First Round of 2015 NHL Draft Was Absolutely Loaded With Talent

Published on October 11th, 2024 10:30 am EST
Written By: Dave Manuel


The 2015 NHL Draft: A Factory of Future Superstars - In photo: Connor McDavid. If you are looking for the greatest NHL Draft of all time, it's hard not to stop at 1979, which produced seven Hall of Famers (Bourque, Messier, etc) and countless All-Stars.

1979 should be excluded from the discussions re: best draft class, however, as there were multiple reasons why it was such an unusually strong draft class. To start, the minimum draft age was lowered from 20 to 19 that year, creating a much larger pool of players to choose from. In addition, any underage players from the WHA were also eligible for the draft.

If we exclude 1979 from the discussions, the strongest draft likely belongs to 2015, with a strong shoutout to the 2003 draft.

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The first round of the 2015 NHL Draft produced 12 All-Stars and one of the greatest hockey players of all time.

To start, Connor McDavid was taken first overall by the Edmonton Oilers. McDavid is a sure-fire Hall of Famer and will almost certainly be recognized as one of the greatest hockey players of all time when he retires, if not already.

Of the top 5 picks, four have been named as All-Stars at least once:

Connor McDavid
Jack Eichel
Mitch Marner
Noah Hanifin

Working down the list, we have three more All-Stars in the top ten picks:

Zach Werenski
Timo Meier
Mikko Rantanen

With the 16th, 17th and 18th picks, we find three more All-Stars:

Mathew Barzal
Kyle Connor
Thomas Chabot

That's 10 All-Star players in the first 18 picks of the 2015 NHL Draft.

The top 30 produces two more All-Stars in the form of Brock Boeser and Travis Konecny.

That's 12 All-Stars in the first 30 picks of the draft - an incredible hit rate.

We're not done yet as the 2015 NHL Draft produced three more All-Stars in the later rounds:

Sebastian Aho
Kirill Kaprizov
Troy Terry

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The 2003 NHL Draft produced more All-Star players, but the 2015 Draft has produced more superstars.

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