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With one week of rankings revealed in this year's Top 25 Under 25, it's time for the first summary.

Official Vote

Week one of the official vote gathered up six of the lowest ranked players.

25 Mikko Kokkonen

2023 T25U25: Mikko Kokkonen is 25th
Welcome to the countdown for this year’s Top 25 Under 25 Maple Leafs prospects. The list opens with the 25th ranked player, Mikko Kokkonen.

With 22.4 as the weighted average, Kokkonen was ranked over one full place higher than the next closest. He was a very firm consensus last place.

24 Artur Akhtyamov

2023 T25U25: Artur Akhtyamov is 24th
Next on our countdown for this year’s Top 25 Under 25 series is the Russian goalie Artur Akhtyamov. He had great numbers in the VHL last year, but does that mean much?

Ranked at 22.1 in weighted average votes, Akhtyamov barely outpaced Kokkonen and was behind number 23 by half a placing.

23 Dennis Hildeby

2023 Top 25 Under 25: Dennis Hildeby is 23rd
Overlooked in multiple drafts prior, he was a good use of a late-round pick, but the difference in early career between him and Woll is marked. Woll, part of the UNTDP and a member of Team USA since the U17 team in 2015, was on everyone’s radar as a prospect, and Hildeby never was.

Ranked mysteriously ahead of Akhtyamov, Hildeby is the second goalie on the list at 21.5 in average votes.

22 Brandon Lisowsky

2023 Top 25 Under 25: Brandon Lisowsky is 22nd
Lisowsky and Saskatoon put up the points for an eye-catching season in the WHL. What are his next steps as a leader on his team and looking ahead towards pro hockey?

Very nearly tied with Hildeby at 21.4, Lisowsky had eight voters ranking him, the highest so far.

21 Dmitri Ovchinnikov

2023 T25U25: Dmitri Ovchinnikov is 21st
Last year, Dmitri Ovchinnikov was ranked 15th on our T25U25 list. This year he dropped six spots despite finally getting a full time KHL role. Let’s talk about what’s likely behind the drop.

Only 3/100 over Lisowsky, Ovchinnikov was ranked at 21.1 by only six voters. Most of those who ranked him, ranked him in the middle of the list, so they either really like Ovchinnikov or they did't rate him at all.

20 Hudson Malinoski

2023 T25U25: Hudson Malinoski is 20th
Hudson Malinoski makes his Top 25 Under 25 debut at 20th. A fifth round pick in the 2023 draft, he has some interesting tools and some shiny new toy syndrome among the voters.

At 21 even in ranking, Malinoski is almost tied with Ovchinnikov on the strength of nine votes. In a total reverse to the man ranked a bit lower, almost everyone ranked Malinoski low.

Our first six players were ranked without a single unanimous vote, and we're going to see a lot fewer of those this year than is usual.

Community Vote

The community vote went well this year, but did use different software necessitating some changes in the tabulation process. Because you could choose N/A, which is a generic nope vote, or rank players between 26 and 36, almost every player had some votes outside 1-25.

To conform to the official vote tabulation process, only the votes in the 1-25 range were used. Everything else was taken as an "unranked" vote. The votes were reversed so they ran from 25 at the top to one at the bottom, with all unranked votes counting as zero. That reversed average ranking is then converted back to its 1-26 form so it makes some sense to us when we discuss it here.

With more than 200 voters, the community vote should be able to handle a little noise from incomplete submissions. One strange vote isn't going to skew the whole list. I was a little afraid that the voting list, which is in order of oldest to youngest player, would lead voters to leave young players at the bottom unranked, but the 11 unranked players is reassuringly sensible, and that means you all took the voting seriously and did your best.

Community Vote Unranked

  • Max Ellis - 22.83 weighted average ranking
  • Michael Koster - 23.51
  • Brandon Lisowsky - 23.60
  • Hudson Malinoski - 23.64
  • Noah Chadwick - 23.97
  • Semyon Kizimov - 23.99
  • Ryan O’Connell - 24.01
  • Joe Miller - 24.49
  • Braeden Kressler - 24.78
  • John Fusco - 25.12
  • Wyatt Schingoethe - 25.57

And now your bottom six:

25 - Vyacheslav Peksa

Unranked on the official vote, I had to go to a third decimal place to break the tie between Peksa and Max Ellis, the top unranked player on the community vote. At 22.83 in weighted average, it's fair to say that your vote doesn't have the clear line between ranked and unranked that the 10-person official vote has. Many of the unranked listed above are within one place of Peksa.

The charts show all your votes, so you can see how many of you voted N/A or below 25 for each player.

24 - Veeti Miettinen

Also unranked on the official list you had Miettinen ahead of Peksa by a very small margin at 22.59 in weighted average ranking. Miettinen had higher votes from those who ranked him, but had more out and out no votes.

23 - Dmitri Ovchinnikov

Ranked 21st in the official vote, we have almost agreed on this placing. At 21.72 in weighted average ranking, there is a small step up from Miettinen to Ovchinnikov, and a great deal of consensus on his placing, which shows clearly in the vote chart:

22 - Keith Petruzzelli

From agreement to a very big difference in the two rankings, you have Petruzzelli, who went totally unranked in the official vote, at 21.44. There is some noise here of very high rankings – Petruzzelli is older and was near the top of the voting list – but a lot of those rankings in the teens are deliberate. They offset the big contingent of no voters a little.

21 - Mikko Kokkonen

Ranked at 25th in the official list, you had Kokkonen at 19.54, a clear step up for him from your bottom four. And just like in the official vote, most people ranked him. So you had a line, it was just higher up the list, but centred on the same player.

20 - Nikita Grebenkin

Not yet revealed in the official vote, you had this player low compared to that vote at only 19.46 – nearly tied with Kokkonen. But unlike Kokkonen, there is very disparate opinion on "Greb". Note the y axis on these charts, it varies with the data displayed.

And that's the first week of the T25! We'll be back Monday with number 19.


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