask yourself: is there more room for Hävelid to take before shooting these pucks, or is he settling for low-percentage looks? I think he has room to maneuver in all three clips below— point shots should be seen as more of a last resort than a productive offensive play. It’s better than a straight turnover, sure, but doesn’t present much of a threat at all and doesn’t extend the offensive possession either.
Elias Salomonsson
Salomonsson outproduced Mattias Hävelid , putting up 15 points in 14 U20 games and even getting into three SHL games for Skelleftea. But I don’t think his upside nearly matches that of Hävelid, who displays terrific offensive habits and a clear area where a simple mindset change could improve his results. Salomonsson plays a generally unspectacular game, mostly keeping himself out of trouble on the breakout just by finding a little bit of space and making the easy play and making basic activation reads to involve himself offensively. Defensively, he was inconsistent in junior play but looked excellent defending the blueline in his SHL debut, where aggressive rush defence seemed to be his major focus in limited minutes. If he can maintain that effective NZ defence while continuing to be able to find space on the breakout against high-level competition, Salomonsson will be very much capable of becoming a capable top-four defenceman— I just don’t think he has the offensive skill or eagerness to play a larger role like Hävelid or Chesley.
Let’s look at that SHL neutral zone defence. Here’s Salomonsson aggressively crashing into a passing lane, forcing the turnover, and creating a controlled entry for himself.
In a similar spot— he crashes upon the pass recipient’s back, making it very difficult for them to get turned around and keep the puck moving forwards.
Salomonsson sets a tight gap on the puckcarrier from the moment he first touches the puck and makes a play for the puck around the offensive blueline, creating a loose puck.
And here’s a little activation down the offensive wall for an outside shot, then he recovers to play solid NZ defence and eventually close out the puckcarrier on the wall.
Salomonsson’s defence didn’t look nearly as strong in junior action. Check out this fly-by after the forward changes direction— poor guy is absolutely lost.
Here he plays a poor gap and then doesn’t really contest the shot as the opponent scores upon him. He didn’t really do anything at all on this play despite being the defensive player in the middle of the play— he didn’t contest the entry, the pass, or the shot.
And here a forward manages to drive behind him to the backpost and the puckcarrier is able to force a pass through Salomonsson, resulting in a goal against.
So, it’s a mixed bag. The good news is that when Salomonsson seems to really concentrate on his defensive actions, like in his SHL debut, he certainly seems to be capable of playing effective neutral zone defence against strong competition.
Let’s look at the breakout game, which is also a mixed bag. The good news: Salomonsson seems to be quite good at finding space with the puck, giving him plenty of time to find an outlet. Plus, he seems to be reasonably capable of utilizing the weak side most of the time. The bad news: There seems to be little advanced problem solving ability here and Salomonsson does not seem like a player who responds to heavy forechecking pressure particularly well.
Here are some solid reads when Salomonsson has space to work with. The first is a nice play to throw off the forechecker, the second contains a little bit of offensive work at the end.
But then I see plays like these two and I start to doubt Salomonsson’s transition process a little bit. This one pained me— he has options here, he can either hit that winger on the boards fast, or if the bobble prevented him from doing that, switch the play back to his defensive partner on the weak side. Instead, he panics and goes glass-and-out; well he never actually gets it out, so I guess he just goes glass.
For a guy that seems most comfortable making plays out in space, you’d think Salomonsson would understand that you move your feet, find the space, then make the play. The Finnish forechecker correctly reprimands him in the corner for his mistake— that’s called negative reinforcement. Again, it’s the lack of comfort under pressure that is concerning here.
Three games don’t do any players justice, but especially for Salomonsson, three games isn’t enough of a sample to start to get comfortable for a read on this kid— he just seems to be one of those guys that is a little up-and-down and not real consistent with his play. Last year was a weird hockey season too and he bounced around from different levels. My initial read is a pretty basic transition player with some upside as a rush defender and semi-frequent offensive contributor, which is fine, but that could change significantly as I see him play next season. This is where I’m at right now.
Isaac Howard
Howard and Frank Nazar, statistically, are the two best forwards on what will be the NTDP U18 squad this upcoming season. Neither of them are true standout talents though-- if you contextualize their production last season with historical NTDP talents, their even-strength primary points per game against USHL competition aligns most closely with players like Cole Caufield, Clayton Keller, Jeremy Bracco, and Kieffer Bellows. The truly elite players that passed through the NTDP-- Matthews, Hughes, Eichel, M. Tkachuk-- posted numbers far surpassing Howard and Nazar even while primarily suiting up for the U18s rather than the U17s in their draft year minus one seasons. Howard and Nazar are both very raw prospects with plenty of skill and some significant areas for development. We’ll start with Howard, the U17s leading scorer.
My concern with Howard is that, while he is proficient at both, he does not seem to operate at a particularly high level of danger as either a scorer or a playmaker. He gets plenty of slot opportunities and can dangle his way there himself too, but doesn’t have a very powerful shot and can’t threaten from beyond the immediate slot. And he isn’t a pass-first player either, preferring to do most of his passing in the neutral zone and then attack the net with his puck skills once he makes it into the offensive zone. His results seem to be more than the sum of his tools, or at least his projectable tools, and that’s why he isn’t regarded as a likely top ten pick despite leading this year’s NTDP crop in scoring last season.
The stickhandling is pretty, but this shot ain’t a threat.
More pretty stickhandling, but can’t finish from this angle.
Aaaand more pretty stickhandling, but again cannot finish.
Howard’s dangle-heavy style also results in more than his fair share of offensive blueline turnovers, which is not a good way to endear yourself to a coach.
Howard is a tough player to evaluate right now because his current role—a puck-dominant offensive leader— is pretty far from what his probable NHL role will be: an off-puck scorer who can use the hands in short bursts to work within the slot, but not a puck-dominant player who’ll get the opportunity to dangle on entries all the time. Against stronger competition, he’ll start to lean more on being in the right spot at the right time and letting the puck come to him, rather than trying to dangle the puck into the right spots himself. He’ll be getting more chances like these ones below than ones like the first clips we looked at.
Frank Nazar
Nazar will probably play a similar role to what I expect from Howard, only that he has a better shot that will lend him more of an advantage in that type of scoring role. He’s a little more used to the off-puck style already, making plays like this skating alongside Howard on the U17’s top line. He looks very good in these two clips using his puck skills and finishing ability in short bursts after receiving the puck in good spots.
Like Howard, Nazar likes to dangle at the line, and like Howard, he was often unsuccessful. He tries to go through the defender here?? Buddy, you’re literally 5’9”? Flattened him though, credit for that. Conservation of momentum.
Nazar has the edge as a shooter, but is also a rather poor playmaker. Here’s a Nazar special, combining a near-turnover on the entry with a telegraphed pass that has no chance of connecting.
Here’s another very telegraphed pass that is just doomed from the start.
He also does a lot of blindly throwing the puck out in front.
This is literally a pass to the other team. Intentional grounding— no receiver in the area.
Sometimes you get lucky though, this blind pass rattles around a bit and Nazar ends up with a primary assist.
Howard and Nazar both seem like middle-six off-puck scoring types to me. Good hands that can be productive when used properly, good scoring instincts, but probably not cut out for a more puck-dominant role. Am interested to get first looks at other NTDP guys like Logan Cooley (who seems to be the most highly thought of player from last year’s U17s from a draft perspective right now) and Rutger McGroarty in coming days.