Which NHL teams have drafted the best and worst since 2005 - The Athletic

Which NHL teams have drafted the best and worst since 2005

May 31, 2021 The has created an entire industry of coverage and curiosity in prospects and the draft that thrives well beyond when the picks are made. It has done so because of how early its predominantly 18-year-old draft takes place, the global nature of the sport and the wide range of leagues and levels available to prospects before they reach the NHL, and, maybe above all else, the parity in the league created by its salary cap, which fuels a never-ending pursuit of the cheap-entry level contracts and young players who can open a team’s contending window. Advertisement On top of all of that, there are these two truths: 1. Hockey is the hardest of the big four sports to scout because it doesn’t have the measurables of the other sports. Even as data at the NHL level inches closer in some areas, its data points in junior, college and non-NHL pro leagues are inconsistent at best and unreliable or empty at worst. 2. Because of the time lag between a player’s draft day and NHL debut (even as the league gets younger) and the breadth of games being played across several time zones and multiple continents, NHL fans, even the diehards, don’t have the time to keep adequate tabs on their prospects. The result is an economy of draft authorities who do that work for them. The sheer difficulty that comes with drafting in hockey also creates a ton of unpredictability, which results in hits and misses. Every hockey fan has the instinct to pore over old drafts to wallow in all of the players their team missed on. Here, through an exhaustive review of draft data since the 2004-05 lockout (a good barometer for modern player evaluation), we’ve tried to cut through the noise to provide a holistic picture of how every NHL team has done. We’ll start with some of the raw data before trying to take it a step further. The data includes a total of 2,551 picks from 2005 to 2016 (it’s too early for the 2017 to 2020 results, so our focus there will be more anecdotal at the end of this article). Of those picks, roughly half have played an NHL game. Those players have played more than 280,000 games, and have produced nearly 120,000 (and counting) points. Here’s what the raw data looks like across several counting stats, with a bit of an index for the ones that aren’t obvious: • NHLers: Players each team has drafted who’ve played at least one game in the league. This is not a barometer for NHL regulars. Advertisement • Hit %: The percentage of NHLers produced according to the number of picks made by each team. An easy way to identify a scouting department’s success rate. (Scouts don’t trade picks.)

