2026 NHL Draft Top 100 Rankings Big Board With Tiers
Upside Hockey's Chief Prospect Profiler Trevor Curtis's Big Board Top 100 ranked prospects from the 2026 NHL Draft class in 21 tiers
This instalment of the Upside Hockey Top 100 by our chief prospect profiler Trevor Curtis marks a shift in how we project the 2026 draft class. While traditional round-based rankings provide a general roadmap, they often mask the true talent gaps that define a draft.
In this Tier-Based Analysis, we move past the arbitrary cutoffs of first or second rounders to focus on talent clusters and organizational value. From the elite ceilings of Tier 1 to the developmental depth of Tier 21, this list identifies where the drop-offs occur and where the real value lies.
Here is the updated landscape of the Top 100. The NHL Draft Lottery is now in the books with the Toronto Maple Leafs currently slated to pick number one and soon to be on the clock. Which direction do they go?
Caleb Malhotra (Photo: Brandon Taylor, OHL Images)
Tier 1
LW Ivar Stenberg
Tier 2
D Carson Carels
D Keaton Verhoeff
D Chase Reid
D Alberts Smits
Tier 3
C Caleb Malhotra
C Viggo Bjorck
D Daxon Rudolph
Tier 4
C Tynan Lawrence
D Ryan Lin
LW Ethan Belchetz
Tier 5
LW Nikita Klepov
D Malte Gustafsson
Tier 6
C Alexander Command
C Ilya Morozov
LW Oscar Hemming
Tier 7
LW Adam Novotny
LW Wyatt Cullen
LW Marcus Nordmark
RW Elton Hermansson
Tier 8
LW Ryan Roobroeck
C JP Hurlbert
Tier 9
C Oliver Suvanto
C Yegor Shilov
D Tommy Bleyl
RW Niklas Aaram-Olsen
Tier 10
LW Liam Ruck
D Juho Piiparainen
D William Hakansson
D Xavier Villeneuve
C Jack Hextall
Tier 11
D Adam Goljer
C Maddox Dagenais
D Nikita Scherbakov
C Thomas Vandenberg
C Simas Ignatavicius
RW Casey Mutryn
C Tomas Chrenko
LW Mathis Preston
C Brooks Rogowski
C Adam Valentini
Tier 12
C Lavr Gashilov
G Dimitri Borichev
C Ryder Cali
Tier 13
C Markus Ruck
G Brady Knowling
D Giorgios Pantelas
D Luke Schairer
RW Chase Harrington
RW Blake Zielinski
LW Jaxon Cover
Tier 14
D Ben MacBeath
D Jakub Vanecek
G Tobias Trejbal
LW Adam Nemec
D Landon Nycz
RW Gleb Pugachyov
Tier 15
D Vertti Svensk
C Beckham Edwards
C Alessandro Di Iorio
D Samu Alalauri
LW Cooper Williams
G Harrison Boettiger
Tier 16
D Mans Gudmundsson
RW Rian Chudzinski
C Ludvig Andersson
G William Lacelle
D Charlie Morrison
RW Jonah Sivertson
RW Lars Steiner
RW Cole Zurawski
LW Pierce Mbuyi
Tier 17
LW Landon Hafele
C Tyus Sparks
C Liam Lefebvre
LW Noel Pakarinen
G Tobias Tvrznik
LW Filip Novak
Tier 18
D Alexander Bilecki
RW Nils Bartholdsson
C Oscar Holmertz
LW Victor Plante
RW Beckett Hamilton
Tier 19
LW Landon Amrhein
D Callum Croskery
LW Jakub Frolo
C Rudolfs Berzkalns
D Jakub Floris
D Brek Liske
RW Zach Lansard
C Viktor Fyodorov
G Frantisek Poletin
D Vladimir Dravecky
Tier 20
G Yegor Rybkin
D Lucas Ambrosio
Tier 21
D Sean Burick
RW Vilho Vanhatalo
C JC Lemieux
D Maxim Sokolovskii
Dare to compare this Top 100 to:
Our Top 83 Consolidated Draft Rankings (from all the top rankings available)
Upside’s own April Rankings (our mammoth in-depth spreadsheet) - May update coming soon
Upside Hockey.
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I really like this idea. But I'm going to push back a little...presumably moving from one tier to the next implies a big gap in ability - how do you estimate the size of that gap? Is it ceiling and floor? And then probability of floor and ceiling? With computer models this is easier because the models spit out a number and we could cluster similar values (say values with 5 or 10 or 15 points of each other). But it's not clear to me how Trevor decides on 'gap size'.