Rights, Sources & Disclaimers
This page sets out who owns what on Draft Prospects Hockey, where the underlying data comes from, what we claim a right to and what we do not. It applies to the site, the rankings, the player database, the models and every tool published under the Draft Prospects Hockey name.
Draft Prospects Hockey is a brand and asset of The Prospect Don Holdings LLC, an Illinois limited liability company. In this page, "DPH", "we", "us" and "our" mean that company. It is an independent scouting service and publisher. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or licensed by the National Hockey League, the NHL Players' Association, any NHL club, the CHL, the OHL, the WHL, the QMJHL, the USHL, the AHL, the NCAA, the IIHF, or any other league, club, federation or player association.
What we own
The following are the original work of The Prospect Don Holdings LLC and are protected by copyright and, where applicable, database and trade-secret rights:
- our player ratings, attribute grades, ceilings, tiers, rankings, comparables and draft boards;
- our written scouting reports, articles, rankings copy and editorial commentary;
- our models and their methods, including the grading model, the development bands, the draft-value curve and the estimate layers, together with their weights, calibrations and fitted coefficients;
- the selection, structure, arrangement and enrichment of our player database, including the identifiers, matching and merge work that turned separate public sources into one dataset;
- the design, code, layout, interface and branding of this site and its tools.
A number being visible on a page does not place it in the public domain. Our ratings are the output of a proprietary process and are published for reading, not for collection.
What you may do with our work
Read it, share the link, and quote a short excerpt or an individual ranking with attribution to Draft Prospects Hockey and a link back. That is welcome and always has been.
What requires our written permission
- scraping, crawling, bulk-downloading, mirroring or systematically copying our rankings, reports, database, ratings or any file this site serves;
- republishing our lists, boards or reports in whole or in substantial part;
- using our content or data to build, train, fine-tune, evaluate or ground any machine-learning model, language model, dataset or derivative work;
- any commercial use, resale, syndication or redistribution of our data or content, including in a competing product, an app, a newsletter or a broadcast graphic.
Licensing enquiries are genuinely welcome and we do license our work. Write to Anthony@TheProspectDon.com.
What we do not own, and do not claim to
Club names, team names, crests, logos, uniforms, wordmarks and other league or club marks are the property of their respective owners. Player names and likenesses are the property of the players and, where applicable, their associations. They appear on this site for identification, reference and editorial commentary, which is a nominative use and not a claim of ownership, sponsorship, endorsement or affiliation. No trademark licence is granted to us by their appearance here, and none is granted to you by their appearance here.
Where the data comes from
Statistics, biographical details, draft information, contract and cap figures and transaction history on this site are compiled from publicly available sources: public league and federation feeds and pages, public records, public reporting, and our own manual entry and hand-checking. We do not publish or redistribute raw datasets that were licensed to us or to anyone else under terms that forbid it, and we do not knowingly republish another provider's proprietary dataset as our own.
No source named or used on this site endorses, reviews, supplies or is associated with Draft Prospects Hockey. Nothing here grants you any right in the underlying third-party data. If you want to use that data, get it from its owner.
Player tracking numbers
Where this site shows measured skating speed, shot speed, distance skated, speed bursts or zone time, those figures come from a league's own publicly published tracking feed. They are not our measurements, we did not collect them, we hold no rights in them, and we do not present them as our own model. They appear as published, for reference and commentary, and we do not warrant that we have matched or reproduced them correctly.
Where a player carries no published tracking, we show a Draft Prospects Hockey estimate derived from that player's ratings, role and workload. Estimates are labelled as estimates everywhere they appear. An estimate is a guess with a method behind it, not a measurement, and it should not be quoted as one. No league supplies, reviews or endorses our estimates.
Photographs and images
Player photographs and club crests are served from public league assets and remain the property of their owners. Where no photograph is available we display a generated monogram instead. We make no claim of ownership over any third-party image or mark, and we will remove any image on request from its rights holder.
Ratings and projections are opinion
Overall ratings, attribute grades, ceilings, comparables, tiers, rankings and development projections are the subjective editorial opinion of Draft Prospects Hockey, produced by a mix of human scouting and our own models. They are not measurements, not statements of fact about any person, and not a prediction of what any player will do. Criticism of a player's game is commentary on the play, not a statement about the person. Where we publish an accuracy or error figure for a model, it describes past fit on historical data and nothing more.
Simulated content is fiction
Franchise mode, the mock draft simulator, season sims, exhibitions, awards, standings, injuries, trades, contracts and any career outcome our tools produce are simulated entertainment. They did not happen. Simulated statistics, contracts and transactions attributed to real players and clubs are generated by the simulation and are not that player's or club's record.
Unofficial, and sometimes wrong
Nothing on this site is an official record. Public feeds change without notice, sources disagree with one another, name matching across leagues fails, and hand entry introduces error. Verify anything that matters against the league of record. Corrections are welcome and we would rather hear it than not: Anthony@TheProspectDon.com.
Rights holders: takedown and correction
If you are a league, club, player, agent, publisher, photographer or data provider and something on this site uses your property in a way you object to, or states something about you inaccurately, contact Anthony@TheProspectDon.com with the page and the material. We remove or correct promptly on a good-faith request and do not require a lawyer to be involved first. Formal copyright complaints are handled under the process in our Terms of Use.
Our marks
"Draft Prospects Hockey", "DPH", "The Prospect Don" and the associated logos and wordmarks are marks of The Prospect Don Holdings LLC. Do not use them in a way that suggests we produced, endorsed or are associated with your product.
No warranty, and limits on liability
The site, its data and its tools are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranty of any kind, express or implied. Nothing here is legal, financial, medical or employment advice. The full warranty disclaimer, limitation of liability and governing-law terms are set out in our Terms of Use, which this page forms part of.
See also our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Licensing, permissions, corrections and takedowns: Anthony@TheProspectDon.com.