2026 T25U25: Victor Johansson is #15

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Last year, Victor Johansson was ranked 10th on that summer's top 25 under 25. The players ranked ahead of him were: Knies, Cowan, Maccelli (gone), Danford, NRob (gone), Koblar, Hildeby (gone), Thrun (gone), and Hopkins. Players who were ranked behind him that are now ranked ahead of him this year: Holinka, Quillan, Haymes and Akhtyamov.

Not only did Johansson drop five spots from last year, and not only did four guys leapfrog him in our rankings this year, but four draft picks from this year were immediately ranked ahead of him. McKenna is an obvious one that makes sense, and the other three were third round picks or as near as to make no difference (Bilecki) where Johansson was a fourth round pick from two years prior.

It's also interesting to me that all three of those other players, and the other new addition to this year's rankings (Andrae), are all defensemen like Johansson. I've written before about how Toronto went a long time without having either quantity or quality of defense prospects, so it's easily possible that Johansson simply looked better than he was because he was like an oasis in a desert.

But still, I admit I was surprised to see Johansson's rankings drop. And I mean that beyond just just number changing from 10th to 15th. I think it's clear that many people have cooled on him compared to last year. So let's talk about why that might be.

The Player

Johansson's path after being drafted in 2024 has been quite good, considering how much of an unknown he was when the Leafs picked him. Seriously, I've never seen a player anywhere in the draft being taken with so little known about him at all. No one had any scouting reports on him, and I make it my business to dig that kind of info up for my prospect work.

Johansson followed that up with a big leap in his development, albeit in Sweden's junior league. He was the top all situations defenseman for a Leksands junior team that had the best record in the league and only just barely lost in the semi finals in the playoff. His offensive output in 47 games that season (39 points) surpassed all the points he had in the three previous seasons he played (35 points) – in 118 regular seasons and playoffs combined.

His play was recognized by Sweden, as for the first time in Johansson's life he was called to play for their international team for 7 games. This year, he played in 14 international games, including making their World Juniors roster where he was used as a 7th defensemen – he may have also been hurt in the tournament, as it took him a couple of weeks to return to regular season play back in Sweden when the tournament ended.

This was also the first season where Johansson played entirely at the pro level, even though he was still young enough to be sent back to junior. He played his first two games on the U20 junior team, but then spent most of the season loaned to IK Oskarshamn in the second tier pro league (Allsvenskan). There, he was used as a second pair defenseman who got powerplay time and a bit of penalty kill time. He had 10 points in 22 games in the Allsvenskan league, which was good for second most in the league for U20 defensemen. He also got called back to his main team Leksands in the top SHL league, where he had 3 points – good for a tie for 3rd among all U20 defensemen, but the second highest point per game rate.

After Leksands was relegated to the Allsvenskan league, Johansson used his status as a free agent in Sweden to sign with Brynäs for the next two years to have a chance to play full time in the SHL this coming season. So far in the pre-season, he's been playing in the top four... but that doesn't always mean much, other than they want to get a good look at him. Brynäs has one of the deeper defensive groups in the league from what I've read, so him being able to carve out any kind of role as the youngest defender on the roster by 6+ years would be noteworthy.

The Votes

Here's how the other voters ranked Johansson:

So I wound up being by far the guy highest on Johansson, with no one else having him in their top 10 and most being in the mid-late teens – right where his final ranking wound up landing.

I won't focus on explaining why I was higher on him in this ranking than everyone else ranked ahead of him, I want to focus on those three newly drafted defensemen: Bilecki, MacKenzie and Gudmundsson. They are, funnily enough, eerily similar to Johansson in terms of their style and strengths. They are all on the high side of average for height (6'1" to 6'2" depending on what site you check) except for Gudmundsson. MacKenzie is even from the same original draft year as Johansson, but born later in the year with a September birthday.

But all four of these defensemen are on the two-way defenseman spectrum, with questions on both their defense and offense in terms of projecting them to higher levels. Bilecki has so much potential that I only ranked him even higher than Johansson, but for the other two I was asking myself... if they were all at the same age (MacKenzie and Johansson are) and were put in the same situations, who do I think would have done the best?

I've already seen Johansson play at a much higher level, and play well, than the other three. He still needs to put on more weight and get stronger, but his puck movement and his defense are all better than I think he's gotten credit for. Funnily enough, while people probably think of him as more of an offensive defenseman, last year he was skewing more towards the defensive side of the two-way spectrum:

He's already established himself as a pro-level player in Sweden last season, even as he was banged up multiple times. If he was playing in the WHL like MacKenzie did, I think Johansson's defense would have looked exceptional as well with even better abilities with the puck. Not to an extreme degree, mind you.

And I'm also asking myself if I think Gudmundsson would be at the same level in two years' time? I think he can be, in fact in watching some of his SHL pre-season games so far I've been pleasantly surprised by how pro-ready he's already looked at times. But he's still inconsistent, especially on the decision making front that's led to some defensive lapses in his positioning and execution. That's not something I can so easily guess will improve like some of the ways Johansson already has gotten better. So I'm keeping some caution on him before I'm willing to consider him ahead of Victor.

To summarize my general stance on Johansson and to defend why I ranked him so high, I don't view last year as a step back for him – quite the opposite, in fact. He still has some things to improve, but I just don't think he's done anything to deserve being knocked down in the rankings compared to others who were ranked behind him last year or guys drafted in a similar range who haven't played at as high a level as Johansson has.

The Opinions

Here's what the other voters had to say:

Shinson93: Last year had to be a bit of a trying season for Johansson with everything happening around Leksands and being loaned out to Oskarsham. This year he gets a chance at a fresh start with a much stronger Brynas team, getting to play with NHL stars like Nick Backstrom and Jacob Silfverberg, along with Marlies legends Keifer Bellows, Erik Kallgren and Axel Rindell. It’s probably an overreaction to leave him off my rankings, but I hope we get a chance to see him in a few Marlies games after the SHL season.

Cathy: I think I ranked Victor Johansson so low this time because I felt like I was way too high on him in the past just because he's fun and he'd been making huge improvements. I may have overcorrected, but on the other hand, I'm not absolutely sure he will play a meaningful role in the SHL this year on a team where getting Axel Rindell was big news, although they lined up together in their first preseason game. He needs to be a pro-team regular rostered player right now, one that no coach would consider sitting for any reason. (This is why there's more than one voter, though, so if I'm totally wrong, it doesn't really matter.)

Svalbard38: In retrospect, I ranked Johansson a couple spots too low. He’s a good puck mover, more physical than you’d expect, he’s gotten better and better since we drafted him. He’s also, last we heard, 165 pounds, and I always feel like a jerk when I bring it up but he needs to put on some weight for me to consider him a potential future NHLer. According to nhl.com, there have been four blue liners south of 170 in the cap era. Jakub Galvas, Mac Hollowell, Lane Hutson, and Jared Spurgeon. If you’re asking Johansson to play any substantial number of NHL games at his current weight, you’re asking him to do something that’s been done twice in the past two decades, once by a 1000 game player and longtime captain, the other time by one of the best young defencemen in the sport. Johansson’s good but he’s not on that level. Maybe he’s put on some muscle and it just hasn’t been reported yet. I hope that’s the case because until I see it, I have a hard time putting trust in him.

So that's what we all thought. Let us know where you stand on Johansson as a prospect in Toronto's system!

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