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The third week of this year's top 25 brings us into the range of players that ordinary people may actually have heard of.

Official Vote

Semyon Der-Arguchintsev was the lowest ranked player on the list to actually play in an NHL game, but it was only one game. The first player ranked this week has appeared in six.

14 Alex Steeves

2023 Top 25 Under 25: Alex Steeves is 14th
NHL, or AAA+? This is the season where we will know.

At 14.6 in weighted average ranking, Steeves is one full ranking point above Ty Voit at 15. He was ranked by 10 voters unlike the next entrant.

13 Nicholas Moldenhauer

2023 Top 25 Under 25: Nicholas Moldenhauer is 13th
Last year’s third round pick, Nicholas Moldenhauer, had a strong final season in the USHL for the Chicago Steel ahead of his move to the NCAA with the University of Michigan. Moldenhauer could fool you as a Yank with all those red, white, and blue words, but the truth is he’s from Mississauga.

Ranked by only nine voters, Moldenhauer finished with 14.5 in average ranking – a virtual tie with Steeves. He's the highest ranked player to not receive 10 votes.

12 Nikita Grebenkin

2023 Top 25 Under 25: Nikita Grebyonkin is 12th
Grebyonkin is in a quite interesting place as a prospect. There are some reasons to think highly of him, but also reasons to be skeptical. I am here to tell you why you should be getting all aboard the Greb hype train.

There are as diverse a set of opinions among the 10 voters, who all ranked him, as was revealed on last week's community vote. At 13 in average ranking he is firmly above the first two revealed this week and well below the next entrant – he marks the division between the bottom and the top of the list, but isn't really a part of either.

11 Nicholas Abruzzese

2023 Top 25 Under 25: Nick Abruzzese is 11th
Sitting just outside the top 10 is a 24 year old forward who played his first professional season last year.

With 11 NHL games played, Abruzzese is convincing enough to get 11.4 in weighted ranking.

10 Easton Cowan

2023 Top 25 Under 25: Easton Cowan is 10th
Say hello to Easton Cowan, the Leafs first round pick from the 2023 NHL Draft. And as is inevitably the case, he’s not simply allowed to be a prospect, but a foil for arguments about the NHL team today. Let’s begin his T25U25 profile with what Easton Cowan is, and

The youngest man on the list comes in at 10 with an average ranking of 10.5 ranked by 10 voters. However the spread in rankings was 14, with four the highest placing and 18 the lowest. The biggest spread for a player with 10 votes goes to Grebenkin, which is not a surprise, followed by William Villeneuve and Cowan.

Community Vote

The community vote left off with Villeneuve at 17.63, and this is the part of the list where the rankings accelerate towards the placing number.

14 Dennis Hildeby

People really believe hard in this goalie with very few absolute dissenters. When has faith in a goalie ever been a bad idea, though? Ranked well down on the official list, this placing is a major disagreement about a player in a year with a lot of correlation between the two votes.

13 Ty Voit

Hildeby came in at 16.78, not quite one point above number 15, and Voit is barely higher at 16.63. Ranked in a similar spot as on the official vote, we're back in lockstep again.

12 Nicholas Abruzzese

In another interesting mirror of the official vote, the community marked out Abruzzese as a dividing line. He's all the way up at 13.04 in average ranking, a jump of more than three places. His vote shows a very strong consensus.

11 Alex Steeves

Steeves, at 12.87, is close to tied with Abruzzese in your minds and is ranked a bit higher than on the official vote with another strong consensus.

10 Roni Hirvonen

Your number ten is not Cowan, but you'll see him ranked next [spoiler!] next week. Hirvonen had 11.73 in average vote, lower still than Cowan's official ranking, so the community vote is still grouping the players tighter together with another jump in rankings to come. Your vote for Hirvonen is the strongest consensus yet (note the y axis number).

Now that we're both at number 10, the lists have caught up with the two players not yet ranked on each list relative to the other as mentioned last week.

The community vote is missing Easton Cowan and the official vote is missing Roni Hirvonen.

Next week we'll see both of those players added to their lists, and find out if we land on the same number 5. (We don't.) See you next weekend when the calendar will say September, and we'll be deep in denial that summer is ending.


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