Coming off a rough season for the USNDTP that included a big injury, Fondrk is slated for Boston University in 2025-26.
After watching some great options fall off the board just a few selections before the New Jersey Devils were on the clock, Tom Fitzgerald chose to take a bet on Conrad Fondrk, a 6’0” and 192 pound center from the USNDTP. Fondrk was ranked 45th by NHL Central Scouting among North American skaters, usually finding himself in the mid-third round on draft boards. Devils fans will have to hope that the scouting department knows what they are doing here. Of course, Fondrk hurt his leg during the 2024-25 season, so his draft stock took a bit of a hit. Below, you can see his statistics from Elite Prospects.
Elite Prospects
I hate to be down on a pick, but nothing here calls out to me. He had a regression in production and is neither big nor a right-handed center. Nothing about his production says he would have been a better option at 50 than, say, Ethan Czata. According to Byron Bader’s Hockey Prospecting, Fondrk has just a 23% chance of becoming an NHLer based off of his U18 production. Hockey Prospecting uses production profiles and compares them to actual, historical cases of players becoming busts or stars, and he does not look great.
Hockey Prospecting
Below, you can see Fondrk’s highlights from HSD Prospects. From what I can tell, Fondrk gets most of his production from distance, and he has some good legs. But if you were looking for a big, physical center, Fondrk does not seem to be that guy. To me, this seems to be a below-average pick, but hopefully Fondrk proves that his 2024-25 season was a fluke. In Mitchell Brown and Lassi Alanen’s USHL tracking data, Fondrk was in the 8th percentile in defense and the 18th percentile in physicality, while deriving almost all of his value from offensive zone entries and shooting.
Now that you know what I think about the pick, please feel free to give your reaction to the pick in the comments. Please also vote in our flash poll (ends at 7:00 PM tomorrow), that will lead to a later post describing what you, the People Who Matter, thought of the pick. Thank you for reading.