Top 100 NHL Prospects (4 Kings)

[Psych3man]

11. Gabriel Vilardi, C, Los Angeles

Skating: 45
Puck Skills: 60
Physical Game: 60
Hockey sense: 65

Vilardi is one of the better players outside the NHL. He has the unique combination of being a high-end playmaker and tough to handle physically. He’s big, strong and can make fantastic passes and dekes seem routine. When he returned from injury this season and was traded from Windsor to Kingston he dominated the OHL. He’s a below-average skater, which is a reasonable concern about his game, and the biggest reason why he may not end up a star, but I still believe a lot in his skill set. He’s such an advanced player physically that he could possibly make the Kings next season and be a good top-six forward for them soon. Staying healthy will be important for him and it’s something he has struggled to do.

18. Rasmus Kupari, C, Los Angeles

Skating: 60
Puck Skills: 60
Physical Game: 50
Hockey sense: 55

There are a lot of tools to like in Kupari’s game. He’s a very strong skater who explodes out of his first few strides and puts pressure on defenders using his speed. His stride is incredibly smooth, with so much power coming from every push off. Kupari also has high-end puck skills and can make skilled plays in tight and off the rush. I’ve seen flashes of good playmaking from him, but I don’t think he’s a high-end passer but he’s fine in that area. He also has an above-average shot. He needs time to round out his game, and to learn when to play quick and when to slow plays down.

Note on tier change: Going into the draft, Kupari was rated as very good, but after watching him in the summer and early parts of his season, I bumped him up and moved his hockey sense from a 50 to a 55.

65. Kale Clague, D, Los Angeles

Skating: 60
Puck Skills: 55
Physical Game: 40
Hockey sense: 60

Clague was the top defenseman in the WHL this season. He’s an excellent skater with the mobility to evade pressure and lead a rush. He’s skilled with the puck, but his offense comes more from his feet and his great vision as a puck-mover. He can make unique plays as a distributor and projects to be able to QB a power play at the NHL level. Clague can be decent defensively, but he’s not the biggest guy and can be prone to being exposed a little too much on the defensive side of the puck. He’s smart and mobile enough though to make enough stops to be reliable as a pro. Projecting him into the NHL, Kale will be part of any team’s healthy blueline.

95. Jaret Anderson-Dolan, C, Los Angeles

Skating: 60
Puck Skills: 55
Physical Game: 40
Hockey sense: 55

I went from being lukewarm on Anderson-Dolan last season to becoming a huge fan of his this season. Clague gets more of the press from the Kings system but for my money Anderson-Dolan is as good a prospect. He was one of the best players in the WHL this season. He has great speed, plays hard, but I was really impressed this season by the level of skill and playmaking he showed on top of his quality shot. He’s not like his teammate, Kailer Yamamoto, but he’s not miles off in terms of the quality of plays he makes. You add in the fact he’s a competent two-way center and the only issue with him is size. He was one of the youngest players in his draft and with added development we’re seeing a player who could make the Kings’ lineup shortly.

Pronman: Top 100 NHL prospects entering the 2018-19 season

 

[Stunner_At_Staples_Kings]

Do you subscribe to that site? I tried to look and it makes you sign up.

Interesting that Kupari is so high, because he wasn't even top 18 drafted this year. I mean, great news if it's true. We actually would be back in the discussion if we could get one puck-moving defenseman, and one young forward who could emerge as a scorer. Would change a lot and balance everything out.

 

[Psych3man]

Do you subscribe to that site? I tried to look and it makes you sign up.

I do subscribe to The Athletic. I really like it.

 

[PuckinUgly57]

I downloaded The Athletic app and they give you 3 free articles before you have to pay for a plan, snagged this one off their site before I went through the 3 and deleted the app. The videos aren't that great (at least they weren't on my phone) but there are some details in there you can clearly see (12000 character limit, multiple posts coming up - looks like when I split it up the video links disappear).

