Getting to Know Brody Pepoy

Introduction!

THE BASICS: STATS AND CONTEXT

Position: Right-shot winger
League: OHL
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 181 lbs
Birth date: May 16, 2008

The central theme around Pepoy as a player, is that he has always been a battler. Toronto taking him in the NHL draft made it the first time he had been drafted in any league. Two years ago, he went undrafted by any CHL or American junior league. Since he was from Michigan, he took the 2024–25 season to play youth hockey for the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite 16U AAA program, putting up 52 points in 55 games. Before that, he didn't play in well known leagues or pipelines for the typical major junior leagues. In fact, they're so obscure that some of them don't show any stats at all for his seasons. I had to double check if he was hurt and missed entire years – he didn't, by the way, but it was a pain to verify.

Honestly, there really isn't a lot of known information about Pepoy that I could find to provide as context to his career to now.

Anyways, last summer, Pepoy received an invite by Saginaw to attend their training camp. He impressed the coaches enough that they signed him as a walk-on free agent junior player. He rewarded them with a pretty decent rookie season as an undrafted walk-on. His 16 goals and 29 points in 67 games doesn't scream spectacular, but he played an important role as a hard working forechecker and defensive conscience. He and the entire Saginaw team had a very short and rough playoffs, starting against the eventual OHL and Memorial Cup champions Kitchener Rangers, and they got swept in four games where they were outscored 19-8.

Pepoy's role for the season started in the bottom six, but he worked his way up to the second line. For the whole season, he averaged 13:52 of ice time per game and pretty much all of it was at even strength. He played very little on the powerplay, and maybe a bit more on the penalty kill but he wasn't one of their go-to guys for that either. He did slowly earn a bigger role as the season went on, including a bit of secondary powerplay time where he had 3 points.

Pepoy's main line for much of the second half of the season was on the second line, along with Carson Harmer and Jacob Cloutier. They were the hard working checking line that played behind the heavily used top line that led the league in offense. They wound up being affectionately named "The Weasel Boys", and Pepoy certainly fit with that theme for their energetic and irritating play against other teams.

THE GOOD: PHYSICALITY, FORECHECKING, OFF-PUCK HABITS, SKILL POTENTIAL

When it comes to Pepoy's strengths as a prospect, there is a mix of tools and skills he has that are already nicely far along and others that are interesting but need much more development and consistency. I'll start with what is already at a high level and don't need as much improvement.

What stands out the most, on a consistent basis, is Pepoy's physicality. He has a bit of a power forward in him with how he uses his strength and size. He has a good sense of how to protect the puck using his frame, setting his feet wider on his edges to get low, and use his reach to keep defenders on his back so they can't reach the puck. He will be proactive in initiating contact so it happens on his terms, when he is prepared with a sturdy, balanced base. He'll establish inside position and then bulldoze his way into and through the middle areas of the ice. He'll willingly go to the net front area and engage in physical battles for position so he has a better opportunity to look for deflections and rebounds. And despite his physical and weasel style of play, he only had 22 penalty minutes all season so he's very good at staying disciplined.

Aside from just his physical style, Pepoy is also well known for his constant motor and high energy level through every shift. This comes through on his forechecking and backchecking skills, which could project as elite. He is an above average skater and plays at a high pace, attacking defensemen going back for retrievals with aggressive pressure. He is smart in how he angles the defensemen with his routes, then forces them into making more difficult plays under his pressure. And then on the backcheck, he skates just as hard to chase down puck carriers and strip it off them or at least break up and pressure them on their transitions. That defensive effort extends to the defensive zone, where his tracking data shows him as being at an elite level in junior for making defensive plays to get the puck back. He plays very well in a defensive structure, keeping his assignments, not missing or messing up any rotations, and taking up passing lanes with his reach to deter more dangerous cross ice passes.

The final area of Pepoy's game that is already at a high level and that projects well is his highly intelligent off-puck habits. He scans and pre-scans so he maintains a good mental mapping of where everyone is on the ice, which helps him make quick decisions in the moment. He has a good sense of timing in his routes and when to drop back into uncovered areas, even if it isn't a dangerous area for scoring chances but it helps give his linemates on the cycle a good relief option. He just does a lot of little things without the puck, setting picks, creating space for teammates, and being in the right places at the right times. That kind of thing is very projectable to the NHL.

The big wild card for Pepoy that flashes a lot of potential, but is more inconsistent now, is his offensive skill. He reminds me a bit about Harry Nansi in this regard, from his draft year. The comparison comes from him having some very interesting tools and skills in isolation that he hasn't figured out how to combine and chain them together in order to consistently execute high level plays. They are also specifically the kinds of skills that he uses to attack the middle of the ice – he's no perimeter player. He has some fancy highlights showcasing nifty mittens. He'll mix in linear crossovers, delays, pulling the puck back into his hip to bait the defenders into reaching for it and changing their momentum before accelerating and skating through them. He's pulled off spin-o-ramas, incredible moves off the wall, pulling the puck through his own legs, give and go sequences, and more.

The big difference in this regard from Nansi is that Pepoy has a very good wrist shot – it's quick, he can get it off with minimal time and space with very a good catch and release. He's scored goals where the puck is in the middle of traffic, and he manages to find it, control it, spin and whip a wicked wrist shot top corner before the goalie could even register a shot was coming. It's something that could be a legitimate weapon on the powerplay, with him playing either down low or in front of the net.

THE FLAWS: VERY INCONSISTENT OFFENSIVE EXECUTION, SKATING MECHANICS

There are two problems with Pepoy's game that, ironically, also draws more comparison to Nansi – the first is that his offensive skill is very raw and inconsistent which also led to inconsistent impact and production, and the second is that his skating mechanics need some refining to unlock greater speed, acceleration and agility.