Takeaways

There are some immediate trends that develop out of this dataset (which we dove into previously in and has now been updated through all games on March 30, 2021). The first ones are the teams that lead the way on various fronts. The , for example, made the most picks in the 12 drafts from 2005 to 2016, selecting 105 times. That’s nine more than the next-most for a team (which accounts to basically selecting an entire extra draft class) and an average of nine selections per draft. But despite all of those picks, their 41 NHL players is tied for 17th among the league’s 30 teams (sorry , we’ll get to you later!). That gives them a 39 percent success rate, which is tied for last in the league. On the flip side, the won the Stanley Cup twice and made the fewest picks in that span, selecting just 72 times (six per draft, for an average of one pick traded away each year). But the Penguins don’t appear in red anywhere else, suggesting that they’ve done reasonably well with what they have. The and the led the way by drafting the most players to get into an NHL game with 51 apiece, but the Bruins were the league’s most efficient, doing it with 78 picks to Columbus’ 89 for a 65 percent rate, a full 16 percentage points higher than the league average of 49 percent. The Bruins were also the most productive on a per pick basis, producing an average of 61 points out of every selection. The light up green the most, ranking first in total games played and games played per pick, second in total NHLers and total points produced by those NHLers and third in hit percentage. Advertisement The , on the other hand, don’t look good here. They made the fewest picks and drafted the latest on average, which drives some of those results down, but it’s ugly no matter how you slice it, with league-worst rates virtually across the board as well. They missed a lot, and the players they did get didn’t last or become particularly productive. The 2005 to 2015 lookback period results are very grim, albeit a lagging indicator that doesn’t capture their recent drafting turnaround under GM Jim Benning. Of the players who did make it, the produced the most productive ones and by a decent margin. That’s driven in part by top picks like , and , but they deserve a ton of credit for also drafting highly skilled forwards like (10th), Ryan O’Reilly (33rd), Chris Stewart (18th) and (44th) as well as highly productive defencemen like (64th) and (14th). Though average pick isn’t as strong a measurement for predicted success as actually weighting each pick (which we’ll get to in a moment), it does highlight some interesting notes at either end of the spectrum. It’s no surprise that the drafted lower on average than any other team in the league given how competitive they were as a franchise from 2005 to 2016. They actually did OK, all told. On the other side, you’d like the to do better than they did considering their favourable draft slots. The and probably challenge each other to round out the top five here with the Kings, Bruins, Blue Jackets and . The only teams that are likely in the conversation to give the Canucks a run for the worst record are the and , though the , and are firmly in the bottom 10 as well. Other notes: The worst team draft classes: Only five team draft classes from 2005 to 2010 produced zero NHL games. The Canucks (2007 and 2010) had two of them and the Flames (2006), Canadiens (2008) and Penguins (2008) had the other three. It still feels too early to fully write off the other drafts since, because players taken in 2011 are only 27 and 28 right now, and it’s not completely unheard of to have players that age find their way into the league. The best team draft classes: The most productive team draft class of this era was Boston’s 2006 group led by (5th), (50th), (71st), which have combined for more than 2,100 points (and counting). Pittsburgh’s 2005 group finishes an unsurprising second thanks to No. 1 pick , but they don’t get there without nearly 600 points from 62nd pick , either. The Islanders had back-to-back drafts that produced more than 1,100 points and more than 1,400 points in 2008 (, , and ) and 2009 (when they drafted at No. 1 but also hit on all seven of their picks). Tampa’s 2011 class deserves some love for going six-for-six and nabbing (27th), (58th) and (208th). The best feeders: The London Knights remain the giant of player development, producing more NHL picks (38) than any other program from 2005 to 2016 outside of USA Hockey’s all-star national program (66). For a closer look at the results, though, we’ve also taken the data a step further, mining it right down to the expected value of each pick. As you might imagine, point totals alone are inadequate for measuring a player’s overall value, particularly for defencemen and goalies. We need a more holistic way of objectively assessing each draftee’s impact and for that, we’ll turn to colleague Dom Luszczyszyn’s Game Score Value Added model. GSVA, which is measured in wins, is an all-in-one stat that combines box score statistics like points, shots, blocks and penalty differential with underlying metrics that measure two-way impact and then adjusts it for usage. Here, for each player, we analyzed how many wins of value they chipped in during their first seven NHL seasons, as that’s how long teams typically have control over a player’s rights. If there were recent draftees that haven’t played all seven seasons yet (e.g.: someone drafted in 2015 might have only played four NHL seasons so far), we took the existing results and simply projected their value for the remaining years. Luszczyszyn’s goalie data was derived from Evolving-Hockey’s data. Let’s begin by looking at the total value every team has gained from the draft. On the right side of the table, we’ve included six notable draftees purely for context (you shouldn’t judge the ranking of teams based on these six). GSVA Wins Leaders Via Draft (2005-2016) Ranking Team Wins Notables Capitals Washington may not immediately come to mind when you think of the best drafting teams in the NHL — they haven’t mined an impact player since 2015 with — but they’re at the top of the table for this lookback period. The Capitals landed this high in large part because of how many goalies they’ve unearthed as Braden Holtby, , Samsonov, and Michal Neuvirth have combined for 55 wins of value. The Capitals drafted especially well between 2006 and 2014, including the 2012 draft where they pulled , and with their first three selections. Landing and with late first-round picks is mighty impressive as well. Meanwhile, at the absolute bottom, the New Jersey Devils netted roughly a fifth of the value from drafting that the Capitals did. New Jersey and Arizona at 25th are the two teams that you could argue were unable to draft a single star player through 12 draft years. Examining the total value each team’s extracted from the draft is a good starting point but one factor that we need to account for is the quality of each team’s picks. It’s a lot easier to mine high-end talent as a bottom-feeder consistently drafting in the top 10 compared to a contender picking in the mid-to-late 20s, after all. To account for this, we can look at the historical average value of every pick in the draft. The first overall pick, for example, is expected to be worth 17.7 wins over seven years on average by the GSVA model, the second pick 12.3 wins, the final pick in the first round 2.8 wins and so on. : Table from Dom Luszczyszyn What we can do with this is tabulate an expected number of wins/GSVA for each team’s draft capital and then compare that to what they actually garnered. This means that a team like Edmonton that’s consistently drafted in the top five will have a much higher bar to clear while a perennial contender like Pittsburgh that’s had few valuable picks will be graded far more generously. So which teams have outperformed their draft capital most significantly, ie: picked the best on relative terms? Best Drafting Teams by GSVA Ranking Team Wins xWins Difference The top-five drafting teams on a relative basis (Washington, , Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Boston) all won the Stanley Cup in the past decade. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the bottom-five drafting teams (, , Edmonton, Arizona and Vancouver) account for some of the longest ongoing rebuild projects in that span. Of course, this isn’t a definitive ranking of drafting ability, there needs to be room for subjective interpretation. Pittsburgh, for example, gained 11 of its 19.5 wins above expected from Sidney Crosby, who was a no-brainer selection — it’s an excellent pick on paper but it’s not one a team should get too much credit for here. Without Crosby, they’d be neck and neck with for the 10th spot, which is still solid. The Penguins have had limited draft capital to work with, ranking 23rd in expected pick value, but they’ve made the most of it by landing a pair of high-end top-six forwards in the third round in and . ranks high on this list at sixth. They’ve drafted really well but squandered the opportunity by relinquishing players like , , and before they broke out. This mismanagement has undermined an amateur scouting staff that has otherwise passed with flying colours. The Rangers were a bit of a surprise at seven. They’ve certainly struggled to land players that move the needle since about 2014 and had very little in the way of draft capital to work with before that but they did well from an efficiency standpoint from about 2005 to 2013. During this time they made it a habit to either hit in the first round ( at 15th, at 28th, at 19th, at 12th) or nail it in the second if they squandered their first pick ( in 2008, Artem Anisimov in 2006). Their best class on a relative basis was 2013 where they selected , and all in the third round or later. was below average in the drafting for most of this sample but since Brendan Shanahan’s arrival, the club’s had a strong turnaround. (eighth in 2014) and (fourth in 2015) were critical hits that are worth a combined 17.4 wins above expected based on their draft slot. Similar to New York, we didn’t expect to see Dallas round out the top 10. The Stars have been hit and miss with their first-round selections but they’ve made up for it by mining , , and outside of the first round. Nashville’s a really fascinating case in the top half. The amassed a number of elite defensive talent in , , , and but they’ve been held back significantly by an inability to find high-end offensive weapons up front, especially at centre. It might be surprising to see the Blackhawks as low as 19th but that’s because the heavy lifting to construct their Cup-winning core was mostly accomplished just prior to our lookback period. Between 2002 and 2004, Chicago acquired a boatload of picks that helped yield Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Corey Crawford, Dustin Byfuglien, Dave Bolland, Troy Brouwer and Bryan Bickell. The one drafting juggernaut we haven’t touched on yet is Tampa Bay. The Lightning ranked as the NHL’s best drafting team outside of the first round, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering that they’ve netted , Nikita Kucherov, and Ondrej Palat in later rounds. Best Drafting Teams Outside 1st Round Rank Team Wins Notables Conversely, this table also explains part of the reason why it’s taken the Oilers so long to round the corner out of their rebuild. Edmonton’s had a tough time supplementing its first-round selections with players that can move the needle elsewhere in the draft.

