Jake Karabela is a smart, well-rounded player who showed the ability to slide into multiple roles with his team and have success. He is a strong, albeit not elite, skater who uses his lower-body strength to generate powerful strides and maintain his top speed for long periods of time. He has a surprisingly strong ability to escape traffic and navigate the neutral zone as a puck-carrier despite lacking that elite speed. Offensively, his bread and butter is working away from the puck and putting himself into the prime scoring areas so he can use his shot. He has a hard shot with a powerful release and quality accuracy. He never has the puck on his stick for too long, as he quickly finds an outlet and defers the puck to his teammates so they can carry the play. He was able to cover up his lack of high-end speed in the OHL with his solid positioning and on-ice awareness, but that may be a tougher task for him at the next level. He will want to work on his explosiveness if he wants to be an effective offensive threat. Without elite speed, higher level players will be able to keep up with him and negate any positive impact he may have in the offensive zone. He’s tough to project at the next level because he doesn’t have that element of skating in his game to be a skill guy in the top-six, but he hasn’t shown enough tenacity and aggressiveness to play a bottom-six checking role. He might develop into a case where he’s held out of a top-six position and can’t crack a checking role, either. It’ll be up to him to decide what type of player he wants to be and he will need to work hard at adapting his skillset to fit that archetype. A move to the wing may help his career long-term, too, and a team selecting him might have that in mind.

– FCHockey’s 2022 NHL Draft Guide