2026 T25U25 Week 1 Summary

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The first week was a gentle introduction to the countdown with only three names revealed.

When we tabulate the votes for the T25, we average the rankings given by all the voters and also take into account the number of voters who did not rank a player at all. "Unranked" counts as a ranking of 26 for the purposes of weighting the votes to get an average.

Because it's possible to give players very similar mixes of votes, sometimes ties happen (this year they were all confined to the honourable mention section below number 25). But the other effect is that the weighted averages will be very similar for tiers of players. You can see that the three players below are all clustered around 23 as an average.

Official Vote

At 25th this year and with a weighted average ranking of 23.18 is Rylan Fellinger. He was ranked by four voters and is only 0.27 higher than Borya Valis at 26th.

Ryan Tverberg is 24, and he got a ranking of 23.73, so not quite half a point higher, but he got eight votes. That marks a pretty serious distinction with the group below him.

Cooper Williams came in at 23rd with a ranking of 22.27, higher by the same jump that moved Tverberg firmly into 24th and also with eight votes.

Next week we'll have five new names on the T25 and this fairly rapid rise up through the bottom few players will give way to another tier of players ranked by all the voters.

Community Vote

As this is the first reveal of the Community Vote, a little explanation comes first. As you know if you voted, you rank the entire 39 players in one way or another. There is the option to use the N/A box, which places all the players at the bottom of your ranking, and then you can adjust the rank on as many as you want.

We tabulate this vote the same way as the Official Vote, by treating all rankings below 25 or the N/A choices as a vote of 26. That's what goes into the weighted average you'll see for each player. For the purposes of the charts, all votes are included to give a full picture of what people actually did within the constraints of the form.

There is some noise in the official vote, but it's just under 300 votes this year which is enough to wash that noise out and give a decent representation of the order of the ranking, but also how close each rank is to the other.

First, before the first three names on the Community Vote, are the non-ranked names that fell below 25.

Community Unranked

39 Matthew Lahey with a weighted average of 25.58 (26 is the highest this number can be)
38 Rylan Fellinger - 25.37
37 William Belle - 25.23
36 Brody Pepoy - 24.91
35 Hayes Hundley - 24.91
34 Alexander Plesovskikh - 24.62
33 Cooper Williams - 24.52
32 Sam McCue - 24.41
31 Brandon Buhr - 24.28
30 Blake Smith - 24.11
29 Patriks Plumins - 23.97
28 Yaroslav Fedoseyev - 23.81
27 Juuso Ainasto - 23.75
26 Timofei Obvintsev - 23.63

As usual, there are a lot of newly drafted players unranked on this vote, and some big differences with order compared to the bottom of the Official Vote. When you consider the small differences in average ranking, though, it mostly amounts to the difference between a firm "no" and a "yeah, but no, though" vote. But 25 marks the line, and we will cling to it!

25 Vinny Borgesi

With a weighted average of 23.51, this free agent defender was one of the three unranked on the Official Vote.

Borgesi started out on the ranking form in ninth place, as it goes from oldest to youngest. So for him "noise" is at the left side of the graph. Note the 99 voters who selected N/A for him. This is the graphical equivalent of "yeah, but no".

24 Hudson Malinoski

Unranked on the Official Vote, he got an average of 23.43 in this vote and has a chart just like the one above.

23 Nicholas Moldenhauer

Drafted the year before Malinoski and often confused for him, Moldenhauer got a couple of votes on the official ranking. He comes in here with an average of 22.97.

Next week, we'll see one of the small steps up in the Community Vote to the start of the list taken a little more seriously as prospects with prospects.

See you then!

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