Good read about Villardi and how he isn't overly skilled in any one area but put together he is the complete package. His description sounds a lot like Kopitar more than anything. Hope his back doesn't screw up his career before it ever gets started.

In hockey, as in life, there are archetypes built on hyperbole and buzzwords which are designed to fit every player into a pre-defined box. Scouts and evaluators often fall prey to lazily characterizing young prospects in this way: the power forward, the two-way centre, the speedy winger, the one-dimensional scorer, the elusive European, the stay-at-home defenceman. But sometimes, just sometimes, there’s a player who is so uniquely different from everyone else in approach or in ability that you can’t help but notice him. These players have mastered their skill and used it to set themselves apart. The Gifted is a 10-part series which examines through video the NHL’s most fascinating prospects and the unique skillsets that define them. By popular demand, The Gifted is back this fall. It runs every Friday. Check out last year’s series featuring Carl Grundstrom, Jordan Kyrou, Vitaly Abramov, Juuso Valimaki, Vili Saarijarvi, Filip Chlapik, Travis Sanheim, Timo Meier, Kirill Kaprizov, and Elias Pettersson here.

The Gifted (the 2018 series): Part 1: Miro Heiskanen | Part 2: Casey Mittelstadt | Part 3: Dylan Strome | Part 4: Oliver Wahlstrom | Part 5: Gabe Vilardi | Part 6: Adam Boqvist | Part 7: Evan Bouchard | Part 8: Kristian Vesalainen | Part 9: Jonathan Dahlen | Part 10: Morgan Frost

When I opened this year’s series with Miro Heiskanen I set out on wanting to discuss a new type of prospect this time around. In last year’s series, I focused on skills-specific players who thrive on the basis of one or two unique attributes. In doing so I ignored a different kind of player: the player who thrives despite lacking any one standout tool. Those players do exist, and they’re fascinating in their own way, because they dominate a game without actually getting noticed all that often. And that, in itself, is a skill. It’s not easy to be a star without being faster, more elusive, more powerful, more dynamic with the puck, or a stronger shooter than your peers — all of the things that find a player in this series.

Heiskanen is unique because he built a foundation of skills needed to be an NHL defencemen before he ever developed one wow-you skill. Evan Bouchard, who I’ll discuss later in the series, is fresh off one of the most productive draft-eligible seasons in the history of the OHL by a defenceman and he did it while playing a relatively plain, almost ordinary game.

And Gabe Vilardi is somewhere between Heiskanen and Bouchard, but he’s repackaged and repurposed as a forward.

Unlike with Heiskanen, who I was lower on than I should have been in retrospect during his draft year, I have always been a big fan of the way Vilardi plays the game. Before he fell to the Kings at 11th overall in 2017, he spent the most of the year ranked at No. 4 and No. 5 on my draft board. His Memorial Cup performance was some of the best hockey I’ve ever seen a 17-year-old play on that stage, and was chief among the reasons I was as surprised when he fell out of the top-10 a few weeks later at the draft. On a talented Windsor team that featured Jeremy Bracco, Logan Brown, and Mikhail Sergachev, among others, Vilardi was, far and away their best player despite not scoring a single goal.

Last year, Vilardi’s 1.81 points per game ranked second in the OHL behind Jordan Kyrou (1.95) but he did it without drawing the attention of a playmaker like Robert Thomas (1.53), a speedster like Morgan Frost (1.67), a shooter like Owen Tippett (1.47), or a creative handler like Nick Suzuki (1.56).

So this summer, when I released my annual top 50 drafted NHL prospects ranking, Vilardi landed at No. 13.

And yet, I had to contrast how much I have historically liked his game and his production, against viewings where I left the rink disappointed in how he looked. Because somewhere in those viewings my eyes are playing tricks on me. With players like Vilardi, evaluators have to be careful with conflating effectiveness and flash — or lack thereof.

I went back and watched three of Kingston’s five first-round games against North Bay in an attempt to marry that distinction between what your eyes see when Vilardi is on the ice (which can look underwhelming) and what’s actually happening when he’s out there (which is borne out in his production).

