2026 NHL draft: Gavin McKenna, Ivar Stenberg top rankings - ESPN

It's that time of year again! NHL teams who did not make the Stanley Cup playoffs will be laser-focused on lottery balls drawn at the NHL Network studios in Secaucus, New Jersey, on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET, ESPN). With so many possibilities and intrigue around the draft class, there are bound to be surprises.

There is no consensus on any player except Gavin McKenna, and even he has scouts questioning whether he should be the first player off the board. If your team needs a high-end defenseman, this is the year. There are a handful of prospects projected to become foundational pieces on the top pair.

My projections model is most heavily favored in this iteration of the rankings, with a few adjustments made. For a refresher, the model weighs scoring statistics from the current season and last season, league strength, tracking statistics (defensive, physical and transition play), age, size and injuries. The injury factor is only weighed as a function of games played given the impact on sample size for projection volatility. The model has five outputs:

NHL ceiling: A player's peak if everything goes right

NHL floor: Worst playing outcome for prospect

NHL probability: Probability the player plays 200 NHL games

Most likely tier: What the player is most likely to be in the NHL based on statistical comparables

Statistical comparable: A comparable player in their draft year, based on NHL production equivalency, position, and size

The biggest change this year is the addition of a statistical comparable. Note: This is not about what the comparable player has become in the NHL; it is a comparable to the player in their draft year, before being selected. The comparison accounts for the player's position, NHL production equivalency, and