Winnipeg’s top prospects are easy to sort out — aren’t they?

You start with the top four: Chaz Lucius, Rutger McGroarty, Colby Barlow and Brad Lambert.

You start a new tier, beginning at No. 5, with a defenceman: Declan Chisholm, Ville Heinola or Elias Salomonsson.

Then you realize Chisholm is already 23 years old, has lost his waivers exemption, and is behind eight defencemen on Winnipeg’s depth chart (for our purposes, he’s aged out of our top prospects list, even though his future is unclear). You think about Heinola’s impressive offensive gifts but contrast them with his 22 years of age and his relative lack of NHL playing time to date. You start to wonder if the qualities Winnipeg’s amateur scouts draft for aren’t the same as the ones Winnipeg’s professional squad seeks to employ. Could the Jets’ fifth-best prospect, whoever he is, really be so much of a project that he’s not likely to play for the team until his mid-20s?

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Then you breathe.

Salomonsson isn’t a giant, either. He was listed at 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds at development camp and does so many things well in the SHL that Winnipeg is excited about him all the same. Winnipeg has drafted the reigning OHL and WHL goaltenders of the year, while the Moose will be thrilled to see Russian scorer Nikita Chibrikov make his AHL debut — even as Dmitry Rashevsky commits to Russia for two more seasons.

Winnipeg’s top four prospects have elite potential; they’re probable NHL players who will seek to become impact players. You can read our piece about them here.

This next tier, starting with Heinola at No. 5 and continuing through No. 10 in today’s list, comes with more question marks. Some flash elite skills — Chibrikov’s release comes to mind — but the battle, for now, is more about finding a path to the NHL than finding a way to star in it.

6. Elias Salomonsson, RHD, 18 (Skellefteå AIK)

A funny thing happens when you read Salomonsson scouting reports: Nobody seems to call any of his individual skills elite but everybody agrees he’s already a capable defenceman. Skellefteå, his SHL club team, agreed: They trusted Salomonsson to play a full-time role in Sweden’s top league despite turning 18 shortly before last season began.

An injury kept him out of last year’s world juniors but Salomonsson returned in time to reclaim his form, cement himself as a third-pairing option, and help Skellefteå get to the SHL finals. He’ll be back in Sweden this fall, hoping to turn his success in 17 playoff games into an even bigger role, and is young enough to make this year’s world junior squad, too.

Here he is making an excellent cut and finishing off an excellent power-play pass.

Vilken passning av Arvid Lundberg till Elias Salomonsson! @skelleftea_aik leder med 1-0. pic.twitter.com/oPemOQ6vJD

— C More Hockey (@cmorehockey) April 7, 2023

He’s an above-average skater, reads the play well, admires Adam Larsson for his mean streak and seeks to embody the same (albeit with a less physically imposing frame). For me, there’s something appealing about Salomonsson’s well-rounded game, the way he’s already learning to defend pros on a top SHL team, and the fact that — unlike his competition on this list — his game doesn’t have any obvious holes. Salomonsson could easily supplant Heinola as Winnipeg’s top defensive prospect before our next prospects review.

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7. Nikita Chibrikov, RW/LW, 20 (Manitoba Moose)

Chibrikov dominated Russia’s top junior league throughout his teenage years, earning call-ups to play against professionals in the KHL and the VHL. It’s in the latter, second-tier pro men’s league where Chibrikov scored 41 points in 44 games since getting drafted by the Jets in 2021 — the kind of production that implies Chibrikov could be an impact player in the AHL right here, right now.

What makes Chibrikov so good?

At 5-foot-10, 172 pounds, Chibrikov won’t bull his way through coverage. He’s fast enough to be impactful but not so fast that speed will be his calling card in the NHL. And yet, Chibrikov is effective when playing into traffic. He uses high-end hockey sense, deft passing skills and a powerful wrist shot to solve problems in high-density areas that other small forwards shy away from. There’s no fear — at least, not as far as I can tell — and not a lot of defaulting to the perimeter; Chibrikov knows where the magic happens and is committed to getting the puck there.

I clocked this same development camp release from ice level:

Nikita Chibrikov is making some *wow* plays today. Here’s a rocket of a shot that just caught iron in a short area 3-on-3 🚀#NHLJets #GoJetsGo pic.twitter.com/1AitF805pQ

— Connor Hrabchak (@ConnorHrabchak1) July 8, 2023

He signed his entry-level contract with Winnipeg this spring and joined the Moose on a PTO contract in time to watch Manitoba’s first-round loss to Milwaukee. I think he’s an impact scorer for the Moose this season and, if he produces in Manitoba at 20 years old, I’d believe in him to have top-six NHL potential.

8. Dom DiVincentiis, G, 19 (North Bay Battalion)

Dom DiVincentiis speaks like someone who understands the value of hard work. He was clear the day he was drafted that his seventh-round selection was a starting point, not a finish line. He worked diligently with his coaches in North Bay and Jets goaltending development coach Drew MacIntyre to take better advantage of his 6-foot-2 frame this season. Their goal was for DiVincentiis to play “bigger” — it’s a concept that seems simple, but it takes many micro-adjustments to make goaltending almost unapproachable to non-goaltenders by way of analysis. (Side note: I once asked Laurent Brossoit if he was familiar with the phrase “goaltending is voodoo.” He did a spit take, I laughed, he laughed, and no one ever talked about it again.)

