Sam Dickinson vs Artyom Levshunov: who is the better prospect right now?
One housekeeping note: there is no NHL player named "Artem Levchanoff." Every detail you gave (Chicago, drafted higher, bigger pedigree, full NHL rookie year, runs the power play) points to Artyom Levshunov, Chicago's No. 2 overall pick in 2024. That is who this is about.
Here is the trap with this one. The draft board says it is a blowout: No. 2 overall versus No. 11, a right-shot blue-chipper versus a left-shot "very good" pick. If you stop at pedigree, you hand it to Levshunov and go home. But you told me not to stop at pedigree, and you were right, because both kids just gave us a full NHL season, and the season tells a different story than the draft did.
The short version: it is close, much closer than No. 2-vs-No. 11, and with everything we now know I give the narrowest possible edge to Dickinson. Let me show my work, because the one number that flips this is easy to miss.
The scoreboard everybody sees
| 2025-26 (NHL official) | Dickinson (SJS) | Levshunov (CHI) |
|---|---|---|
| Games | 72 | 68 |
| Goals-Assists-Points | 1-13-14 | 2-22-24 |
| Ice time / game | 16:45 | 19:35 |
| Plus-minus | -5 | -41 |
Levshunov wins the counting stats 24 to 14 and plays three more minutes a night. Case closed, right? No. Look where those points and those minutes come from.
The number that flips it
Strip the power play, and Dickinson out-scored Levshunov 14 to 13.
Levshunov got 11 of his 24 points on the man advantage, running an NHL PP1 at 2:39 a night. Dickinson played 0:18 a game on the power play and scored zero power-play points. His entire 14 came at even strength. Levshunov's three-minute ice-time edge is almost all power play too. So the headline gap is not a production gap. It is an opportunity gap.
That does not make Levshunov's power-play work fake, it is a real, valuable, translatable skill and he has shown it while Dickinson has not. But it does mean the raw scoreboard is measuring deployment, not ability. At five-on-five, these two produced the same.
Were they sheltered? Yes, on opposite things
You taught me to ask this on Dickinson, so I asked it on both. They were each protected, just on different axes.
| Deployment | Dickinson | Levshunov |
|---|---|---|
| Offensive-zone start % | 45.4% (D-tilt) | 65.7% (O-shelter) |
| vs Elite competition | 23.2% | 28.0% |
| Elite minus Grit | -17.2 | -4.1 |
| Power-play role | None | PP1 |
Levshunov faced tougher competition but got the easy zone starts and the power play. An offensive deployment. Dickinson faced softer competition but got the hard zone starts and no power play. A defensive deployment. The two shelters roughly cancel, so neither kid can hide behind "but my minutes were easier." Good. That lets the actual play break the tie.
And the actual play favors Dickinson
| 5v5 on-ice | Dickinson | Levshunov |
|---|---|---|
| Expected-goals share (xGF%) | 48.0% | 41.0% |
| xGF% relative to team | ~0 | -3.0 |
| Dangerous-Fenwick % (all EV) | 46.0 | 42.0 |
On a bad team, against a wash of deployment difficulty, Dickinson tilted the ice harder. And the part that should make a Levshunov backer squirm is the breakdown by competition tier:
The honest case for Levshunov
I am not going to pretend this is lopsided, because it is not. Two things keep Levshunov right in it, and one of them never goes away:
- He is right-handed. This is the big one. A genuine top-pair right-shot defenseman is one of the scarcest things in hockey. Dickinson is a lefty, the deep side. Equal players, the righty is worth more, full stop. That is a permanent edge the season cannot erase.
- He already runs an NHL power play. Demonstrated beats projected. Dickinson's offense is still a junior resume (a 91-point OHL year, a Memorial Cup) waiting for an NHL power-play look. Levshunov's is on the board right now.
The verdict
Claude's pick: Dickinson, by a hair.
The draft slot is a prior. The NHL season is data, and you asked me to weight the data. The data updated toward Dickinson: he was the better even-strength player, he was better against elite competition, he is about seven months younger, and he did it jumping straight from junior while Levshunov needed an AHL year first. His missing points are a power-play role he was never handed, not a ceiling. The one thing that keeps this honest and close is Levshunov's right-handedness, which is real enough that a team built to need a right-side quarterback could rank him first and not be wrong.
What would change my call: if Levshunov's power play scales into true top-unit-quarterback value and Dickinson never gets a sniff of PP1, the right-handed offensive driver pulls away. But if Warsofsky finally hands Dickinson power-play minutes next year and that OHL offense shows up, this stops being close, in Dickinson's favor. Either way, San Jose did fine at No. 11.
Counting stats cross-checked across MoneyPuck and the NHL.com API (and the repo for Dickinson). Competition data: PuckIQ WoodMoney. Zone starts and situational ice time: MoneyPuck. Full write-up filed at docs/players/Dickinson-vs-Levshunov_2025-26_prospect-comparison.md.
