As the great Chubby Checker might say “It’s time to rank again/like we did last summer/come on let’s rank again/like we did last year.”
That’s right, it’s the off-season tradition of ranking the top players in the Blue Jackets organization who will still be under the age of 25 as of opening day. You can click here to revisit the coverage from last year’s list. Don’t pay attention to #4! Or the player who we acquired after the vote who I thought should be somewhere in the teens!
There hasn’t been quite as much turnover as last season, but still some changes:
Aged out:
#2 Kirill Marchenko
#9 Dmitri Voronkov
No longer in the organization:
#4 David Jiricek
#11 Gavin Brindley
#22 Samuel Knazko
But there are eight new names in between trades, UFA signings, and 2025 draft picks.
This year we are trying out a new method of tallying the votes. Rather than ranking 25 in Google Forms, you will instead go to this Rumble Rank list and proceed through a series of head-to-head matchups. Simply pick your preferred prospect in each matchup.
There are 200 matchups so allot at least 10 minutes, or save the tab to do it in some chunks. In cases where you have little or no opinion, decide in advance what factors you value you most in a prospect. Is it based on upside or production to date? Older or younger? Are certain positions more valuable? Or maybe you just go with all red or all blue to answer the ones you can’t figure out otherwise. There’s no wrong approach, though my preference would be for you to pick the player that you feel has the higher ceiling at the NHL level.
To help you with the process, this year I’ve included each player’s position, date of birth, draft year and position, and their stats from last year (league included).
Once again, this is the link to use. Feel free to share with any other CBJ fans you know. I’ll pull the results in about a week and we’ll start the countdown from #25 shortly thereafter.