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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the party where you get to meet the voters.

Voter Blurbs

Please write a short paragraph or two about you as a voter and use the name you want to be public as a voter:

Cathy:

Once again, the cruel overlord of PPP has forced me to vote on these prospects. This year there was a challenge in combining a lot of prospects of a somewhat similar level with established NHLers and AHLers. There's so much turnover in the prospect pool, and as with the more recent years, the list digs deeper into the prospects than it did in the early days of the Matthews/Nylander era. I went pretty hard on some personal views and just did not rank older players I don't buy in on at all. The hidden theme for me is the challenge of seeing where these players sit in the larger picture as opposed to just each other. This is merely one of the reasons Brigs hates rankings...

Everyone is talking about how long they've been doing this. Species has me beat, but I wrote my first articles in 2016. I built the automated system that tabulates the votes about three years later which is when I began learning R. I built out more automation to produce the articles more easily when the site moved away from SBNation, and last year I turned R Studio to dark mode, but little else changed other than all the things I've learned over the years from my own bad ranking decisions.

Brigstew/Brian S/Whatever handle I go by:

I have long made it known that I don’t find rankings to be all that useful, and honestly I’m probably closer to disliking them in general than I am to being neutral on them. But I have a fondness for this series. Because of my dislike for rankings, I don’t put nearly as much thought into it as I used to, but I also have my method for voting pretty down pat by now. I tend to bet big on the guys I like and predict will have breakouts, so the ‘accuracy’ of my rankings is probably all over the place. But I don’t really care about that, this series is supposed to be fun for people so that’s how I have fun with it. I like the discussions around each player more than the ranking itself – either how I ranked, or the community ranked, or what the final ranking score winds up being. This year in particular I will probably be obnoxiously high on quite a few of the new guys.

Hound Line:

Long time lurker, second time voter. After voting in 2024, I skipped out last year but the siren song of McKenna and the other nine freshly drafted mystery boxes pulled me back. It was an interesting draft class; not a single pick was used on an immobile large-adult-son D-man, a zippy little winger lacking secondary skills or Matthew flippin' Hlacar. Our prospect pool now looks full of mobile two-way D-men and forwards with a mix of tenacity and latent skill. When I did this two years ago the prospect pool was more of a prospect bathtub ...and the drain was open. I'm excited to get votin' and blurbin'.

Shinson93:

Back for a 3rd time, continuing to evolve the way I think about and follow prospects. I probably watch more of the Leafs prospects during the season than most people here. I watch every Marlies game (which paid off this year with a championship) and since they switched to FloHockey, I have access to more hockey than I know what to do with. When I started voting in the community vote, I would pick one or two interesting players and purposefully boost their ranking. It was my way to create an incentive for me to root for and follow a specific prospect, without having to try and follow all of them. For example, I followed a season of Joe Miller in the USHL, Matthew Knies at Minnesota, and last year Rylan Fellinger with Flint. This year will probably be Brody Pepoy playing for the Flint rival Saginaw. Watching a player through a full season gives me a lot more information than just catching highlights or looking at stats. I very much enjoy this process of ranking, because it forces me to think critically about all the prospects and to challenge myself about what aspects of a player are really impactful. I also enjoy a community of people that are willing to share and challenge opinions in a way that is both thoughtful and fun.

Cameron:

I am very excited to return as a voter for my 3rd straight year! This year has a wide variety of different experience levels and play styles which will make it fun to see how the rankings end up. This year’s draft class for the Leafs had a number of picks I really liked, making me much more optimistic about the Leafs’ prospect pool than I had been prior to the draft. With my rankings, I like to think about how close they are to the NHL, their odds of making it, and how impactful of a player they will be. I also like to give a couple of the lesser known guys a bit of the spotlight, if I feel they deserve it. I can’t wait for this year’s T25U25!

