Dissecting Royals 2023 Prospect Draft with Joel Henderson of Puck Preps

The Zone’s Royals Hockey correspondent Mark Addams caught up with Joel Henderson from Puck Preps https://puckpreps.com/ to discuss the recent WHL bantam draft and also the US Priority Draft.

Joel Henderson puts in thousands of hours watching the prospect pool each year to create rankings and evaluations of the draft eligible talent across the west.

The spoiler alert before you listen is – the future looks bright for the Victoria Royals. The most recent draft has yielded the 4^th overall pick, Keaton Verhoeff who is already 6’3” and a solid offensive minded defenseman.

Joel was able to shed some light on all 11 players picked in the main WHL draft as well as the Cruz Waltze who was taken by Victoria with 2^nd overall selection in the U.S. Priority Draft.

We also circled back to get some intel on Victoria’s top pick in the 2022 Bantam draft, Cole Reschny and last but not least we talked about a local hockey player who was highly touted and taken by Calgary with the 11^th overall selection in the WHL draft, Noah Kosick.

This draft yields a lot of solid, intelligent players. The smallest guy picked could become a crowd favorite and there is potential for the Royals to have also found their goalie of the future as well a range of quality offensive talent and depth.

Give the interview a listen and if you like what Joel has to say, give him a follow on Twitter @dathockeydoe

2023 Royals Prospect Draft
1	#4	Keaton Verhoeff (D)
2	#25	Kash Alger-East (F)
3	#62	Cole Prelusky (G)
4	#69	Owen McCarthy (D)
4	#81	Harshaan Kaila (F)
5	#104	Nolan Stewart (F)
6	#113	Kadyn O’Brien (F)
8	#157	William Ren (D)
9	#179	Mathieu Lajoie (F)
10	#201	Tyler McCracken (D)
11	#223	Henry Liu (D)