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Noah Chadwick is hard to pin down. He's very tall, but needs to develop more physically. He's a very low draft pick, but has some higher quality results. He's on the radar of Hockey Canada for the WJC, but his junior GM put him there. He's a defenceman who gets buzz for his offence even when he's built more like the next Joel Edmundson.
He's only 19, and has at least one big jump to come in his development in all probability. His buzz is all about motion, how quickly he's outperformed his draft position and how much better he is at everything. He's going so fast, surely he won't ever slow down.
| Noah Chadwick | Vitals |
|---|---|
| Age as of July 1 | 19.14 |
| Position | LD |
| Height | 6'4" |
| Weight (lbs) | 187 |
| Shoots | L |
| Draft Year | 2023 |
| Draft Number | 185 |
The Player
Who is Chadwick? To answer that, I wanted to see him standing still first, because I think his hype is all about where he started and how fast he's got to where he is, but where exactly is that? Let's start by looking at his most recent play.
This is a video made by Brigstew that shows Chadwick (#3) at the WJSS in August. He's paired in this game with Carter Yakemchuk (#6). What you need to know is that Yakemchuk has an offence-focused game that is not very often on display here, but he was the man on their pair tasked with making the first pass out of the zone and jumping up in the play. Chadwick, in other words, had to play against his strengths.
This is long, but worth some investment in time to see multiple different defensive situations and also a Sens draft pick who was seventh overall playing like... well, you'll see.
I think this is very instructive, but first, let's get this out in the open: they're terrible. Both of them are disastrous to merely barely able defensively. Neither of them move the puck well, and the good plays are really hard to find.
But for Chadwick, what I saw here was a player who understood the role, knew where to go offensively as a blueline hugging player, and had the maturity to accept this role and defer to the guy with more reputation. Chadwick himself had to know Yakemchuk was performing very poorly. That's digging deep to find some praise, but I also don't see the skating problem that keeps getting mentioned. I don't see much sign of him using his size in physical ways either.
All that said, this was a summer tournament, and they usually aren't the best hockey. They also aren't usually this bad. I don't see a single sign here that Chadwick is making the WJC team, and even if he does, every Team Canada in a reasonable span of years since Morgan Rielly's day has a couple of defenders who topped out at AHLer.
For a long look at what Chadwick's game usually is try this:
Noah Chadwick (No. 8) wrapped up his regular season over the weekend.
— Kyle Cushman (@Kyle_Cush) March 26, 2024
Big DY+1 campaign from the 6-foot-4 defender. More in the more 🧵
Totals (WHL): 66 GP, 12 G, 56 PTS, +13, 136 SOG#LeafsForever pic.twitter.com/5hIoscMhgw
Those clips are 100% offensive. Also, the thread below that Tweet contains some scouting information and an assessment that relies on the twin pillars of the case for Chadwick: points and the speed of his development.
Included is a bar chart from Mitch Brown that uses tracking information, and this is when I have to tell you honestly that I ignore these almost entirely. They are never from quite enough games to take seriously, so they give you some indications of style of play and the role assigned, not any certainty about quality. I can see them being useful to the scout themselves to backstop their opinions, though.
The source of those, EP Rinkside, is behind a paywall, but if you subscribe this article covers Chadwick, again from the perspective of how far he's come:
Mitch Brown
Chadwick's growth can be attributed to many things: An elevated role, more favourable offensive zone play and freedom, nimbler skating, etc. But above all else, it's that he took on a bigger role and expanded his game without losing his efficiency.
This is revealing. It's positive in the sense that in only his second year, he's moving right up the ranks and likely playing against top lines more often, and succeeding enough for the coach. Points come from opportunity, so part of what using points as a measure of an individual actually does is act as a proxy for the coach's opinion – along with the strength of teammates and host of other things like the randomness of shooting percentage all mixed in with individual skill. We don't need points as a proxy here, we can known that Chadwick's coach elevated him up the lineup and was happy with the result.
