It's impossible to not like Juraj Slafkovsky

The 2022 NHL draft class is packed with all sorts of players with so many different abilities. They come in all different shapes, sizes, positions, countries– you get it.

There are so many talented and gifted hockey players available in this upcoming draft class, that it really does feel like a team will be able to get top 5 talent as late as 15th overall. It shocks me how skillful players such as Gleb Trikozov and Frank Nazar could be at the 15th overall spot, but that’s the luxury of having a deep draft class with very well-rounded prospects.

Shane Wright is destined to go first overall, and there’s no debate. The 18 year-old centerman has 46 points in 35 games this year with the Kingston Frontenacs. In his rookie season, Wright tallied 66 points in 58 games with Kingston, which happened to be a better rookie season in the OHL than Connor McDavid had. Although Wright’s hype has been amped up, he’s been shown to have a few flaws in his game. Shane Wright’s an amazing hockey player who will go on to have a long lasting and successful NHL career, even if he may not live up to some of his comparables.

Now, the discussion shifts to who in the world will ever go second overall. This season, there’s no bona fide second overall pick. The names have bounced around from Brad Lambert, Logan Cooley, Simon Nemec, Matthew Savoie and even Joakim Kemell. But the one name that hasn’t seen second overall on many lists, is Juraj Slafkovsky.

Juraj Slafkovsky is one of the most intriguing and engaging prospects I’ve seen in a long time. Standing at 6’4 and weighing in at 218 pounds, the Slovakian native has been showing off his adroitness at all sorts of levels in Finland and different tournaments in the last few seasons. He’s got so many aspects to his game that are so adoring to watch, and I’ve fallen in love with his playing style ever since I laid my eyes on him.

Photo Credit: TASR, Jaroslav Novák

Representing team Slovakia at the 2022 winter olympics at 17 years, Juraj has torched the competition using his powerful shot, his active speed, and his well-built body. Slafkovsky has managed to shock the world quite recently as he put up 3 goals in 2 games with team Slovakia at the olympics.

There are so many amazing things about Juraj Slafkovsky’s gameplay, and in this article, we’ll go over every part of his game that I venerate. Get strapped in, because you’re about to witness something incredible with this guy.

Speed & Zone Entries (and a bit of exits too)

Despite being over 215 pounds and being 6’4 at the ripe age of 17, Slafkovsky has grown himself as a fast-paced skater with great agility and quick feet. His footwork and his exploding power has mechanized him in so many moments of need, and it’ll only affect him positively once he inevitably arrives in the NHL.

In this clip, Slafkovsky picks up the puck ever so smoothly onto his stick while it’s rolling (giving it some extra style points), and carrying it through the neutral zone straight into the offensive zone, driving it right to the net, and creating a beautiful backhand pass across onto the stick of his Slovakain teammate, who ends up putting it in. He did all of this, while being chased down by Alexander Perevalov, a Russian prospect known for his shot, and more importantly, his speed.

These sorts of plays are something that you’re going to get with Juraj Slafkovsky very often. One of the more stimulating things you’ll perceive with him, is how much he likes to enter the zone instead of making a boring passing play. Of course, there have been many instances where his sort-of selfishness with the puck have cost him a bad giveaway, but if he masters what he currently does, creating offensive zone chances won’t be an issue.

As I said, there’s still work to be done when he enters the zone, but across the board of some of the top prospects, Slafkovsky still remains one of the better skaters when it comes to controlled entries per 60, with 11.90. As a 6’4 player, successfully getting into the opponent's zone with that positive rate is considerably impressive. Agreeably, with every upside, comes a slight downside. Slafkovsky still needs a lot of work with getting the puck out of his own zone. His controlled exits per 60 sit at a mere 8.50, which isn’t something “sexy” for a forward. Could it be defensive laziness due to his outgoing offensive upside? It could be, but his defensive skill is still one of his best tactics. Whatever it is, it needs to get better.

Back to his speed.

His fast paced footwork let’s him get through some of the harder parts of pressure, letting him create space and time for himself to make a play. Whether it’s a simple pass or if it’s a cycle-like play, he’ll use his speed to find a way to generate an opportunity for whatever it is he needs to do.

