'By A Massive Margin': Auditing Hockey's Loudest Pipeline Claim

The sentence going around is that the San Jose Sharks have the best prospect pipeline in the National Hockey League "by a massive margin," which is Corey Pronman's phrasing and not a paraphrase anyone should soften.

It is a big claim. It is also the kind of claim that is very easy to make and very annoying to check, because "prospect pool" is a bucket that holds everything from a projected first-line winger to a seventh-round flyer listed at seven feet one.

(That last one is real. Alexander Karmanov, seventh round, listed at 7-foot-1 and 272 pounds, from Moldova. If he ever plays an NHL game he would be the tallest player in league history, taller than Zdeno Chara. He is a lottery ticket in a folder of lottery tickets and he is not part of this argument, but I was not going to get through a prospect piece without telling you he exists.)

Anyway. Let us do the audit properly. The claim rests on three players.

1. Ivar Stenberg, LW, No. 2 overall#

Everything starts here.

Stenberg was the second pick of the 2026 draft, signed his entry-level deal on July 3, and is the only prospect in this system who is going to spend the entire season in the NHL. Scott Wheeler's summer top-100 for The Athletic ranked him the No. 2 drafted prospect in hockey, in the top tier, projecting him as a first-line winger.

Four independent opening-night lineup projections have now been published. All four put him in the top nine. Three of the four have him top six. The Athletic's Sharks beat writer called San Jose's top three left wings interchangeable, which is a nice way of saying the 18-year-old is already in the conversation for the best of them.

The reasonable expectation is 45 to 60 points and a real Calder campaign. The one anchor projection that lands under that bar came from Professor Hockey, who framed it as Stenberg getting to roughly 80 percent of a 60-point second-line forward, which pencils out around 48.

Note that the pessimistic case is "a very good rookie season." That is what a No. 2 pick who is already NHL-ready does to a pipeline's floor.

2. Keaton Verhoeff, RHD, No. 9 overall#

The Sharks had two top-ten picks and used the second one on a right-shot defenseman headed to North Dakota.

Verhoeff is the one whose grade moves the most over the next three years, because the skating is the swing skill. The ceiling is a top-pair defenseman. Right-shot defensemen who can genuinely play top pair are the scarcest commodity in the sport, and organizations spend entire decades failing to produce one.

He is also, importantly, not close. College freshman, 25 to 35 points would be a good year, and any conversation about his NHL timeline that does not include the words "2028 at the earliest" is not being honest with you.

3. Eric Pohlkamp, RHD, and this is the one people miss#

Here is where the claim gets interesting, because the third name is not a first-round pick.

Pohlkamp was a fifth-round selection in 2023. Last season he led all NCAA defensemen in scoring with 39 points and 18 goals, won a national title, and finished in the Hobey Baker top ten. He was the organization's Prospect of the Year. He is a right shot. He is on the AHL-NHL bubble right now, this season, at 21.

A pipeline that is merely stocked with high picks is a pipeline that spent years being terrible. A pipeline that also turns a fifth-rounder into a Hobey finalist is a pipeline where somebody is doing actual work. That distinction is the entire difference between "best prospect pool" as a compliment and "best prospect pool" as an accusation.

The supporting cast is genuinely deep#

Beyond the three: Ryan Lin, another right-shot defenseman taken at No. 21 and described by multiple evaluators as the smartest defenseman in the class. Luca Cagnoni, who put up 52 points in 64 games as an AHL rookie and is a legitimate Calder dark horse if he sticks. Quentin Musty, the Barracuda's co-Rookie of the Year. Joshua Ravensbergen, the goaltender of the future behind Yaroslav Askarov. Filip Bystedt, Leo Sahlin Wallenius, Cameron Lund.

Wheeler had this system ranked second in the NHL before the 2026 draft, and then the Sharks added three first-round picks including the second-overall selection. Pronman graded the draft class an A.

So the claim holds up. Mostly.

Now the skeptic's version, which deserves a real hearing#

Three objections, in ascending order of how much they should bother you.

Objection one: prospect pools are graded on potential, and potential is free. Nobody has ever lost a job for over-rating a 19-year-old. The evaluators making these lists are excellent at their craft and also structurally incentivized toward optimism, because the downside of being wrong about a prospect arrives four years later when nobody is keeping score. This is a mild objection. Wheeler and Pronman both have public track records and they are good ones.

Objection two: "best pipeline" is frequently a synonym for "worst team, longest." You accumulate a pool like this by picking second overall and ninth overall in the same draft, and you get those picks by being bad, repeatedly, on purpose. The pool is not evidence of genius. It is the receipt for the tank. San Jose's front office deserves credit for the execution (Pohlkamp, Cagnoni in the fourth round) and no credit at all for the draft position.

Objection three, and this is the one that matters: a pipeline is a promise, and promises get paid for. Every name on that list is currently cheap. Stenberg is on an entry-level contract at $1.075 million. That is the good part. The problem is what happens when the promise comes due, and San Jose has already committed nearly $110 million to four veteran players whose deals run into the same window as the second contracts for Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, Michael Misa and Sam Dickinson.

Celebrini and Misa are two of the four second contracts that come due in the same window as that $110 million of veteran money. This is the bill, not the promise.

A great pipeline in a flexible cap situation is a dynasty. A great pipeline in a rigid one is a series of painful decisions about which of your own draft picks you can afford to keep.

The honest summary is that San Jose has assembled the most talented collection of young players in the sport and simultaneously reduced its ability to keep all of them. Both of those things are true. Neither cancels the other.

Check back on Stenberg in April.

He is the whole thing, really.