Hanzel appears to have a plethora of tools at his disposal and is showing the knowledge base to adapt to solve problems and then enact a forward-thinking creative edge. Deceptive gestures are a staple in his game and he’s got a mature knack to hide intentions of his passes or routes by keeping his eyes up and stacking skills while never directly giving indication until the puck is en route or he’s flipped his toes and changed direction to evade pressure. He’s got good play-panning tendencies and is fairly efficient in breaking up pressure, and isn’t afraid to jump up in plays and provide an option or lead a play in possession. You won’t find him skating the puck out of trouble too often, but he certainly does it if there is ample space in front of him. Not the most dynamic player, but he sells his abilities very well by playing with so many variations to his skating and routes, with a strong first three steps that sets tempo and dictates plays early. There’s room to grow his game off the puck a bit, but he’s showing great tendencies to surf above pucks to stay in good positions where he can attack or retreat to assess where pressure is present. Instead of getting on his heels early in plays he makes attempts to close via angle gaps by skating on a route to force puck carriers to bad areas and force dumps or retreats. Needs some work boxing out and with his man-to-man coverage, but when he is going back to retrieve pucks he’s going to become such a resourceful threat out of the back end. His skating and his lack of physicality in the defensive zone to maintain positioning are a concern. Overall, Hanzel is one of the smartest defenseman in this class, and the analytics on his defensive-zone transitions would be quite high, but as the speed and physicality increase there are doubts he would be able to be as consistently effective with his style.

– FCHockey’s 2021 NHL Draft Guide