2019 NHL Draft: Top prospect Peyton Krebs suffers Achilles injury

Peyton Krebs has reportedly suffered a partially torn Achilles tendon. How will this affect the 2019 NHL Draft prospect’s ranking?

The 2019 NHL Draft is nearly here. Unfortunately, one of its top prospects has just been injured. According to Cory Pronman of The Athletic, Peyton Krebs suffered an Achilles’ injury during his offseason training.

Scott Cruickshank of The Athletic followed up with some more details. Apparently, Krebs suffered the injury on Tuesday and underwent surgery to fix his partially torn Achilles tendon on Friday in Calgary. There isn’t a timeline yet for his recovery, but there is optimism he might only miss a few games at the start of the 2019-20 season.

Recently, we ranked Krebs as one of our top 10 prospects in the 2019 NHL Draft. He’s been very dominant despite playing for a weak Winnipeg Ice franchise. They only won 13 games all season, yet Krebs still posted over a point per game.

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Luckily, it sounds like it was only a partial tear. It could have been a lot worse, as the injury reportedly occurred thanks to another player’s skate blade. Krebs should be able to recover and there should be no long-term effects.

There’s little reason to believe this will affect how teams view him. Krebs’ injury, assuming there are no complications, shouldn’t affect his long-term outlook. Still, teams are probably going to want to be extra cautious and want to know more about the injury.

It wouldn’t be surprising to see Krebs fall a little bit in the draft. After all, there are a lot of good forwards in this draft. And the difference between Krebs and everyone else honestly isn’t that much. It’s so tiny, the injury might give some teams some understandable concerns about him.

But if Krebs does fall, I’m willing to bet whoever passes on him will regret it. And whoever drafts him will be lucky. Krebs is easily one of the top prospects in the draft. A lot of people aren’t huge on him because of his unimpressive numbers, but remember, he was on a very bad team.

It’s unfortunate Krebs suffered the injury while training. However, don’t expect it to affect his draft status much. Krebs is still worth considering as a top 10 pick and shouldn’t fall past the 15th pick. If he does, teams are going to regret passing on him.