I have too many opinions about prospects.

That is what happens when your team has been rebuilding for your entire working career. I started following the Devils closely as someone who actually cared about this stuff around the time they were bottoming out for the Nico Hischier pick, and it has basically not stopped since. Every spring I know more about 18-year-olds than any adult probably should. Every June I have a big board ready to go.

Honestly, I cannot wait to not care about this. I want the Devils to be good enough that a top-five pick feels like an accident, not an annual tradition. I want to spend May and June watching playoff hockey instead of reading QMJHL boxscores trying to figure out if a 17-year-old's point totals are real.

But here is the thing: you should always care. Depth is built through drafting. The teams that stop treating the draft as urgent because they are good for a few years are the same teams scrambling for organizational talent three playoff exits later. Carolina still drafts well. Dallas still drafts well. The best franchises treat every pick like it matters, because eventually it does.

So I care. I just want to care from a position of strength for once. Here is how I think about it.

I care less about whether a player already looks like an NHL archetype and more about whether he makes life harder for the other team.

A lot of draft coverage gets trapped by the obvious stuff. Size. Shot. Point totals. Highlight goals. The phrase "looks like a pro" gets thrown around constantly, but it can hide a lot. Some players produce because they are older, stronger, or playing in a role built to feed them chances. That does not always tell you who is actually driving the play.

The prospects I like most are the ones who create the advantage before the goal happens. Can he beat the first defender? Can he enter the zone with control? Can he pull coverage toward him and make the next pass? Can he turn a loose puck into pressure? Can he make a play through the middle instead of circling the outside and waiting for someone else to solve it?

That matters because playoff hockey usually takes away the easy version of offense. Space gets tighter. Rush chances disappear. Defenders close faster. The players who survive are the ones who can still make decisions under pressure, and I want prospects who are already showing signs of that, not just players who look dominant when everything is open.

Processing is a huge part of it. Real hockey IQ shows up before the puck gets to a player. The best prospects scan early, know where pressure is coming from, and already have the next option mapped out. They do not need three touches to figure out the play. They can delay, attack, slip a pass, or change the angle before the defense gets set.

Being young for the class matters to me. A lot. If a player is one of the youngest serious prospects in the draft and already producing with older peers, that is a real signal. It means there may be more development runway left. It also means his production is not just the result of being physically ahead of everyone else.

That cuts the other way too. Size can work against a prospect in my mind if it looks like the main reason he is dominating. A huge junior player can bully immature kids in ways that will not exist at the NHL level. If the advantage is mostly strength, reach, or early physical maturity, I get nervous. That does not mean I dislike big players. I just want to know what happens when everyone else catches up. Can he still think the game faster? Can he still create against grown men? Can he still win pucks when he is not the strongest player on the ice?

I am willing to bet on smaller or unconventional players if the skating and brain are high-end. Size is useful, but it cannot be the whole argument. A big player who cannot process quickly is just easier to imagine in the NHL, not necessarily more likely to help you win there.

I also care a lot about growth. Some prospects get attention early and then stay mostly the same. Others keep adding pieces every year, and those players are special to me. If a kid has had to work for it, improve his skating, expand his role, add strength, become more responsible, or prove he can produce without ideal circumstances, I pay attention.

Motor matters the same way. I want players who keep hunting the next play. Not fake hustle, not just skating around to look busy. Real motor means a player keeps finding ways to matter when the puck is not bouncing for him. He tracks back. He reloads. He wins second touches. He gets inside. He stays involved instead of waiting for the game to come back to him. The combination of brain, pace, growth, and motor is usually where the good bets live.

I love interior players. I just care about functional size and functional toughness. A big forward who retrieves pucks, protects possession, wins below the dots, and still has enough skill to finish is extremely valuable. A big defenseman who can skate, close gaps, and make a clean first pass is valuable. But height without pace, hands, or feel is how teams talk themselves into solving a playoff problem without actually solving anything.

The best interior players do more than survive contact. They use contact to create offense. They get to the middle, hold pucks under pressure, make defenders collapse, and then punish the mistake. That is different from simply being large.

Position matters too. All else equal, I prefer centers and right-shot defensemen. They are harder to find, harder to trade for, and usually more expensive once they are established. If two players are truly close, I will lean center over wing and right-shot defenseman over left-shot.

But this is still a best-player-available board. Positional value is a tiebreaker, not the whole argument. I am not passing on a better winger to take a worse center.

The Devils have already lived the danger of confusing need, projection, and value. Alexander Holtz was not a bad idea because he was a winger. He was a bad outcome because the organization bet on a limited offensive profile that did not create enough advantages at NHL pace. Drafting for offense was fine. Drafting a player whose game depended too much on finishing, without enough skating, processing, or possession-driving, was the problem.

The current Simon Nemec logjam situation does not disprove best-player-available either. If Nemec was the best player on the board (debatable), taking him was defensible. The failure came later. Once the Devils had too many right-shot defensemen, Tom Fitzgerald needed to maximize value. That probably meant moving Dougie Hamilton while he still had strong market value, or at minimum not signing Johnathan Kovacevic to a preemptive extension before the hierarchy was clear.

That is the real lesson. Best-player-available does not mean hoard every asset forever. It means draft the best value, then manage the roster aggressively when those values overlap. Vegas and Florida have done this well. They do not treat good players like museum pieces. They identify value, consolidate when necessary, and move before the market turns against them. Draft the best player. Develop him. Then, if the roster gets crowded, turn surplus into something the team actually needs.

For the Devils specifically, this matters because the roster already has high-end talent. They do not need to burn premium picks on safe, low-ceiling players just because those players feel projectable. They need cheap impact pieces who can grow into the Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier, and Luke Hughes window.

So my board is going to reward pace, processing, controlled offense, middle-ice creation, age-adjusted upside, and year-over-year growth. I will probably be higher than consensus on young players with possession traits. I will probably be lower on older junior scorers whose offense feels dependent on role, size, or linemates.

The simplest version: I want players who make the game easier for their teammates and harder for everyone else. The kid who keeps getting better. The kid who creates offense instead of waiting for it. The kid who has enough pace to matter, enough brain to adapt, and enough motor to keep pushing when the game gets ugly.

That is the bet.