2024 NHL Draft: Early 1st CHL Defensemen
This breakdown is going to be a little bit different. In this one, I’ll be going over essentially 3 1/2 players. There’s a solid group of three talented defensemen coming from the Canadian junior leagues so I’ll group them all together. Since the player-cards are paired, I’ve also included Denton Mateychuk.
As far as pure production goes, Zayne Parekh and Sam Dickinson have posted some of the best OHL draft years in recent memory including more total production than recent 10th overall pick Pavel Mintyukov.
As far as Carter Yakemchuk goes, his draft year production was also one of the best in recent memory including outproducing highly drafted Mateychuk and Korchinski.
This total production, along with that of Levshunov and Buium, likely explains the hype around the talent of the defensemen in this draft class.
The first pair I’ll introduce is the bigger, toolsier defensemen in Sam Dickinson and Carter Yakemchuk. As far as their production goes, their underlying microstats don’t quite match. Yakemchuk’s profile suggests he did indeed earn quite a lot of his offense, by way of gigantic Offence Involvement, but Dickinson has a more well rounded, but not dominant, profile.
The second are the smaller, more dominant defensemen. This is Mateychuk’s D+3 data, but I’ll bring in his DY data later as well. Parekh’s underlying offensive production is perhaps unmatched in the history of Mitch Brown’s tracking database.
Offense
In terms of offensive potential, Zayne Parekh stands alone. His underlying tracking data is betrayed by the Z-score only going up to 3. Similarly, his production also stands alone and hasn’t been matched since Ryan Ellis in 2008-09.
Carter Yakemchuk has a prolific shooting profile with balanced game-state creation.
Neither Dickinson or Yakemchuk are particularly good playmakers. Dickinson stands alone in his low-value shooting whereas both Parekh and Yakemchuk seek to improve the quality of their shots rather than being content shooting from the point.
Largely, that is partially attributed to system, teammates and tools. Dickinson loves shooting from distance because he has a quality shot from distance and because he has extremely high quality forward teammates.
Parekh, on the other hand, is not a dominant shooter and prefers wrist shots, as does Yakemchuk. The difference between these two is system and teammates. Parekh’s Saginaw system is quite advanced and encourages movement in exchange with his teammates. While his own offensive abilities shouldn’t be discounted, shot quality improvement is part of the game.
As far as Yakemchuk goes, he was just a massive part of the Calgary offense which was not a powerhouse team in the same way Dickinson and Parekh were (and even Mateychuk). His handling ability and powerful shooting enabled frequent access to high danger shooting positions.
Parekh and Yakemchuk were also much more focused on keeping the puck in the zone, exemplified by their successful pinches/60. While Dickinson wasn’t absent in this regard, it goes to highlight their teams’ desire for active defensemen in in-zone sequences.
Transition
Somewhat surprisingly, none of these defenders are dominant in transition. Dickinson grades out the best largely driven by his abilities to create controlled entries and crosslane plays. He leverages his excellent skating to make a big difference in the neutral zone.
Yakemchuk’s transition profile is hilarious. He legitimately looks like a winger with these stats. His entry volume and success rate are excellent but he’s only a league average puck-mover when it comes to his own zone.
Parekh’s transition data may be the most concerning. He’s an undersized and not dynamic skater and also isn’t contributing in a large way to exiting the zone. He still grades out better than Yakemchuk particularly because of his crosslane plays and use of the inside lane in transition.
That each of these defensemen generated better relative volume of entries than relative volume of exits suggests there may be an adjustment period for each of them as the game scales upward.
While this breakdown is primarily centered on the draft eligible defensemen, I would like to point out that Denton Mateychuk was one of the best transition players in the CHL this past season. Not among defensemen but among all players. Only Berkly Catton completed more crosslane plays than he did.
Dickinson is the most prolific puck retriever, Yakemchuk is the best in execution and Parekh really just isn’t good at all compared to the others.
Largely, this makes sense. Yakemchuk isn’t often the first back but has the frame and handling ability to convert possession.