The outcomes speak for themselves. In five games, Vilardi picked up five goals and 12 points (2.20 points per game), and registered 22 shots (an astonishing 4.4 shots per game).

But you quickly learn, when you dig a little deeper, that Vilardi’s game is about the details. That’s evident in some of the lesser outputs, too. I’m not a huge proponent of the value of faceoffs, but Vilardi was over 50 per cent in all five games and finished the series 67-for-102 (or 66 per cent, which is crazy). Over the course of his three seasons in the OHL, Vilardi has turned all of those little skills into assets.

One of the bigger strengths of Vilardi’s game is his defensive play. There are terms in hockey, like ‘competitiveness’ that I tend to avoid as best I can because they’re hard to quantify with both your eyes and available data, but Vilardi is one of those kids. Not only does he get it (he always supports the puck defensively and never flees the zone early) but he also keeps his feet moving, remains engaged, and fights for his space. Watch, below, how he supports the breakout low to provide an outlet, hesitates before exiting, retrieves it in the neutral zone, fights off a stick in his chest, drives to create an entry with his feet, loses it, and then drives the net to get it back and create a chance (Vilardi is No. 73 in all clips):

 

[PuckinUgly57]

Here, in the third period of Game 1, notice how Vilardi drives the centre lane from deep in the defensive zone, gets caught up in the play, pursues the carrier, finishes his check behind the front of the net, and then makes sure he tracks the play and gets back involved for the tip in front:

What stands out isn’t how aggressive he is in pursuit (Vilardi isn’t a particularly strong skater but it doesn’t prevent him from getting in on the forecheck) but rather what he does after he finishes his check behind the net. A lot of players would stop moving there. Vilardi stays in motion and makes sure he gets to the front of the net to get a piece before the shot gets through.

Sometimes, the little plays he makes are easily missed. Here, he wins the puck back with a deft stick lift after tracking the carrier and remains involved, creates another exit with his feet and a lateral pass, and then supports the play high in the zone to force a dump when the Frontenacs can’t pick up the retrieval:

He’s also just plain strong, and for every battle he wins with his stick, he wins another with body positioning and strength. Here’s 6-foot-3, 200-pound Gabe Vilardi out-muscling 6-foot-6, 220-pound Justin Brazeau (the biggest forward in the OHL last season), protecting the puck against a second forechecker, making the easy play to a teammate, and then hustling to re-join the play and push the tempo:

Over the course of a game, these little plays add up. In Game 5, when the Frontenacs rallied from behind to win in triple-overtime (more on that below), Vilardi made some big plays — but he also made a lot of little plays in key moments. They manifest into little pick-pocket retrievals like this one:

It seems like a little play, but if Vilardi doesn’t continue to keep his stick and his body in the play, that puck never gets to the top of the offensive zone, the cycle doesn’t continue, and the Frontenacs don’t eventually get the game-tying goal — and thus have to head back to North Bay for Game 6.

Because he always has his feet moving, despite his size, Vilardi also draws a lot of penalties. You can defend a big player who stops up and tries to play keep away because you can get to his inside. It’s a lot harder to reach around a big player while he’s in motion, even if that motion is slower than your own:

One of the biggest issues a lot of young players have (and you see this all the time in teenagers who play in college as freshmen) is that they also skate towardopen space, because they feel like they need separation, rather than at opposing teams. As the speed gets ramped up, that has two side-effects:

1. It forces players to the outside, where the space no longer exists when they get there like it did in junior hockey.
2. It encourages them to flee the zone early because they feel like they have to compensate by getting ahead of the play.

But another one of the little things that Vilardi does well is how quickly he rotates into that open space. Every movement is decisive so that when he skates into open space, if the puck isn’t on his stick by the time he gets there, he pivots and opens himself up in a new way so that he can’t be easily tracked (which is a blessing and a curse because lesser players struggle to think as fast as he is and they often fail to get him the puck when he’s open, which is normally only for a brief second).

