Helenius, Protas and Stenberg emerge as next AHL NHL stars

Konsta Helenius made the loudest statement of the group, and he did it with numbers that travel from Rochester to Buffalo and beyond. The Sabres prospect finished the 2025-26 AHL regular season with 63 points in 63 games for the Americans, including 21 goals and 42 assists, then added three more points in three Calder Cup playoff games. He also played his first nine NHL games, scored his first NHL goal, and then capped the spring by burying Finland’s overtime golden goal in the 2026 IIHF World Championship final in Zurich, the kind of résumé line that turns an AHL scorer into a legitimate NHL name.

That matters because the AHL’s 72-game grind across 32 teams is designed to expose whether a prospect can handle production, pace and responsibility, not just flash. Helenius showed all three. Rochester leaned on him all season, the league rewarded him with a spot in the 2026 AHL All-Star Classic, and Buffalo got a clear read on a player whose offense did not dip when the games tightened in April and May. For a rookie-year conversation, that blend of point production, playoff carryover and NHL sample is exactly the kind of profile that tends to stick.

Ilya Protas, though, gave Washington its own immediate argument for Calder relevance. The 19-year-old led Hershey with 62 points in 66 games, scoring 28 goals and adding 34 assists to finish first in AHL rookie scoring and sixth overall in the league. He was even better in a late-season burst, posting 11 points in six April games, then got the call from Washington on April 6 and made his NHL debut two nights later against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Scotiabank Arena. The Capitals lined him up with his brother Aliaksei for that debut, a memorable detail, but the more important one is that Washington already tested his scoring touch against NHL pace.

Ivar Stenberg sits a step away from that AHL-to-NHL lane, but his case is still impossible to ignore. The 18-year-old Frölunda forward was ranked No. 1 among international skaters by NHL Central Scouting for the 2026 NHL Draft after producing 33 points in 43 SHL games, the most by an 18-year-old in Sweden’s top league since Daniel and Henrik Sedin in 1998-99. Some scouts have called him the most exciting player in the class. Helenius has already proven he can dominate the AHL and handle NHL looks, Protas has shown that raw rookie scoring can survive the jump, and Stenberg is the high-end talent waiting to enter the same pipeline. Of the three, Helenius looks closest to turning AHL success into immediate rookie impact next season.