Scott Wheeler, The Athletic’s prospect evaluator, published his latest annual mea culpa Monday — a gift-wrapped column in which he walks through five NHL draft picks he ranked too high or too low, pulls apart his own reasoning, and invites readers to enjoy the show. The piece covers players from the 2022, 2023, and 2024 drafts, and it’s the kind of self-audit that most analysts would rather swallow a mouthguard than write.
The headline name is Shane Wright. Wheeler ranked him No. 1 overall in 2022. The Seattle Kraken took him at No. 4, behind Juraj Slafkovský, Šimon Nemec, and Logan Cooley. Wheeler writes that Wright “has become a good player” but may not reach the 30-goal, 70-point ceiling he projected, while Cooley and Slafkovský are already producing at that level. He points to a moment at the pre-draft combine in Buffalo — Slafkovský walking through the hotel “like he owned the place,” Wright looking like he was “forcing it, trying to defend the status he once held.” That intangible, Wheeler concedes, mattered more than his model accounted for.
Then there’s Easton Cowan, and this one’s a whiff of the highest order. Wheeler had Cowan at No. 97 on his final 2023 list. The Toronto Maple Leafs grabbed him at No. 28. Several teams thought that was a reach. It wasn’t. Cowan won OHL Most Outstanding Player, took OHL Playoff MVP, ripped off a historic points streak, and was an NHL regular at 20. Wheeler credits Leafs scouting director Wes Clark for reading Cowan’s trajectory correctly — the work ethic and instincts overwriting the so-so decision-making that kept him buried on most boards.
Beckett Sennecke is the one that gnaws at Wheeler most. He had the Oshawa Generals winger at No. 16 in 2024. Anaheim drafted him No. 3 overall. Wheeler lives near Oshawa and saw Sennecke play more than any other prospect in that class. He’d talked to Generals staff, trainers, Toronto Marlboros coaches. And he admits that proximity — hearing the frustrations with Sennecke earlier in the season, seeing how much strength the kid still needed — made him too stubborn to move Sennecke up as the player’s game and body matured month by month. His own scouting report opened by calling Sennecke “a game-changer” who was “regularly pulling people out of their seats” down the stretch. He just didn’t let his ranking catch up to his own words.
The column also covers Eduard Sale, the skilled but low-compete Czech winger Wheeler ranked No. 14 in 2023 before Seattle took him at No. 20 — a player type Wheeler identifies as one of the hardest to slot, and one that “often busts or ends up as an AAAA type.” And Dmitri Simashev, the rangy Russian defenseman Wheeler buried at No. 35 before Utah selected him No. 6. Wheeler says he over-weighted the “Russian factor” after the invasion of Ukraine and undervalued a smooth-skating blueliner whose offensive game has developed faster than expected.
Wheeler has run this exercise every year since 2021. The columns are linked at the top of the piece, a chain of receipts stretching back five drafts. He frames it as a trust-building exercise for paying readers — show the misses, not just the hits. Whether that’s noble or just smart branding probably depends on how many of those misses were your team’s draft pick.