Svalbard38:

Hey everyone, I’m Svalbard38, I’m very excited to be back for my second year as a T25U25 guest voter. I’ve been a Leafs fan since my parents bought the pyjamas and decided that for me, but I started getting more into the prospects around the start of the Matthews era. The PPP T25U25 was a big part of that for me, and I’m grateful for the chance to give back. When it comes to prospects I mostly watch OHL, WHL, and the Marlies, that might translate into a bias in favour of guys I’m familiar with, but it also means that I see more of their mistakes and their shortcomings, which it’s tougher to get when you’re just watching highlights. Overall I’d like to think it’s a wash, but towards the end of the list it might mean that I go with the guy I’ve seen play in person over the guy who I don’t see outside of clips. There’s a lot of guys on the list this year I’m excited about, looking forward to getting into it.

Sclodiggity:

Another newish (but not brand new) voter as I was part of the 2024 list. I’m a long time Leafs fan and long time prospect follower (who else was excited about the Alex Suglobov trade? No one? Just me?). Having lived through various Leafs eras (team-wise and prospect pool-wise) has given me a good perspective on what having a prospect really means, although that's hardly unique among this group. With a background in science (by day, I’m a marine biologist) and business, I very much enjoy the lessons and micro-models that hockey can bring to everyday life and expect my analysis to follow suit.

Zone Entry (she/her):

This is I believe my third go-round as an official voter, and having horribly overthought the vote in the past, this time I’m attempting to be more balanced between gut feelings and thoughtful reflection. We’ll see how I do! A big metric for me is “how often do I remember reading something encouraging about this player on PPP” along with “do I think this player is more valuable to the franchise than, say, a potato”. “Value” is of course a nebulous concept that includes raw talent, how rare is this type of player (both on the Leafs and league-wide), and do they seem to add fun and/or frolic to the organization? I mean, the world is a stressful place and we gotta find those bright spots where we can.

Next, continuing my new tradition, here’s my Top 5 Sceptres Under 25! (Kirk turned 25 in March but validated me choosing her as #1 last season)

#5 – Jamie Nelson, who was picked 20th overall so I’m trusting that for now

#4 – Clara van Wieren, not currently under contract but she will be, right? Right?

#3 – Kiara Zanon, see #4

#2 – Emma Gentry, who I am hoping will take a big step this season

#1 – Kirsten Simms, because if she’s not awesome we’re doomed anyway lol

Species:

I’ve been doing this so long I remember ranking Phil Kessel, Nazem Kadri, and JvR who was of course always at number one on my ballot. I also remember having to rank guys like Eric Knodel, whom do you even remember the Leafs signed him or that he existed? I am very familiar with the Marlies because I have credentials to cover them and I went to about 45 of their games last season, but I’m self-aware enough of that bringing potential bias against the junior players recently drafted, so I rely on Brian to help figure that out, though I do occasionally watch a junior game when they are televised on Sportsnet or FloSports (get on there, WHL!), but I admit I don’t pay too much attention to it. I occasionally watch SHL games on Saturday mornings too if there’s a team that has a Leafs prospect, but that’s rare lately.

I have often made one or two wonky rankings on a player to make a point that I thought they were overrated or underrated, but this time that was pretty hard to do. This will be an interesting top 10 given how easy it was years ago where what you had to wrestle with was Marner vs. Nylander at #2 or #3 behind Matthews, and then who would be #4? That happened again this season, but not at any point further in the list. We know this time who is going to be #1, that shouldn’t be a spoiler for anyone, but after that top three ranking it’s really wide open and it was one of the most challenging rankings in recent memory.

ItsNotHardev:

I refuse to remember how long I’ve been doing this for but it’s been a while. I found once I got to the teens I needed to do more homework on a lot of prospects. I leaned on Brian, highlight videos on youtube, and the scouting report sites you can find (shoutout a new fave: Neutral Zone, no relation to Zone Entry). I found watching highlights from playoff games particularly useful for defenders because it gave me perspective on both sides of a player’s game. CHL games are all easy to find. I have noticed in the past that I’ve clung too tightly to the expectations I have of a prospect to reality. I’ve been slow to notice when a player’s development curve flattens, or accept that “if they could just do this…” isn’t what they’ve been doing or what they’re going to do. I think I have a hot take (it’s tepid at best) this year?

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