Recent results 2017-2020

Wheeler: When I think about the teams that have drafted best of late and I haven’t pored over the data, the first team that comes to mind is Vegas. I loved their drafts in 2017, 2019 and 2020. Part of all of their noticeable hits has been driven by the number of high picks they’ve had, but they haven’t really missed on any of those (, , , and Brendan Brisson) and they appear to have hit everywhere else in the draft as well (Lukas Cormier, Lucas Elvenes, Ivan Morozov, Jack Dugan and the rest). If I had to predict the teams we’ll look back on as the most successful another 10 years from now (relative to where they’ve picked in this stretch) when we do this all over, though, I’d bet on the Hurricanes, who’ve drafted most in line with my board, and the Kings, who’ve assembled an unrivalled group of prospects in the last few years that should turn them around faster, in theory, than some of the other current rebuilding teams. All three of those teams really get it. Dayal: The Canucks have taken full advantage of some of the more recent top picks they’ve had. (5th) and (7th) were home run picks in 2017 and 2018, respectively. 2019 second-round pick graduated ahead of schedule as a valuable middle-six contributor already while has top-four upside despite being a 2017 fourth-round selection. I’m also a big fan of what Colorado has done at the draft table recently, at least with its first-round picks. is going to be a perennial Norris Trophy candidate, could be another cornerstone piece on the back end and I think the Avs also got excellent bang for their buck with at 16th in 2019. It’s scary to imagine how this Avalanche team might look like when Byram and Newhook break in closer to their primes. (Top photo , John Tavares and Matt Duchene in 2009: Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

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