32 newcomers with 80 PO or higher

*Milan draftee Jason Robertson, who can play either wing, has a 90 PO rating. That means he should reach the level Vadim Shipachyov and Ondrej Palat are at currently.*

Now that the NHL’s regular season is over and Websim’s admins have had time to input attributes for players who will play in Websim for the first time, we can get a pretty clear look at the future, especially in a virtual evolution league like the EURO League.

Along with Owen Power, Matty Beniers and others who will be drafted in July in the NHL, EURO general managers will have two or three excellent skaters and a few young goalies to salivate over. Kirill Kaprizov had a good enough rookie season with the Minnesota Wild to earn an 89 PO rating. He will be a goal scoring winger in our league for sure. Mikey Anderson of the LA Kings is somehow an 84 PO defenseman now. That one has us scratching our heads a little.

Perhaps the pandemic-shortened season helped this crop of Websim rookies. Thirty-two of them have PO ratings of 80 or higher.

But not all 32 of those guys will be available to you on draft day. Twenty-one of them are already on EURO teams. They were drafted as prospects in previous seasons. Drafting a prospect in a virtual league is almost always a gamble because the player’s lifelong attributes are based on his first NHL stats. Leon Draisaitl and Nino Niederreiter are prime examples of good NHL players who earned terrible attributes and will probably never place a EURO league jersey over their heads. Filip Forsberg (drafted #52 in Season 2) and Dylan Larkin (#56 pick in Season 4) are examples of the opposite effect – gambles that paid off big.

After this season’s Websim attributes shook out, the biggest winners were Milan, Copenhagen and Moscow. Dallas Stars forward Jason Robertson, 21, earned a 90 PO rating and with his 77 OV rating, he should be able to step right into the Guerrieros’ lineup as a wing. Moscow also gets a future star LW in Tim Stutzle, an 18-year-old German with an 89 PO rating. And Copenhagen gets big K’Andre Miller to add to its defense corps, possibly as early as next season. Miller earned a 75 OV rating and 90 PO.

There are also four prospect gambles that paid off with 86 PO ratings: Nils Hoglander, W, Copenhagen; Alexander Romanov, D, Prague; Maxim Comtois, LW, Bern; and Josh Norris, C, Bratislava.