It's our favourite part of the offseason at EP Rinkside, when we rank the best prospects and the best prospect pools in the NHL That starts today with our ranking of the top 100 affiliated skater prospects in the sport.

As with past rankings, we've determined that any player who is still eligible for the Calder Trophy, given to the NHL's best rookie, qualifies for this exercise.

The NHL determines whether a prospect is still Calder-eligible based on these criteria:

To be eligible for the Calder Memorial Trophy, a player cannot have played more than 25 games in any single preceding season nor in six or more games in each of any two preceding seasons in any major professional league. Beginning in 1990-91, a player must not have attained his 26th birthday by Sept. 15 of the season in which he is eligible.

We've been tracking these players since before they were drafted and got ourselves up to speed on their progress by scouring untold hours of game tape, writing more than 700 individual game reports (as of this writing), and consulting with industry sources.

If you're new to these parts, we use a linear 1-to-9 tools grading system to judge players' skating, shooting, passing, puckhandling, hockey sense, and physicality. The table below shows how that relates to their NHL projection.

Our strict Calder-eligibility rule for determining who is or isn't a prospect means that a lot of players from last year's ranking who are probably prospects by most other definitions have graduated.

Here is the complete list of players who graduated from last year's ranking: Connor Bedard (Chicago Blackhawks), Adam Fantilli (Columbus Blue Jackets), Leo Carlsson (Anaheim Ducks), Logan Cooley (Utah), Zach Benson (Buffalo Sabres), David Jiříček (Blue Jackets), Luke Hughes (New Jersey Devils), Simon Edvinsson (Detroit Red Wings), Pavel Mintyukov (Ducks), Shane Wright (Seattle Kraken), Olen Zellweger (Ducks), Simon Nemec (Devils), Marco Rossi (Minnesota Wild), Brandt Clarke (Los Angeles Kings), Matthew Knies (Toronto Maple Leafs), Kevin Korchinski (Blackhawks), Matt Coronato (Calgary Flames), Brock Faber (Wild), Tyson Foerster (Philadelphia Flyers), Ryker Evans (Kraken), Jackson LaCombe (Ducks), Connor Zary (Flames), Ridly Greig (Ottawa Senators), Luke Evangelista (Nashville Predators), Mason Lohrei (Boston Bruins), Wyatt Kaiser (Blackhawks)

Now, let's get back to today's work, as we dive into the top 100 affiliated skater prospects going into the 2024-25 NHL season, complete with tools grades and scouting reports on each player and a list of honourable mentions to finish it all off.