It's not that Chadwick's offence is valueless, but it can't be his only skill. For a defender to be so tilted to offence that his defence is a real negative, he has to be as good as Morgan Rielly with the puck on his stick.
There's rumours of defensive improvement with Chadwick, mentioned but never really fleshed out – none was on display at the WJSS or the Leafs Dev Camp where he was as prone to make you ask, "Where were you even going, and what were you going to do when you arrived?" And you can't take those two outings any more seriously than charts of "microstats" from 10 games.
In some great timing for us, you can hear all this from Brown himself:
This is set to come in after the introduction, which is things you all know. This goes into the most detail about his offensive game with an emphasis on his playmaking. There is some good detail on his defensive strengths and weaknesses that I don't find very comforting, and a lot of talk about potential NHL upside that I struggle to fit into my paradigm of how an NHL defence corps is going to operate.
If his transition play and overall play at the bluelines is a value add, then he's got some chance of finding a pro game that translates higher than the AHL. He's a smart person, and he's young enough to have years to work on things, but I can't easily imagine him in the NHL without very large improvements in how he uses his body, how he plays around the net-front and how he gets the puck and executes a zone exit. Things Brown discusses quite a bit.
Where Chadwick is right now, ignoring the journey to get here, is a player with very large weaknesses in very important parts of a defenceman's game that sit alongside heavy indications of some offensive upside at the pro level. But go watch all those points highlights again and ask yourself how often NHL defenders score with those medium danger bombs that go in so easy in junior. That offensive upside has to come from the playmaking and a positive effect on shotshare.
Taking his offence too seriously is as prone to error as assuming there is no defensive skill at all based on one horror movie.
The Votes
More people voted for Chadwick lower than 10th than at or above that. If you saw the Community Vote last week, you can see a lot more people doing similar things. There is a group of people who are sure enough about Chadwick to rank him near the top 10, and a slightly bigger group that put him lower. It's not a stark polarization, but it's tilting towards a split opinion on him. This vote is a weaker version of that.
I confess that I find him so difficult to sort out – the potential of an offensive game and the probability his defence ever really improves, mixed up with growing physical power and all the other things development brings – I aimed my vote at a little below the average opinion and figured that was close.
| Voter | Vote |
|---|---|
| Cathy | 13 |
| Brian | 12 |
| Species | 11 |
| Adam | 13 |
| Hardev | 7 |
| dhammm | 8 |
| Cameron S | 9 |
| Hound Line | 15 |
| brysplace | 10 |
| Catch-67 | 8 |
| Sclodiggity | 10 |
| shinson93 | 19 |
| The Bag | 12 |
| Zone Entry | 15 |
| Weighted Average | 11.57 |
| Highest Vote | 7 |
| Lowest Vote | 19 |
The Opinions
dhammm: The chatter about Chadwick in his D+1 might seem a bit like seeing an oasis in the desert, given the quality of the Leafs' defensive prospect pipeline going into the 2024 draft, but Chadwick did indeed take on more responsibility in the WHL and did well with it. Looking ahead, there's not much a prospect can do in his D+2 in the CHL to really impress me, but sneaking onto the World Juniors team, being an unquestioned #1 in Lethbridge, and seeming clearly too good for the league would be swell. I think there's something there.
shinson93: I struggle to tell the difference between a guy that’s exceeding his draft position vs a guy that’s a lock to break into the NHL. I might have ranked him more on anti-hype than something more rational.
Cameron S: Chadwick was my second most watched prospect, only below Cowan this year. Watching him on Lethbridge really amazed me as he surpassed my already high expectations for where he was drafted. I liked that he always stood out to me in a positive way and seemed to have great positioning. I liked how instead of constantly having to chase down the puck, he positioned himself in ways where the puck always came to him instead, especially on the O zone blue line, extending Lethbridge’s o zone time. In the games of his I watched, I couldn’t find many things to complain about overall, and no glaring issues to worry me.
Okay, that was a lot! A lot of highlights, conversations and rumination. What do you think about Noah Chadwick?
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