The 2023 NHL draft class will be remembered for its forwards. 

That’s what it looked like before the start of the season and that’s what it still looks like now at the end of it. The group contains many potentially elite NHL wingers and centres. 

But over the last few months, a few defencemen have also started to emerge as legitimate top talents, making the class’s defensive picture look much brighter than it did before. 

Now, if NHL teams do need to fill a hole on their back end at the draft, they should be able to reach for a few candidates. 

As we’ve established in a previous article, this is not North America’s year on defence. In fact, it might be an unprecedently poor one at the draft. That North American-class has depth, a lot of it, but it lacks the potential A-level talents that Europ