At the world juniors in January, we saw a quick glimpse of how Juraj would play against some North American skill. It was safe to say that it wasn’t any different than European hockey, because he pulled off entries like these. Again, his speed helped him casually walk through all three zones, and enter the offensive zone without having to deal with any pressure up until he came closer to the net. He may not have scored, but the amount of confidence a teenager needs to be making those sorts of plays is awe-inspiring.

It never gets annoying or tiring watching him dance through the neutral zone and into the O-zone. Even when he messes up, you know that he’ll go on to fix his mistake by retrieving the puck, and he’ll eventually become better at entering the zone. These fast moving, big body types of players are hard for NHL defenders to actually defend, and that’s what struggling offensive teams will need. For example, the Vancouver Canucks have had terrible break-ins and controlled entries this year. I’m confident that a player like Slafkovsky could bump up those numbers with ease. His speed and his quick thinking gives him these opportunities to go into the O-zone, and make a great play.

Strength & Puck Protection

Slafkovsky is 6’4 and 218 pounds. It’s quite obvious that one of the dude’s best qualities is his strength and his power. Strength in on-ice performance comes in different forms. It could be a solid hit to get the fellas fired up, or it could be your basic yet crafty puck protection. Or it could even be the ability to feel like the player never gets pushed off the puck.

What if I told you Slafkovsky can do all of that, and more?

Firstly, let’s get on with the easy stuff: the hitting. Here’s a good hit that he laid in a tournament roughly a year ago.

The play starts off by a Slovakian player losing the puck after getting it stripped by a Swedish skater. It eventually rolled off of his stick, and Juraj jumped onto the opportunity by grabbing the puck and once again, speedly entered the offensive zone. Fairly, he does try a little too much on it (he does too much a little much sometimes) and the puck goes into the corner. Slafkovsky targeted his guy, and threw him into the boards with a textbook hockey check. It was a great hit. If he can hold that confidence and grit into the NHL level, there will be NHL veterans who will be scared of going into the corners with him.

In the clip below, Slafkovsky steals the puck off of the defenders stick, and circles around to generate a bit of space, and scores his very first Liiga goal.

As he separates himself from the others, he gets pressured on from the same guy who lost the puck. Using his strength and his agility that we talked about earlier, he spreads himself away from the defender and ends up rifling past the goalie. These types of plays are so smart because it further proves how he manages to draw out a play in his mind and end up scoring while having most of his options taken away. Instead of panicking by sending it off the wall like a lot of younger players tend to do at a higher level, he had no fear of the play, circled around, and ended up scoring on a solid wrister.

This doesn’t happen as often as I’d like to see it, but he does have that occasional moment where he strips the puck off of a player and gains an offensive opportunity.

As you can analyze, he uses his size to knock the defender, then pushes him away. He doesn’t end up scoring on the shot, but the fact that he's never afraid to get involved and use his body to make a play is comforting to see.

It’s good that he knows that he’s big. One thing with bigger-built young players is that they occasionally don’t realize how much their size can positively impact them. Slafkovsky is one of those players who uses his size for anything and it helps him whenever he’s battling for the puck.

Speaking of puck battles, they’re no issue for Juraj.

He gets tied up against the wall a ton. Thankfully, he knows where to go and how to get out of those situations. Half of it is thankful to his monstrous size, and the other is his game smarts. For example, in the video above, he uses his butt to just push Ganahl away, and uses himself as a human shield to just block Ganahl away from being able to touch the puck. Slafkovsky escapes from the tie-up at the wall with ease, and he's off to make a play. That’s another one of those plays that Slafkovsky has mastered. He ended up drawing a penalty on the play too, because the opposing player got pretty pissed after getting outplayed and outsmarted by JS.

Here’s another one of those moments where Slafkovsky ends up in a board battle off the faceoff, and despite getting pressure by one guy and getting held up by another, he stays with the puck using his arm strength to hold the puck close to him, and send it back up to the defenseman. As he sends it right back up, the defenseman tries to lift his stick in a desperate attempt to retain the puck, but Slafkovsky stays with it and creates the play.

Thanks to his size and his power, stealing the puck away, or even keeping it afar from Slafkovsky, feels like it won’t happen. How will it hold up in the NHL? That's up to the future to decide. But, I can promise you that if he keeps improving on his current skill and he continues to stay in the gym and get bigger, it’ll be the same in the NHL as it is now in Europe.

Shooting and Stickhandling

Before we go much further here, I want to show you this goal that Juraj Slafkovsky scored at the Hlinka-Gretzky world cup.