Watch, for example, the play that led to that aforementioned game-tying goal:

There, Vilardi gets a secondary assist for the low-high pass he made to the point. But that’s the simple, right play. What jumps out to me, is the way he rotates, almost by 180 degrees to spin away from traffic in one motion and opens himself up to receive the pass that came to him in the first place. At the beginning of that sequence, it would have been easy for Vilardi to continue his motion towards the point. Instead, he recognizes that will take him out of the play and rotates aggressively towards the wall to make himself available as a pass option, even if it takes him away from the slot.

And Vilardi employs that again, and again. Here, after driving the centre lane and creating the entry, Vilardi gives up the puck and attacks the front of the net. But instead of stopping and slowing his motion, we see that Vilardi-pivot, he curls behind the net and opens himself up to the puck carrier as a pass option, despite not getting it back he continues to stay in motion to avoid being tracked before eventually getting off a one-timer on a rolling puck:

Offensively, Vilardi also has some quirks to his game that allow him to make plays — but they aren’t the kind of quirks that look like they’re high-end skills.

The first is his ability to protect the puck. When Vilardi leans on players, and leverages his weight, he doesn’t sacrifice control over his stick and his core in the process (which is rare, even for a big player). Watch, for example, this Game 1 sequence:

There, Vilardi wins the puck back and leaves a drop pass for a teammate for another secondary assist. Simple, right? Sure, but he does it while leaning off balance after corralling the puck (and without bobbling it) moments before being pushed against the boards into a standstill. Not only does he come out of it with full control, he also uses some decent footwork to then attack towards the high slot while shielding the puck with his stick on the opposite side of his body (attacking to his right, handling on his left) before making a heady little sideways pass against the grain instead of forcing a play into traffic.

That ability to handle the puck while skating with a variety of strides/on a variety of edges, allows him to remain a cycle protection threat in tight spaces too. Below, that tight space included behind the net when Vilardi allowed the puck to pass him by and then handled it on his backhand for the attempted wraparound. While he bumps the net on the second attempted retrieval, Vilardi had also beat his two men to that puck:

Those puck skills, matched with his strength, his playmaking, and his ability to get into open space also make Vilardi a versatile option on the powerplay. In Kingston, he played three different roles on the man-advantage throughout the year:

1. The wall (his primary spot)
2. The point (a close second)
3. The net-front

For most players of Vilardi’s size, the net-front is usually the only real option. For Vilardi, there’s enough talent to where that has never needed to be his role (which bodes well for translatable talent at the NHL level).

Here he is, playing the wing rather than centre while remaining the focal point of the powerplay (everything runs through Vilardi):

There, if you pay close attention, you’ll start to see some of the details I mentioned (did you notice the pivot?). Most of all, you’ll see a player who attacks and then makes quick decisions. There’s no hesitation. When he curls towards the slot, it’s to make the next play (the pass-off before attacking the top of the crease and rotating back into that open space I’ve discussed). His second pass is the same (draw attention and then find the man in the slot).

Everything is inward-facing, too. By that, I mean that for a big man, Vilardi does a wonderful job opening his stride up. Here, after getting the drop pass, notice how Vilardi opens his body up to the centre of the ice to go heel-to-heel rather than staying linear (which would have him facing the corner and limit his ability to see and play towards the slot, rather than the corner):

Late in Game 6, a combination of those tools produced another assist for Vilardi (though this time he was playing the point). Constant motion at the point, avoid remaining static, good footwork on his crossovers, and then move the puck for a set play. Bada bing, bada boom:

None of these assists are particularly noteworthy, but he’s contributing to play in small, productive ways and that creates results with repetition. This assist, from Game 2, is much of the same. Twice Vilardi doesn’t force a play when he has a chance, is comfortable to wait and reset, gets it back at the offensive zone blue line, and makes the play to the trailing F3 to create the entry:

Vilardi’s biggest offensive weapon has become his shot. For a while, including during that aforementioned brilliant Memorial Cup he had, Vilardi was predominantly a pass-first, puck-protection centre with size. In recent memory, he has developed a technique in his shot that allows him to remain elusive and unpredictable in a way that a similar player, like Dylan Strome (featured earlier in this series) can’t with a long drawback.

