Jumpin' Jack Flash: Hughes tops TSN's Top 50 Under-24 players

The TSN decision desk ranked Chicago rookie Connor Bedard the No. 1 player in our 2023-24 ranking of the Top 50 NHL-affiliated players and prospects aged 23 or younger.

New Jersey’s face of the franchise, Jack Hughes, was runner-up.

One year later, we are flipping the order: 23-year-old Hughes is No. 1 and 19-year-old sophomore Bedard, No. 2, in the 2024-25 ranking.

“Did we jump the gun on Bedard?” says TSN Director of Scouting Craig Button. “I don’t think so. Expectations and projections were lofty. He remains a brilliant long-term prospect, but based on this year’s data, we need to make a change.”

This list has always been about the future, not the present. And it remains so.

But after a Calder Trophy-winning rookie season, it must be taken into consideration that Bedard, the supernova talent widely heralded as the NHL’s next great sniper, has just three goals in 19 games.

Some necessary context: Chicago is the lowest-scoring team in the league. Translation: Bedard is not surrounded by talented teammates.

Regardless, Hughes is deserving of the highest honour, completing a 3-2-1 reverse hat trick with his elevation to premier status. He has gone from  No. 3 in 2022 to No. 2 in 2023 to No. 1 in 2024.

“We are trying to strike a balance between a player’s potential and what a player is,” Button says. “We know Jack Hughes is a superstar. He has established that unequivocally.”

So, Bedard falls to runner-up position on the list assembled by Button and FloSports Senior NHL Draft and Prospects Analyst Chris Peters.

Button and Peters assessed every NHL team’s group of assets 23 or younger (as of season’s start) – blending assessments of current development with projected further development to assign grades.

Players are labeled AAA (superstar), AA (elite), A (No. 1 goalie, top-pair defenceman, first-line forward) or B (tandem goalie, top-four defenceman, top-six forward) or C (backup goalie, depth defenceman, bottom-six forward).

No. 3 on this year’s list is another teenager, San Jose’s 18-year-old rookie forward Macklin Celebrini, who is in a similar position to Bedard last year.

Celebrini is not ranked based on four goals and five points in his first eight NHL games. It’s a reflection of him entering the league with only slightly lower expectations than Bedard did last season.

“Macklin has a great self-assuredness to his game,” Button says. “It’s like he’s saying, ‘I’m here to be a difference maker.’ And he is.”

Hughes, Bedard and Celebrini are the only players to earn AAA grades.

Next up are No. 4 Ottawa centre Tim Stutzle (22 years old), No. 5 Buffalo left defenceman Owen Power (21), No. 6 Minnesota sophomore right defenceman Brock Faber (22) and No. 7 Philadelphia rookie right winger Matvei Michkov (19).

Montreal has two representatives in the top 10: No. 8 left winger Cole Caufield (23) and No. 10 St. Petersburg SKA right winger Ivan Demidov (18).

No. 9 is Detroit defenceman Moritz Seider (23).

The Canadiens have a league-high six players in the Top 50, which goes a long way to explaining why Montreal is No. 1 in the Core 4 U-24 rankings.

The others are No. 25 left winger Juraj Slafkovsky, No. 27 left defenceman Lane Hutson, No. 40 Boston College goalie Jacob Fowler and No. 46 left defenceman Kaiden Guhle.

Among noteworthy members of the fab 50 are No. 11 Ottawa left defenceman Jake Sanderson, No. 23 New York Rangers’ left winger Alexis Lafreniere, and No. 24 Calgary goalie Dustin Wolf, the highest-ranked netminder on the list and an early-season Calder candidate.

Lafreniere, No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft, has climbed from C to B to A in player grading over the past three years.

Alternatively, Anaheim left winger Trevor Zegras has gone from AA to A to C over the same time period.