The NHL has always had room for bigger forwards who aren’t explosive skaters, and I’ve spent enough time reading people like Darryl Belfry that I’m conscious of my biases of overvaluing pace, deception, edgework, and off-puck details to the point where I overlook everything else. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t bringing that bias to bear as I watched Alexis Joseph.

I knew that Joseph wasn’t a player I typically advocate for based on glimpses of him through my 2026 scouting, but these viewings didn’t help his case.

Joseph spent much of the first game alongside Mathis Preston and Adam Valentini in a u18 game for Canada, two players who naturally dominate transition touches. Preston was one of the most involved puck carriers in my tracking last season, while Valentini carried a significant transition workload in the NCAA as a draft-eligible. Joseph’s limited involvement in transitions wasn’t something I held against him, because I didn’t expect the puck to run through him very often.

What concerned me was what happened once it did.

Too often, his decisions felt reactive instead of prepared. Under pressure, there rarely seemed to be a second play in mind if his first option disappeared. Rather than absorbing pressure and finding another solution, he’d quickly chip the puck away, throw it down the wall, or dump it into an area that kept his team safe but immediately surrendered possession. There’s a difference between making a conservative play and making a panicked one, and too many of Joseph’s touches landed on the wrong side of that line.

If a player isn’t going to create separation with his feet, then his routes, timing, and anticipation become even more important. I didn’t see enough purpose in Joseph’s movement.

There were multiple sequences where he’d drift into space without recognizing where the next play was headed, or float through the offensive zone instead of supporting the puck. One shift summed it up perfectly. After tipping a stretch pass into the offensive zone along the boards, he wheeled toward the middle of the ice without ever checking what was going on in the zone he just put the puck in. The defenseman immediately moved the puck into the space Joseph had just vacated, turning what should have been a turnover or a forced d-to-d pass into an easy stretch pass and odd-man numbers going the other way.

His physical game also left me wanting more.

At his size, standing 6’5 and 201 pounds, I expected him to dictate more of the play along the walls. Instead, he’d often reach with his stick instead of finishing through opponents, ease up on races where contact was inevitable, and generally allow smaller players to escape without making them uncomfortable. 

The second viewing, a QMJHL playoff game, did little to change my opinion.

He struggled to complete even 50% of his passes, generated very little dangerous offense, and rarely looked capable of driving play through transition. Defensively, he floated through recoveries, allowed opponents to get around him too easily, and never consistently imposed himself physically. Outside of one strong forechecking shift that created a dangerous passing opportunity, very little stood out for the right reasons.

The tracking echoed those concerns. Joseph averaged three shots per game, with fewer than one coming from a dangerous area. Less than 9% of his attempted passes were sent to dangerous scoring areas; he was involved in just 30.6% of his team’s offensive transition plays while succeeding on only 55.9% of them, and his defensive transition success rate finished at just 26.7%.

For context, if he finishes the 26/27 season with these data points and game notes, when I go to rank him, he wouldn’t just be outside of my top 10.

He’d be out of my first round.

It’s entirely possible that another viewing changes some of this. I’ll happily revisit him in the fall and hope he paints a different picture because two games in the spring of their D-1 are never the final word on a prospect.

Right now, though, I came away less worried about my own bias than I was about Joseph’s game. I can live with a big forward who doesn’t have elite pace if the processing, off-puck movement, and physical engagement consistently tilt the ice in his favor. Through these two viewings, I didn’t think they did.