18 NHL Prospects Selected At CHL Import Draft

In the days following the NHL draft, the CHL has its annual Import Draft where its 60 teams can select up to two international players, depending on how many returning international players they have.  This year’s draft was held on Wednesday, with a total of 18 players that were picked at last week’s NHL draft getting selected.  They are as follows, listed by the order of their selection with their NHL draft slot in parentheses:

Matvei Gridin (Val-d’Or, QMJHL), Calgary (Round 1/28th Overall)
Ilya Protas (Windsor, OHL), Washington (3/75)
Gabriel Eliasson (Niagara, OHL), Ottawa (2/39)
Miroslav Holinka (Edmonton, WHL), Toronto (5/151)
Emil Hemming (Barrie, OHL), Dallas (1/29)
Mikus Vecvanags (Acadie-Bathurst, QMJHL), Montreal (5/134)
Markus Loponen (Victoria, WHL), Winnipeg (5/155)
Basile Sansonnens (Rimouski, QMJHL), Vancouver Canucks (7/221)
Loke Johansson (Moncton, QMJHL), Boston (6/186)
Kasper Pikkarainen (Red Deer, WHL), New Jersey (3/85)
Niilopekka Muhonen (Medicine Hat, WHL), Dallas (5/158)
Igor Chernyshov (Saginaw, OHL), San Jose (2/33)
Petr Sikora (Acadie-Bathurst, QMJHL), Washington Capitals (6/178)
Sebastian Soini (Blainville-Boisbriand, QMJHL), Minnesota Wild (5/140)
Aron Kiviharju (Moncton, QMJHL), Minnesota Wild (4/122)
Ondrej Kos (Kitchener, OHL), St. Louis Blues (3/81)
Veeti Vaisanen (Medicine Hat, WHL), Utah (3/96)
Lucas Pettersson (Saginaw, OHL), Anaheim (2/35)

Not all of these players will go to their new teams right away; some won’t at all and others might come next season or later depending on their contractual situation at that time.  However, these players will now have another possible place to play and in several of those situations, the NHL team who drafted the player will likely try to steer them to play in the CHL where they can get into more games while making it easier for development coaches and scouts to check in on them.

Of the 64 non-NHL draftees selected, several of them should become viable prospects for the 2025 draft.  A total of ten players picked in last year’s Import Draft were picked by NHL teams last weekend.  Meanwhile, Leon Draisaitl, Nikita Kucherov, and Nikolaj Ehlers are among the notable NHL players who were picked in this draft and then came to play major junior in North America.