Meier is another prospect who boosted his draft stock with a surprisingly good performance at the World Juniors. He shows some interesting flashes as an offense-focused defenseman, and he should continue to get international reps in a Swiss sweater, which will help his development. He plays on his toes and is comfortable jump-starting the rush with the puck on his stick and carrying it through open ice, including all the way into the offensive zone, pushing opposing defenders back. He is a solid skater who can accelerate quickly and generates excellent speed in a straight line by effectively mixing in crossovers. He can also make some decent breakout and transition passes that help his team advance up ice. He’s dangerous from the offensive blue line on inwards. His wrist shot gets some power and accuracy behind it, and he’s able to draw eyes to him with puck patience before threading passes cross-ice to open teammates. Will try to get pucks on net in volume, though he does force it a bit at times. The flip side to his offensive contributions is that he plays a very risky game. He sometimes chooses to activate out of his zone at bad times, and his puck control isn’t quite as good as you’d like to see for a guy who plays this type of puck-moving role. Defensively he is, to put it nicely, an adventure. He has a hard time reading his own zone well enough without the puck to break up opposing possession. When he gets pressured he seems to grip his stick a bit tighter and at times panics, causing some of his passes to miss their mark or causing him to make other poor decisions with the puck. Luckily, the bad parts of his game are mostly things that he can be worked on over time. Meier is a long-term project at best, but there might be enough different pieces here to one day develop someone who is an offensive specialist at the NHL level.

– FCHockey’s 2021 NHL Draft Guide