from Matt Larkin of The Hockey News,
Before diving into our top 10 rising prospects of the year, here’s a refresher on how Future Watch gets made:
Future Watch is an annual special edition of The Hockey News in which we (a) grade every NHL franchise’s pool of 21-and-younger talent, from players in the system to youngsters on the NHL rosters and (b) rank the top 100 NHL-affiliated individual prospects, with “NHL-affiliated” referring to all drafted or signed players in a team’s system. A 2021 draft hopeful such as Owen Power doesn’t qualify as he doesn’t have an NHL team yet.