Slafkovsky walks into the offensive zone (shocker) and tries to deke around the defender. Given, he’s pokechecked and loses the puck for a split second. He does, quickly, pick up the puck and trick the goalie by making it look like he’s going to his backhand. Instead, he switches to the forehand, and gets the shot off in time for the goal. Slafkovsky shows off his hands, and his shot in this highlight reel goal. He went for the original move, and he lost the puck. Instead of stopping on the puck or just giving up, he kept skating forwards and took the lost puck along with him. Once he got through the defense, he tricked the goalie. The shot speaks for itself. Top left with no mercy.

Here’s Slafkovsky skating through the defensive zone and bringing it up to the middle of the ice by using his nifty hands. As he skates in, he gives a nice pass off to the goal scorer. Slafkovsky rarely does make the pass and he usually skates the puck in himself, but with his head up high, he reads the offensive play with no mitsake, and sets up the other player with a great pass. That’s another small thing that every NHL team will love about Slafkovsky; his offensive read which lets him create plays, space, shots, goals, and crisp tape to tape passes like this one.

Now we have the final Juraj clip of the article, so please enjoy how good he really is at hockey.

This goal was scored very recently at the 2022 winter olympics against team Finland. By the way, Finland is a darn good team so keep that in mind.

So, Peter Ceresnak of team Slovakia sends the puck hard at the net where Slafkovsky is already standing. Slafkovsky then attempts to redirect the puck into the net, which goes the complete opposite way. He picks up the puck, fakes out the defender to cause him to go the other way, and just like one of the earlier videos, he circles around the zone to create space and time for a shot (or a pass, but there was no pass on the play this time), and he got that shot off expeditiously. Not only was it a quick shot, it went in and it went high up. It was a great shot and it was another example of how he’s able to generate room and opportunities using his game smarts. His effective and powerful shot was shown off with this goal, too.

Thanks to Lassi Alanen’s tracked data, he managed to track Simon Nemec, Topi Ronni, Brad Lambert, Joakim Kemell, Jani Nyman, David Jiricek, Lian Bichsel, Otto Salin, and Juraj Saflovsky’s shot contributions across the European pro leagues in the 2021-22 season.

Despite it being packed in the middle, Slafkovsky remains second on the chart in shot attempts per 60, and shots per 60. This makes him the most well-rounded shooter on the list and shows off how much he does contribute to a ton of TPS Turku’s team.

Slafkovsky has so many marvelous bearings to his game, but his shot and his hands are some of the best parts of his skill set.

Microstats and Analytics

Thanks to Lassi Alanen comin up big with the advanced data, we are able to see a ton of Saflovsky’s analyses from his time in the Liiga. First up we have his expected primary points.

Out of all the tracked players, Slavkovsky is first in isolated expected goals per 60. If he keeps playing the way he has, and even improving in the process, he’ll tear up the Liiga next year. And when he inescapably does, he’ll become so much more liked among NHL prospects.

Here’s the scatter plot of expected primary points at even strength.

As visualized above, Topi Ronni is the closest to Slafkovsky’s level, but even then, it’s no contest. Look at how dominant Juraj has been at the analytical level in the Liiga at 17 years of age. The points, goals,and assists are destined to come as soon as next season. All he needs is a bit more development and more ice time.

Finally, the expected primary points via rush VS cycle.

The Kosice native’s best xP/60 come off the cycle. When the puck is being moved around and the puck’s getting moved like we've seen it being moved by Slafkovsky in the clips, that’s when he's got the best chances to score. His expected goals off the rush are one of his strengths as well. His primary assists per 60 off the cycle does need some work as it appears to be the biggest struggle, but even then, he still dominates his fellow competition.

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The way I see it, Juraj Slafkovsky is one of the culminating prospects in the draft. I love the player so much that I sincerely think he could be the best player out of this draft. The potential is right there, and I think that with what he’s shown off, he’s on pace to be one of the better players in the 2022 class.

He’s my favorite player in the entire class, and I cannot wait to see what he does in the next few years. I believe that with the way he’s built and the skill set that he’s got, he can dominate the National Hockey League in a matter of a few years. Juraj Slafkovsky will be one of the most fun players to watch in the NHL one day, and he’ll be sure to amaze some people.

Photo Credit: Codie McLachlan/Getty Images