Is Shane Wright still the No. 1 pick? What’s at stake at the NHL Draft Lottery

Shane Wright entered the 2021-22 season as the consensus No. 1 prospect for the 2022 NHL Entry Draft. He was considered a true elite prospect by many scouts, a potential star No. 1 center. After being granted exceptional status to play in the OHL as a 15-year-old, he promptly scored 39 goals in 58 OHL games. He scored 9 goals and 14 points in 5 games at the U-18 Worlds as an underage player. He was on the path to stardom and it seemed inevitable he would have a great draft season.

Then the season started and Wright got out of the gates slowly. He had 8 points in 8 games in the season’s opening month. He also didn’t seem particularly impactful in the games I saw. Various reasonable rationales for his less-than-exceptional play started to come from around the NHL, with onlookers pointing to sample size or his missed season in 2020-21 as factors that could lead to a slow start.

It’s hard to speculate how much the missed season impacted players’ development, but it’s worth noting that it hasn’t seemed to slow Dallas pick Wyatt Johnston or Seattle pick Ryan Winterton from being among the top scorers in the OHL in points/game. Wright did come on strong in the second half though and ended up in the top 10 in OHL scoring.

Wright’s statistics coming up always looked amazing, but I admit there were only a couple of times when I saw him and was truly blown away: the opening game of the U17 challenge and his U18 worlds game vs. Sweden. He scored a hat trick in both. The obvious caveat here is that he was always so young that I just reasonably concluded that age was the reason why he wasn’t consistently having great games.

Those past viewings inform this season’s, though. I’ve talked to scouts about what they’ve seen and I’ve watched over a dozen Kingston games, both live and via video. The realization and common thought around the industry is that Wright simply lacks the dynamic athleticism and skill elements you typically associate with a No. 1 pick. He’s an excellent player and NHL prospect, but he doesn’t have Nathan MacKinnon’s skating, Patrick Kane’s hands, or Steven Stamkos’ shot.  I historically viewed Wright’s shot as elite, but it didn’t look that way this season, and in fact he had twice as many assists as goals. Wright is just a very well-rounded player, which admittedly can be boring for a first overall pick. It’s why you hear scouts project him as Patrice Bergeron and Ryan O’Reilly, neither of whom, mind you, were first-round picks due to their lack of some of those dynamic elements. You can argue this is a risky projection for a teenager when there isn’t a very large talent high side to hit. That said, similar descriptions could be used for the top two picks in the 2021 draft in Owen Power and Matthew Beniers. My current comparable for Wright would be Rangers center Mika Zibanejad.

Wright has been quite productive this season, but compared to where top CHL prospects usually are, it’s clear he’s not at the level you’re used to seeing of a first overall pick in terms of dominance of his respective CHL league.

Shane Wright’s grip on the No. 1 pick has yet to be challenged in part due to the lack of an obvious riser this season. Logan Cooley is an excellent prospect but has 36 points in 24 USHL games. Joakim Kemell got off to a scorching start in Liiga but has since slowed down considerably, and the same can be said to a lesser extent about Matthew Savoie in the WHL. Juraj Slafkovsky had a tremendous Olympics and overall has been impressive in international play the last two seasons, but despite a good last few weeks with his club his overall Liiga production is nothing amazing.

(Robert Lefebvre / OHL Images)

“You’re keeping a guy at first overall based mostly on what he’s done in past seasons and not in his draft season,” said one NHL executive. “I think that’s dangerous.” This is a reasonable thought, and it’s one I’ve considered more than once. Most NHL scouts I’ve discussed Wright with admit they’re not jumping out of their seats for him at the No. 1 pick, but they also admit he would be their pick simply due to the lack of an obvious alternate. There were several scouts in the first half of the season arguing to me that Logan Cooley was a plausible alternative, but less so lately after Cooley didn’t light it up this season. Lately there have been scouts arguing Slafkovsky as the main challenger to Wright, with a minority suggesting they would indeed take the Slovakian winger if they had the first pick.

Wright and Slafkovsky’s seasons are not over yet, though. Due to how delayed the CHL playoffs are, we still have to see how Wright fares in the postseason….