Alexis Lafreniere is, by universal acclimation, the top prospect available in next week's NHL Draft.
He is a left winger who put up 35 goals and 77 assists in 52 games with Rimouski of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League last season and is a mortal lock to be selected by the New York Rangers with the No. 1 pick.
It's not that Lafreniere is the betting favorite to go first overall; he's the only real candidate.
That Lafreniere will become a star in the NHL seems to be the working assumption of pretty much everyone in the industry, and Patrik Allvin, the Penguins' director of amateur scouting, does not disagree.
"Let's hope he can fall (to the Penguins in Round 3)," Allvin said, laughing. "Obviously, he's been a good player for the last couple of years. He's been a leader. He's carried the Canadians at the world juniors (tournament). I think he is ready to step right in and contribute, unfortunately, right away for the Rangers, which is not good for us."
Still, Allvin isn't convinced that, a few years from now, Lafreniere will be separated from the rest of the Class of 2020 the way he appears to be now.
Not because of any soft spots in Lafreniere's game, but because some of the other players who will be selected during Round 1 of the draft Tuesday evening have shown enormous potential, too, even if their games aren't quite as developed as Lafreniere's at this point.
"I think there are some other players that, with a little bit more time, could actually catch up to him," Allvin said. "A couple of years back, you look at the draft where New Jersey picked (Nico) Hischier and Philadelphia picked Nolan Patrick, then the next couple of guys -- (Miro) Heiskanen, (Cale) Makar, (Elias) Pettersson -- needed a little longer time and actually were able to catch up to those guys. Definitely, Lafreniere is a great hockey player and he will have impact right away. But over the years, it will be interesting to see if some of the players a little bit further down who need a little extra time will catch up."
Allvin declined to specify any of the prospects to whom he was referring, but centers Tim Stutzle and Quinton Byfield, who figure to be claimed with the second and third selections, presumably are among them.
And while Lafreniere (6-1, 193 pounds), Stutzle (6-1, 187) and Byfield (6-4, 215) have good size for 18-year-olds, Allvin said he believes that this draft, while deep in general, has a particular bounty of undersized, gifted forwards.
"The consensus (is that there) are a lot of sub-6-foot, skilled wingers," he said. "Maybe early on in the draft, there's a little bit more emphasis on smaller, skilled players."
Barring a trade, the Penguins -- whose picks are limited to one each in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth rounds -- will not make a choice until 76 players have been selected.
While it certainly will be possible for them to find a prospect who could develop into a contributor in the NHL with their third-rounder -- they got promising right winger Nathan Legare there in 2019 -- Allvin suggested that whoever they select there might be as much project as prospect, that the pick surely will need additional time and experience before contending for work in the NHL, whether that's needed to refine his game, develop physically or both.
"I'm hopeful that we're going to be able to get a player who will be able to play in a Penguins uniform here over the next couple of years," Allvin said. "In the third round, we're relying on some other teams to kind of misjudge some of the players that we like. Maybe there is a player like Legare that will slide down a little bit."
The Penguins' approach to the draft is pretty basic; Jim Rutherford has said the scouting staff settles on rankings of the available players, then simply cross names off the list and ultimately chose their highest-rated prospect who hasn't been claimed elsewhere.
"The farther down you go on the list, the more flaws the player is going to have," Allvin said.
Still, there are a few key qualities Penguins scouts assess in any prospect they consider drafting.
"You want to emphasize a lot on skills and hockey sense and speed," Allvin said. "But the reality is that the players farther down on the list might need a little bit of a different path and they might be under-developed, but you still see the skills set of them. It's more projection of what they're going to be at 23 or 25.
"It's really important to have the right character, too. When you're a little bit farther down in the draft, to be able to overcome a lot of question marks that you're going to (face) as a player. You have to be willing to put in the effort and time."
Because the coronavirus pandemic brought many seasons to an abrupt end last winter, scouts had to adjust their approach to evaluating the players who will be drafted Tuesday and Wednesday.
"It definitely was a new challenge for us," Allvin said. "I thought we were pretty focused. Up to the point in mid-March (when most play was suspended), I thought, overall, our coverage had been like in a normal year. I thought we were well-prepared.
"Obviously, we wanted to watch the (junior) playoffs and the last international tournament, but our mindset right away was, 'OK, let's stay focused here and let's dig in and try to utilize the resources we had.'
"The (advanced) analytics were supporting us, and we were watching video of players to see if there was something we missed, or maybe being too hard on some of the players. The overall process was a little bit different, obviously, with the pandemic, but I also thought our scouts did a really good job of adapting and being open-minded to new things."