I'll start with the skill issue. Pepoy has a pretty great highlight reel where he manages to pull off some great looking goals. He's dangled through the entire team and beaten the goalie for good measure. He's undressed the opposing goalie when he's had the puck all alone in front. He's definitely flashes some high level puck handling, but the problem is that while he tries stuff like that a lot his success rate is not very good. He can create chaos in the good and the bad sense, and he needs to move it a lot more into the good side of that line.

From what I can see, I think Pepoy will need to both refine his skill so he isn't just improvising things where he looks like he's pulling anything out of his ass and seeing if it works. It needs to get to a point where, even if it's instinctual at some level, there is some deliberate-ness to what he does where he's trying something he thinks/knows can actually work because he's practiced it thousands of times to the point he can pull off that move in his sleep. The other thing he needs to improve on is his decision making, where he learns through experience what he can try that will work, and when he shouldn't try to be fancy and just make the simple but effective play. This will be especially true if he can't wind up playing above the bottom six, which is his more likely outcome.

As a final note to this area of weakness, Pepoy needs to refine his mechanics when it comes to handling the puck. He'll lose the puck as he's trying to handle it, mishandle a pass, and just show a general lack of precision and control too often for his offensive skill to project very well – at least as of now. The same can be said for his passing, his accuracy and velocity can vary wildly, and I would say that specifically is his biggest offensive weakness, but not to such an extreme that I think it's horrible. I have more confidence he can clean up in that area to an acceptable level.

Finally, there's Pepoy's skating. He manages to get around just fine, in general, and in some of the highlights I've shared above you'll see him outrace defenders on the rush so he gets to the net first. But you can also see his stride looking awkward and choppy. It's the same issue as everything else I've mentioned, where his mechanics are very unrefined right now and his movements are just too chaotic to be fully effective. Trusting the scouts on the specifics of his mechanical issues, but he doesn't extend in his stride fully, he hunches over too much, he'll handle the puck with his head down, and there's a hitch in his heel kick. All that said, he's starting from a much better place than Nansi did, and if there's a team of coaches I trust to be able to fix these issues to a similar extent, it's Toronto. The question is if it can be improved enough so it won't hold him back from the NHL, and also maybe help him have a better impact there.

OVERALL ASSESSMENT

Aside from the strengths and the flaws, the reason why I like Pepoy as a prospect and especially as such a late round pick is because he has big potential if he hits. I can see a Knies-like power forward in him, but not at the same level. It helps that I've seen him improve so much from the start of the season to the end of it, and considering how raw he was and the fact he never played in a really competitive junior/feeder league for top prospects until this year, I have more faith that he has more room to grow and develop than most others in his draft class.

If you separate Pepoy's season in half, and it's an odd number of games but I will arbitrarily give the extra game to his "second" half since that still supports the notion that he improved over time...

• First half = 6 goals, 6 assists in 33 games, averaging 1.5 shots per game.
• Second half = 10 goals, 7 assists in 34 games, averaging 2.2 shots per game

This is, in part, a product of Pepoy moving up the lineup a bit, and getting a bit of powerplay time in the second half of the season. But he was getting that bigger role because he was playing better. His confidence with the puck and his ability to successfully execute his skill plays with much better consistency, though it was still an issue. He was driving the net with the puck more, carrying it on transitions, shooting it on net more and from more dangerous locations, and really developing that power game. He also really improved on his defensive game, using that motor to backcheck hard and playing with very strong attention to details within the team's structure.

That's what gives me more faith that Pepoy can take these big leaps in his development over the next 2-3 years. Just seeing how much better he got this year when he had more time to refine his game and play within a team structure, and knowing he's going to the NCAA and will eventually (hopefully) earn a contract to join the Marlies and work with them much more closely. The more he plays at higher levels, with better systems and structures, along with Toronto's development staff keeping in touch with him, the more he can refine his game and control the chaos he can create for the forces of good.

I think we already saw a sign of this happening at the recent development camp. In the scrimmage, he looked much more in control of his game and playing within the unit of his line with Hopkins and the undrafted Mick Thompson. He had two assists, and had a very nice set up on a zone every where he took the middle of the ice, drew the defenders to him and then slip a pass to his teammate who had more space and speed to get a good chance.

I am quite excited too see how Pepoy looks at the Rookie Tournament, and then for his full D+1 season. More than anyone other than maybe Bilecki, I can see Pepoy taking the biggest leap. And even Bilecki I think he's already at a high level, he'll just have a much bigger role on Kitchener after pretty much all of the defenseman on the depth chart ahead of him aged out or left for the NCAA.

And to end this, I want to share this incredible old tweet of a baby Pepoy showing he always had some flash and flair.

Thanks for reading!

I put a lot of work into my prospect articles here, both for the draft and Toronto's prospects. I do it as a fun hobby for me, and I'd probably do it in some capacity even if PPP completely ceased to exist. But if you like reading my work, some support would go a long way! I pay for a few streaming services (CHL, NCAA, USHL, the occasional TSN options for international tournaments that are broadcast) to be able to reliably watch these prospects in good quality streams. I also pay for some prospect-specific resources, such as tracking data and scouting reports from outlets like Elite Prospects, Future Considerations, McKeen's Hockey, The Athletic, and more.

Being able to get paid for this helps me dedicate more time and resources to it, rather than to second/third jobs. And whatever money I make here, a lot of I reinvest back into my prospect work through in those streaming and scouting services. Like I said, I'd be doing whatever I can afford for this anyway, so any financial help I get through this is greatly appreciated!