Parekh is light, small and doesn’t have the best athletic engagement (high stance). While he’s got excellent vision, it’s hard to deploy that vision correctly when you can’t really play through contact. Similarly, I wonder if he, along with Yakemchuk, play with defensemen who are better suited to that role. Both of them enter the zone more than they exit which suggests they could be weakside activators.
For Dickinson, he does retrieve the puck at volume. Though he has the skating and frame to become excellent, he doesn’t necessarily have the scanning or awareness to convert them consistenly into possession.
Defense
The defensive metrics are where these three differentiate the most. They all have strengths but none look truly special in terms of defensive stopping metrics.
Technically, Parekh has the best single areas of defensive performance. His NZ Breakups and Weakside Breakups paint the picture of a mentally engaged, or at least aware, defenseman in both zones. His lack of breakups elsewhere suggest he’s limited defensively or that his ability to get stops in those areas may be a feature of the Saginaw system.
Dickinson’s reputation is well in advance of his actual performance in terms of tracked microstats. He’s a sublime skater but struggles to get NZ breakups or prevent entries. I believe this may be a feature, or bug, of London’s more passive 1-2-2 NZ forecheck. Without diving into an audit of the games tracked it could also simply be an ineffectiveness at reading sticks or transition sequences.
Dickinson does feature well in terms of DZ breakups/60, but only slightly in slot protection and weakside breakups/60, which may mean he’s a better on-puck defender than he is a mover and play-reader.
Similarly, Yakemchuk also reads as a mostly switched off defender but one who can also stop plays on the puck. His neutral zone defending is the worst of the bunch as are his slot protection and weakside breakups. This may be a result of minutes played and offensive responsibility but it’s still an area of concern for projecting him to the NHL.
Space Creation and Misc.
As far as creating advantages and moving the puck to valuable areas, Zayne Parekh stands alone among the draft eligibles. His ability to move pucks away from the walls and to teammates in better space is exceptional.
Yakemchuk and Dickinson both primarily use their handling and/or skating to create space for themselves and aren’t quite as good at delivering the puck to teammates. That being said, Yakemchuk does find ways to get the puck to the middle whereas Dickinson does not.
It’s possible, again, that this comes from the London Knights system where, somewhat similar to Michigan State, they prefer breakouts to start up the wall and then be bumped into the middle. If it isn’t an issue with London’s system, Dickinson might have a long way to go to become an impact puck-mover in the NHL.
Historical Comparisons
We know that this group of CHL defensemen, along with Levshunov, Buium and Silayev, are top draft eligible producers in recent history for their respective leagues.
Above is a pure NHLe by age comparable that contains this selection of draft eligible defensemen. Zayne Parekh is off the graph north. Still, besically everyone on this graph is among a cohort of many of the best recently drafted defensemen.
Perhaps active, or younger, defensemen are now more common or more played in draft eligible seasons, but this production still does look exceptional.
Now, top players will also be top powerplay players but only Parekh really looks like a true impact powerplay caliber player. Without further historical research this adjusting may be a little irresponsible. If Dickinson and Yakemchuk do become PP1 qbs, then disregard.
Sam Dickinson was the 5th highest scorer on his team. 28 of his 70 points came on the powerplay, so 40%.
Zayne Parekh was the leading scorer on his team. 34 of his 96 points came on the powerplay for 35%.
Carter Yakemchuk was the second leading scorer on his team. 31 of his 71 points came on the powerplay at 43%.
All of this scoring is from the regular season.
We have fewer historical comparisons as far as microstats go but we can still pull a few comparables.
Stylistically, we don’t have great direct comparisons to each player from within their own leagues. For Parekh, the closest comparisons would likely be Evan Bouchard and D+1 Adam Boqvist who both played with the London Knights.
Boqvist is a potentially unique offensive defenseman who had significant postural and defensive issues even in the NHL. He hasn’t been very good in the NHL though has certainly found pops of offense.
Boqvist’s draft year +1 looks a little bit like Parekh. His total offense and gamescore are not close and, this was a year after relatively, but their transition profiles are similar. That said, Parekh grades out as a significantly better player.
Bouchard has found some success as a puck mover as of late as perhaps the only Oilers defenseman, along with partner Mattias Ekholm, who can give the puck to McDavid. He was significantly worse than Parekh defensively but also much better in transition.
