Calgary Flames’ Ethan Wyttenbach Forgotten & Underrated in Recent Prospect Rankings – The Hockey Writers – Calgary Flames

Well, Corey Pronman and The Athletic continue to spark debate after a flurry of articles ranking younger players, prospects and prospect pipelines. We’ve seen a lot of uproar over players like Zach Benson, who was ranked 124th among the best under 23 years old, despite having three full NHL seasons under his belt and 101 career NHL points (from ‘Ranking the best NHL players and prospects under 23: Macklin Celebrini is No. 1’, The Athletic, Aug. 19, 2026), while many ranked above him haven’t even come close to sniffing the show.

The rankings in these articles are a mess and were clearly written to spark conversation and increase engagement, which is fine – almost welcome – in the dog days of summer. So outside of the obvious, which has already been debated ad nauseam on social media, the question I keep asking is: Why is Ethan Wyttenbach so underrated?

Who Is Ethan Wyttenbach?

Here’s a bit of information about the Calgary Flames’ fifth-round pick from the 2025 NHL Entry Draft. Wyttenbach, born in Roslyn, New York, grew up playing minor hockey on Long Island before transitioning to junior hockey and playing with the Sioux Falls Stampede for his rookie season in the United States Hockey League (USHL).

Leading up to the 2025 NHL Draft, Wyttenbach scored 24 goals and 51 points in 44 USHL games, ranked second among rookies and eighth overall in points per game (among players to play more than one game). Yet he didn’t garner the attention of scouts and ranked 185th on the NHL Central Scouting North America final rankings ahead of that draft.

Considering there was a whole other list of 124 international skaters and two lists of goalies, which included 47 prospects, heading into the draft, the odds of Wyttenbach being selected with one of the 224 picks were not in his favour. However, the Flames helped him realize his dreams, selecting him 144th overall.

Looking back, considering the stigma around undersized players, we can make sense of the ranking, given that he was listed at only 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds. But after deciding he was ready to take his game to another level, he left the USHL. He honoured his commitment to Quinnipiac University, enrolling a year earlier than expected after committing to the school at age 15.

That is where he finally caught the attention of the hockey world, scoring 25 goals and 59 points in 40 NCAA games, leading the nation in points per game as a freshman. This season has elevated Wyttenbach from just another prospect to one of the Flames’ marquee pieces, alongside Cullen Potter, Cole Reschny and Carson Carels, who are all expected to make their NHL debuts by the end of the 2026-27 season.

Wyttenbach Barely a Prospect Based on Latest Rankings

The controversy started with The Athletic’s Top 150 players under 23 ranking, and with Benson, a bona fide NHLer, sitting 124th, it wasn’t much of a surprise that Wyttenbach (also undersized) was nowhere to be found here in these rankings.

What came as a shock was that he was omitted from The Athletic’s Top 100 prospects drafted outside of the first round (from ‘The top 100 NHL players and prospects under 23 drafted after Round 1’, The Athletic, Aug. 20, 2026).

It wasn’t until Pronman re-ranked the 2025 NHL Draft Class that we saw his name show up on one of these lists, and even within his own class, he was still ranked the 59th-best prospect (from ‘2025 NHL re-draft: Matthew Schaefer, Michael Misa, Porter Martone lead the class’, The Athletic, Aug. 19, 2026), despite being a Hobey Baker Memorial Award finalist.

Wyttenbach Should Be Considered a Top Prospect

The one consistency across Pronman’s rankings is that smaller-sized players have been overlooked. Partly, for good reason: being smaller can make it harder to have an impact in a sport as physical as the NHL. So, it’s fair to use that to drop a player down the list, but if that’s the main reason a player is sliding, they’re not analyzing prospects anymore; they’re playing percentages, because, yes, far more undersized prospects bust rather than boom. However, it’s becoming increasigly common for star players to be smaller-set.

Flames fans are very familiar with smaller-sized stars, watching Johnny Gaudreau’s rise after being selected in the fourth round. That isn’t a unique example either. If you look at The Hockey Writers’ Top 10 Undersized player rankings released earlier this spring, it’s loaded with talent: Cole Caufield, Lane Hutson, Brad Marchand, Alex DeBrincat, Jonathan Marchessault, Mats Zuccarello and Logan Stankoven, to name a few.

Many of these players also developed through the NCAA. In their freshman season, Caufield scored 36 points in 36 games, and Gaudreau had 44 points in 44 games. That compares to Wyttenbach’s 59 points in 40 games in what is now a much more competitive NCAA, now that top Canadian Hockey League players can transition to college without penalty.

Now, we saw Wyttenbach impress at the Flames’ prospect development camp as much as any of their other top prospects, and we saw him thrive at the World Junior Championship summer showcase, and there are no signs of his development slowing down.

I think his potential is much closer to what Stephen Ellis of Daily Faceoff thinks, when he said Wyttenbach “might end up becoming the biggest steal from the 2025 NHL Draft. As long as he continues to get quicker, he has a legit path to a middle-six role in the NHL,” rather than some unranked prospect with no future.

With the Flames wanting him in the fold sooner rather than later, we’ll find out pretty quick who’s on the right side of this argument.