For Vilardi, it’s just a simple curl and drag that he executes really well. It looks like this:

There are a lot of players who make this kind of a play from high in the zone to get their shot off, but they’re normally a lot smaller than Vilardi is. As you can see above he has committed it to memory and it has become an effortless motion for him. When defenders think they can pressure him and close the gap because he doesn’t have the puck skills to make plays in tight to his body, he often surprises them — and changes the angle of his shot in the process.

Other times, it allows him that extra six inches to avoid an attempt to close the gap altogether (below, it almost allowed Linus Nyman to end the series in front when the goalie wasn’t set for the shot and thus didn’t control the rebound):

Note: Shoutout to the little turnover he nabbed at the defensive zone blueline too… and to the job he did to use his feet to create the entry.

It doesn’t just make him a threat off the rush either. Vilardi’s curl and drag allows him to create uncomfortable angles for goalies off of set-pieces and faceoffs too. He makes this play (notice how good he is with his feet here too) look simple, despite handling it off his skate with a reactionary kick to his stick ahead of the curl-release:

Eventually, those little curls open him up for point blank opportunities. After nearly ending it once already in the first overtime, Vilardi eventually sealed the series in the third overtime (during a game that routinely saw him play two-minute shifts, including one at the end of regulation, and another ahead of the series-clinching goal).

I’ll let you watch it for yourself, first:

Now watch it from up close, paying particular attention to his feet and his handling (the shot is under the bar and perfect but it’s not the best part of the play):

Again, what does the little curl allow him to do? It opens up his body, it allows him to shoot off of his front or back foot (he ends up rotating to release off of his back foot), and it gives the goalie no idea where he’s going (short-side and far side are both options because he’s tracking across the zone while he releases it and the goalie has to stick with him and can’t square up).

So what are you left with here? You’re left with a kid who makes plays without breaking anyone’s ankles with a deke or burning them wide with speed. You’ve got a centre who’s as responsible in his own zone as he is with the puck in the other team’s. You’ve got a versatile power-play threat. You’ve got a big kid who protects the puck well and handles it effectively in tight. And you’ve got a player who gets into open space without wasting it, and works hard to close down on another player’s when he doesn’t have any.

All of those things sound like a modern, possession-driving, in-control NHL centre.

 

[Stunner_At_Staples_Kings]

I do subscribe to The Athletic. I really like it.

Sounds good. I've never heard of it, but I'll take a look. Thanks.

 

[Stunner_At_Staples_Kings]

@Puck. That is a lot of info. PP specialist, responsible center. All sounds good, and all things we could use.

Also hoping his back holds up. Seems like a lot of injuries already for a 19 year old kid. But I also like the Kings not rushing him because their window is closing. Not really fair to the kid to rush him in and try to have him be the savior. So if he works out, it works out later (Don't get me wrong. I hope "Later" is sooner, but you know what I mean).

 

[Psych3man]

Vilardi is No. 73 in all clips

Now Kings really do have to trade Toffoli to free up the 73 jersey

 

[Stunner_At_Staples_Kings]

Now Kings really do have to trade Toffoli to free up the 73 jersey

I'm in for that.

Side note, this guy Josh Gordon got traded to from the Cleveland Browns to the New England Patriots. He wears #12 and has is prominently tattooed on his back as this giant #12. But that's Tom Brady's number, so he just basically has his teammate's number tatted on his back for the time being.

 

[pete6835]

Side note, this guy Josh Gordon got traded to from the Cleveland Browns to the New England Patriots. He wears #12 and has is prominently tattooed on his back as this giant #12. But that's Tom Brady's number, so he just basically has his teammate's number tatted on his back for the time being.

He's a _ _ _ _