Bouchard obviously had a significant weapon for his shot whereas Parekh is mostly wrist shot. Parekh still grades out at the highest level of offense and though his system encourages unique creation his capacity to read defenses and create breakdowns with projectable offense will remain in his toolbag.
Since these two defensemen were drafted in the top 10, it would be a good bet that Parekh would be the better choice and will have the potential to be a better defenseman. He still comes with postural and non-elite skating caveats but he’s also an unprecedented offensive producer.
In terms of Denton Mateychuk’s draft year, Parekh does not quite grade out as nearly the transition or defensive player that Mateychuk was. Similarly, Parekh’s offensive dominance is still hidden by the limitations of the chart but Mateychuk was primarily focused on playmaking and almost not at all on shooting.
His closest comparison was his fellow Spirit alumnus Pavel Mintyukov.
Here, and especially in the space creation metrics, the players do actually look similar. Both Mintyukov and Mateychuk did not have the skating or defensive concerns that Parekh had. They both can play within contact and were highly engaged players.
For Sam Dickinson, the comparisons are more difficult. He was a higher producer than any of his dynamic skating, good size CHL contemporaries.
Theoretically, he could be seen as a better transitional and more toolsky Kaiden Guhle. Though they are similar in terms of offensive underlyings, Guhle prioritized quality shots over volume. Dickinson was significantly more advanced in transition, though Guhle did drive exits better in comparison to his team, Guhle had significantly better defensive metrics.
Perhaps there are systems or sample size issues at play, but it’s hard to comfortably project Sam Dickinson as a better defensive defenseman than Guhle given their underlying performances in their draft year.
One of Dickinson’s comparisons as a modern elite skating NHL defenseman is Jake Sanderson. Sanderson played on the USNTDP, and as such is not perfectly translatable considering the team advantages, but his hand tracked stats are in a different stratosphere.
Firstly, Sanderson’s passing and playmaking is a hallmark of his game and appears like a weakness for Dickinson. This dramatically changes the shape of a defenseman at the top of a lineup. High-volume point shots simply don’t fly with other top offensive players.
Otherwise, Sanderson was an absolutely elite by the defensive metrics, the best among the tracked data set.
On the graph, Dickinson is marked in Green, Yakemchuk in Red and Parekh in Blue.
Sanderson is the topmost and furthest right dot. 2nd best Entry Prevention Rate Relative to team and 2nd best Defensive Plays/CA in the tracked data set.
If Dickinson’s Entry Prevention rate was due to system issues perhaps he could compare favorably to a player like K’Andre Miller who was the third best entry preventer in the data set.
The most interesting aspect, at least for Sam Dickinson believers, is that his underlying metrics actually look more favorable in his D-1.
If, somehow, there was some system or role effect on his 23-24 data that wasn’t present in his 22-23 data, Sam Dickinson certainly could be that kind of defenseman. His passing metrics are substantially improved as are his transition and defensive plays. Worse at retrievals, still not good at getting the puck into the middle, but this matches his reputation much more closely.
Determing what Dickinson could look like away from this situation, and whether some of his deficiences are related to some aspect of the London Knights from 2023-24, could be the difference between getting an overshooting #4 defenseman a la Ryan Graves and a legitimate neutral zone controller. The lack of year-over-year improvement is, at best, incredibly confusing.
For Carter Yakemchuk, the comparisons aren’t so easy. Potentially, the closest comparison is Dougie Hamilton or perhaps a D/W like Brent Burns. Largely, defenseman goal scoring is diminished so anyone drafting Yakemchuk would have to believe he is truly different.
Unfortunately, there aren’t great player comps or cards to choose from within this data set. Of his closest comparisons in terms of xG/60 with minimal xA1/60, Ty Gallagher, Vincent Iorio, Lukas Cormier and Beau Akey, none have really hit the NHL.
Gallagher played a decreasing role for Boston University. Iorio played a small role for the Calder Cup Finalists Hershey Bears in the AHL, Lukas Cormier has played 2 games with the Vegas Golden Knights but had some reasonably productive AHL seasons and Beau Akey was very injured this past season for the Barrie Colts.