We kick things off on this year’s Top 25 Under 25 with a man with the same curse as myself: a first name that sounds like a last name to go along with a last name that sounds like a first name. It’s yet another way in which I think of him as an underdog beating the odds to be a pro hockey player.
Kelly scored 43 points in 72 games for the WHL’s Prince Albert Raiders in 2016-17, with a strong second-half of the season (29 points in the final 30 games) putting him at 192 on the NHL’s pre-draft rankings of North American skaters.