Every summer since 2015, we here at FlamesNation have compiled our annual prospects rankings.

And man, this year was probably the most challenging voting we’ve ever conducted. Gone are the days where the most recent draft choices automatically leap to the top of a shallow prospect pool. With the depth that we’ve seen the Calgary Flames add in the draft (and via trades and free agent signings) in recent years, there are a lot of tough decisions and debates to be had when deciding who the organization’s top youngsters are.

Let’s dig into how we went through this year’s rankings.

The top 20

Our nine voters were tasked with sifting through Calgary’s 39 eligible prospects and crafting a list of who they deemed the top 20. (What constituted a “top prospect” was left deliberately vague and up to each voter’s interpretation, but each player had to be eligible to win the Calder Trophy in 2025-26 to be eligible for selection for this list.)

With each ballot submitted, FlamesNation managing editor Ryan Pike assigned 20 points to every prospect ranked No. 1 on each individual ballot and a single point for each No. 20-ranked prospect (and divided up as such for the in-between spots).

12 prospects received no votes and earned zero points towards their final ranking: Parker Bell, Daniil Chechelev, Nick Cicek, Lucas Ciona, Artem Grushnikov, Axel Hurtig, Jakob Leander, Jaden Lipinski, Yan Matveiko, Owen Say and Yegor Yegorov. (Joni Jurmo mutually terminated his contract midway through voting, but he didn’t receive any votes either.)

Aidan Lane received one point, Hunter Laing received two points, Eric Jamieson received three points, Jeremie Poirier received seven points, Mace’o Phillips received eight points, Trevor Hoskin received nine points and Carter King received 14 points.

Here’s how the top 20 came together:

Four members of the Flames’ 2025 draft class feature on this year’s rankings: first-rounder Reschny (2nd), first-rounder Potter (5th), second-rounder Stockselius (12th) and fifth-rounder Wyttenbach (20th).

From the 2024 ranking, we saw the graduation of Dustin Wolf (No. 2) and Adam Klapka (No. 15), as they both exceeded the games played cap to be considered rookies for 2025-26. (Wolf finished second in Calder Trophy voting and made the All-Rookie Team.) Cole Schwindt (No. 18) was claimed off waivers by Vegas in the fall. Jeremie Poirier (No. 7), Jaden Lipinski (No. 16) and Artem Grushnikov (No. 17) all remain in the Flames system, but failed to gain enough votes to reach this year’s top 20.

The 2025 top 20 features two goaltenders, six defencemen and 12 forwards. In terms of nationalities, the list contains eight Canadians, five Russians, three Americans, two Swedes, one Slovak and one Belarusian.

Individual lists

10 of our contributors submitted individual lists for the 2024 rankings. Here’s the breakdown:

For the second consecutive year, Parekh was the unanimous choice for top prospect. Behind him, there was consensus around silver-medallist Cole Reschny, while Hunter Brzustewicz just beat out Matvei Gridin for third spot. In terms of trends, there was a lot of consensus over the top eight… and then a ton of variation after that.

In terms of specific players that we had differing opinions on, the most prominent are Sam Honzek and Etienne Morin. Honzek was high as ninth and as low as 16th, while Morin varied between fifth and 14th.

And seemingly every year we do this exercise, there’s a player that misses the cut for the top 20 that ends up playing NHL games. The top candidate for that distinction could end up being Lucas Ciona, who appeared on zero ballots but really stood out as a physical, agitating presence in the Wranglers bottom six last season.