Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is 6-foot-1 and 164 pounds -- which is fine for a cashier at Wendy's, but not the potential No. 1 overall pick.

In that respect, Nugent-Hopkins is a true outlier. So when NHL scouts want to know whether his toughness, skill and growth potential offset his current stature, they can't look at past trends -- the sample size for underweight, high-skilled players is tiny.

But former Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock thinks it's a non-issue. He recently told the Edmonton Journal that scouts are paying too much attention to Nugent-Hopkins' slight frame: "Remember what they said about (Wayne) Gretzky? He was the toughest player in the league because he always had the puck. Weight in a player isn't relevant to me. Look at [Patrick] Kane in Chicago. He plays at 165 pounds and nobody gets a piece of him and he's always got the puck."

At first, it seems like Hitchcock is guilty of only using anecdotal evidence and cherry-picking two highly successful players. In most situations, he should be looking at the entire sample size, which in this case would be all highly-skilled, underweight players. But, like we said, the sample size is tiny and so anecdotal evidence is greatly valuable because it shows what is possible.

So just how rare are these underweight players? And how much of an outlier is Nugent-Hopkins? Well, since 1990, only 10 players lighter than 180 pounds have been selected in the top 10, which is less than five percent. There has been only one player who was less than 170 pounds -- and he was a goalie:

We do this exercise because we want to see what other small but highly-skilled players can tell us about Nugent-Hopkins. And the key questions are: Do these guys usually become good NHLers? Is it a good idea to select them with a high first-round pick?

We can glean a few things from the list. First off, there is just one winger in the bunch, but six centers. This isn't surprising: Small players can compete in the NHL because of their high skill level, and we typically see the most skilled players at the pivot. Nugent-Hopkins will add to that list of centers.

Secondly, only two of these guys were picked in the top-five -- Patrick Kane and Marc-Andre Fleury -- and both went No. 1 overall. Nugent-Hopkins will go in the top five, so he'll join that group.

Thirdly, these guys might be light for NHL standards, but they are hulking next to Nugent-Hopkins, who is currently listed as 164 pounds. This shows just how much of an outlier Nugent-Hopkins is. Players this underweight are rarely skilled enough to be in consideration for a top-10 pick, much less than No. 1 overall pick.

That's what is so hard about scouting Nugent-Hopkins and other size-challenged players: It's impossible to say whether they will make good NHL players, or even if they are good top-10 values. A lot of talent evaluation is about seeing trends of which players are successful and unsuccessful -- consciously or unconsciously. So when scouts see a skinny kid like Nugent-Hopkins, it's sure to conjure images of the thousands of prospects who failed because of their size. And that's a fair concern, because about 20 percent of draft picks are lighter than 180 pounds -- and the large majority of them fail. However, Nugent-Hopkins isn't like them because of his elite talents.

If Nugent-Hopkins is the No. 1 overall pick, he has to average about 11 GVT per season to be an average top pick. However, in the last 20 years, only one player lighter than 180 pounds has topped that average -- and that's Kane, at about 16 GVT per season. The next closest players are Steve Sullivan (10.8) and Brian Gionta (9.8) -- both solid contributors, but below-average compared to No. 1 overall picks.

So Hitchcock nailed it on the head with the Kane comparison. If we look further back, Denis Savard might also be a good comparable -- and some NHL scouts are making that connection, too. Both Kane and Savard were successful, but another comparable is Brian Lawton, the No. 1 pick in 1983, who didn't live up to expectations.

So it's tough to say anything definitive about unusually-skilled, underweight players. However, if we look at trends for small guys, they tend to be high-risk, high-reward players and either huge steals or huge busts. Small guys are usually steals because teams pass on them because of their size, and they are busts because they can't overcome their size disadvantage. But, again, all of this doesn't really apply for Nugent-Hopkins. No one is passing on Nugent-Hopkins; he'll likely go in the top two. And we already know he's skilled enough to overcome his size and play in the NHL soon.

So these comparisons to Kane and Savard are certainly helpful. Another positive is that the NHL is now more accommodating to smaller, faster players. But the tough part -- the scary and exciting part -- is that Nugent-Hopkins isn't just another small prospect; he's historically underweight for a top-10 pick, which is about 45 pounds lighter than the average top-five pick. That means he could either possess a superstar frame waiting to be bulked up, or be a future punching bag for NHLers.