Scout's Notebook: The top skaters of the 2022 NHL Draft class

Speed has become the premier element of any NHL asset. 

Smarts will get you a long way. Great puck skills will wow the crowd, and teams will always line up for goals. But at the end of the day, how you can get up and down the ice, how you can attack seams, and how able you are able to clean up mistakes will make or break your career. 

As each draft has come and gone, we’ve seen teams slowly move away from bigger, lumbering players and focus more squarely on players with blazing speed. The draw to take that one decisive trait and work on rounding out the rest of their game has become a challenge that development personnel have taken on with more gusto. 

So what goes into a technically advanced skater?