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The exciting thing about DiVincentiis is the enormous step forward he’s taken since Winnipeg drafted him in 2022. DiVincentiis improved his technique, his numbers soared, the Battalion became an even better team, and he went from North Bay’s backup to the OHL’s goaltender of the year.

Recently named #OHL Goaltender of the Year Dom DiVincentiis earns Goaltender of the Week honours, backstopping the @OHLBattalion into tonight's Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Championship Series 🎥 pic.twitter.com/LZfNYAVgta

— Ontario Hockey League (@OHLHockey) May 8, 2023

“I think the most important thing is my stance,” he said at development camp. “Just being able to play bigger, I think, is something that I adjusted early on last season and I think that’s what brought me a lot of success.”

We don’t have metrics like goals saved above expected to pick DiVincentiis’ stats apart but there are some statistical arguments for optimism. We know that DiVincentiis’ .907 save percentage as a backup in 2021-22 matched the .908 put up by starter Joe Vrbetic, roughly 18 months his senior. As a starter, DiVincentiis’ .919 save percentage eclipsed his younger backup’s .892. We don’t have the proof but, assuming North Bay played a similar brand of defence in front of all goaltenders, DiVincentiis’ numbers were special for his age in both seasons.

Age is also the tie-breaker between DiVincentiis and Thomas Milic, whose spectacular season won him a WHL championship, goaltender of the year honours in that league, and a gold medal with Team Canada at the world juniors.

9. Thomas Milic, G, 20 (Seattle Thunderbirds)

Don’t let their draft years fool you: Milic, the more recent draftee, is the older of Winnipeg’s two star goaltending prospects.

His 2003 birthday gives us a pretense to rank him behind DiVincentiis. His 6-foot height is a concern for some, too, but all Milic does is stop pucks. His .928 save percentage led all WHL goaltenders during the regular season; Milic improved it to .933 in his 16-3-0 run to the WHL Championship. He also played to a .932 save percentage in five world junior games, including 24 saves in Canada’s gold medal win. One simply does not count Milic out.

Thomas Milic (@SeattleTbirds) making some absolutely massive stops in the Canadian crease to keep this game knotted at two.

🎥: @TSN_Sports pic.twitter.com/tQv9J0KENW

— EP Rinkside (@EPRinkside) January 5, 2023

“The mindset of not being denied, of sticking to my path … You could make a list of dozens of guys that are superstars in the NHL now that never got drafted or got drafted late,” Milic said at development camp. “In my mind, I’m on my own path and just doing what I can each day to get to the next level.”

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It does seem reasonable to be cautious with smaller goaltenders. There are more goaltenders who follow Eric Comrie’s career path — elite in junior without becoming NHL starters — than that of 5-foot-11 Predators star Juuse Saros, who quickly turned spectacular Liiga and AHL numbers into strong NHL performances.

His body of work is too sterling to let that kind of speculation push him down this list.

10. Dmitry Rashevsky, RW/LW, 22 (Dynamo Moskva)

Rashevsky may not be a good bet to play North American hockey. He has signed a pair of KHL contracts since the Jets drafted him and remains under contract to Dynamo Moskva through the end of the 2024-25 season. Plenty could change between now and summer 2025, but Rashevsky has a good thing going for himself in Moscow.

I’m not holding any of this against Rashevsky for the purposes of this ranking. He’s a talented, creative offensive player who knows how to work with his teammates in traffic. He’s good at working give-and-gos in tight spaces and has no trouble making passes through seams to put teammates in dangerous positions. When he cuts toward the middle of the ice, he does so with enough purpose to be a shooting threat, and he’s scored some highlight-reel goals from in close.

I’m not as enamoured of Rashevsky’s shot as some observers say I should be.

I’m leery of his shooting percentage spike in 2021-22 (20.0 percent, compared to his career average of 13.9 percent) and some of the squeakers he scored along with the beauties. He took 67 games to hit 19 goals last season and I think his still-impressive 38 points in 67 KHL games at 22 years old is a more realistic assessment of his offensive prowess.

There is one theory about the drop in Rashevsky’s scoring rate that I take issue with. He made a gorgeous pass to Vadim Shipachyov that got a lot of hype early in 2021-22, leaving many people thinking Rashevsky’s surge was the byproduct of Shipachyov, the KHL points leader.

Dmitri Rashevsky picks up his first point of the new season with a sweet assist on Vadim Shipachyov's goal.#GoJetsGo | 🎥 #KHL pic.twitter.com/IN9txEe4N1

— Dylan Griffing (@GriffingDylan) September 3, 2021

Their overlap was not the norm, though: Rashevsky played most of that season on a line with (former Jet) Eric O’Dell and Oscar Lindberg. Shipachyov’s loss was felt in 2022-23, but if it affected Rashevsky’s numbers, most of it was indirect — the byproduct of Dynamo Moskva losing an elite top line as opposed to Rashevsky losing an elite linemate. Rashevsky finished second in team scoring.

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Rashevsky turns 23 this October and remains a player to watch. I suspect the NHL is still a long-term possibility for him, even if it’s not a priority right now.

Winnipeg's Top 10 Prospects

(Photo of Thomas Milic: Jonathan Kozub / Getty Images)

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