The Draft – Even More Confusing Than I Thought
June 30th, 2009, 10:24 am
So yesterday I mentioned that if you look at certain metrics, like percentage of draft picks that play a single game in the NHL and percentage that have played over 200 games, the Sharks do quite well, and the Red Wings don’t. I’m looking at the years from 1994 to 2003. Any more recent drafts wouldn’t be fair, because some players haven’t had enough time to develop.
As I said yesterday, the draft is basically a crap shoot. But now, I have to add a caveat. It’s not a crap shoot in the first ten picks. Here’s a table, with the number of players in the first ten picks that have played 200 NHL games, versus the last 20 picks of the round.
| Year | First Ten | Last Twenty |
| 1994 | 7 | 8 |
| 1995 | 8 | 10 |
| 1996 | 8 | 6 |
| 1997 | 9 | 5 |
| 1998 | 10 | 12 |
| 1999 | 7 | 6 |
| 2000 | 6 | 10 |
| 2001 | 6 | 9 |
| 2002 | 6 | 6 |
| 2003 | 7 | 9 |
| Avg | 7.4 | 8.1 |
Basically, this implies you’re going to yield about half as many latter-20 picks as first-10 picks. So it’s not only true that first round picks are much more likely to play significant games in the NHL (slightly under 40%, as I said in the last post), it’s also true that the vast majority of those first rounders that didn’t make it weren’t drafted in the top 10.
This really comes into play when you try and compare different teams in terms of their draft performance. For instance, if we look at Detroit, since 1994, they’ve had no draft picks in the top 10. They’ve had only 5 first round picks total in the span we are interested in, and only one, Jiri Fisher, player over 200 games (although Nicklas Kronwall will make it this next season). So rating the Wings charitably (albeit a tiny tiny sample size) they are exactly average in first round draft picks conversion at 40%.
Now let’s look at San Jose: They are 100% in picks in the top-10 (Zyuzin, Marleau, Stuart, Michalek) and way ahead in the latter-20 (7 of 11, not counting Steve Bernier).
Does this mean San Jose is a better drafting team than Detroit? In my opinion, yes. You want to make good picks when they are most likely to pan out- the first round. On the flip side, everyone will always point to the home run picks of Holmstrom, Datsyuk, and Zetterberg, all of which were very late round picks. However, Detroit has had considerably more than their fair share of stinkers. For instance, in 1995 and 1996, the Wings had 18 picks, none of which played more than 200 games, and only one (the 1995 #26 overall Maxim Kuznetsov) that played over 100. The Sharks drafted 5 NHL players in those two years- Kiprusoff, Toskala, Zyuzin, Sturm, and Matt Bradley (to be fair, Zyuzin and Sturm were off the board when the Wings picked).
Perhaps even more interesting than Detroit’s success (or lack of it) in the draft, is the fact they they choose so often to avoid it. In our ten year span, they had only five first round picks. Detroit is a team that can nab marquee free agents and pay big money; it looks like they’ve calculated, correctly, that free agency and trades are their avenue to winning.
It’s too bad San Jose can’t use that same blueprint- if you don’t count Rob Blake, who is a West Coast guy, the only free agent of any import the Sharks have signed in the last ten years is Mike Grier. So you use the draft- Doug Wilson, by this account, tried to get a top-11 pick this year, but was unsuccessful. The best the Sharks can do, like most other NHL teams, is get high draft picks and use them wisely.
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Very good analysis – I imagine it wasn’t quickly put together.
I’ll say it again here and I hope I’m not wrong. This is a different year. DW knows he’s next in line to get fired if we don’t reach the Cup final next year, so I assume he’ll use a different strategy this year to save his job. I expect a trade and I expect a big free agent signing. He’s got no more strikes left.
Sadly, USA today reporter just wrote on Twitter that Hossa is going to accept Franzen-style contract to stay in Detroit. That’s one big free agent off the table.
Never mind, Hossa is not going to accept, what reporter is saying is this – “Bottom line: Hossa has to accept a Franzen-style (10- or 11 year) deal with $4 million cap hit to stay in Detroit. Others can pay more.”
I have to disagree about Wilson- if the Sharks again have a high seed and lose in the first round, he could be on the block, but I’d say it’s far from a sure thing. With guys like Bryan Murray, Darryl Sutter, David Poile, and Glen Sather still holding onto jobs, there might be a little more latitude for a guy that makes the playoff every year.
Nice draft analysis. But it could be very skewed by the lack of salary cap. In the years you took, Detroit was able to disregard drafting to some extent because of the lack of a cap. And it could be that in a pre-cap world, drafting philosophies were different – i.e. always take the best available, whether your teams has that need or not. This might result in the draftee spending excessive time in the minors waiting for an opening.
What I’m wondering is once you get to, say, the third round, is there any difference between that round and the sixth or seventh round as far as NHL-level success? Could a GM just stockpile 6th rounders by trading down his 3rd, 4th, and 5th rounders and have the same shot at hitting paydirt. Quantity over quality???
Everything has changed since DW was hired. Most of the roster is gone and is replaced by people he either traded, or signed or drafted. We have a whole new coaching staff. Hell, we even have a new logo.
Meanwhile, Penguins rose up from the very bottom of the league and won the Cup (remember where they were back in 2003?). Carolina also won the Cup, and most importantly, so did Anaheim.
How many more early playoff exits it’ll take for ownership to realize he’s the only thing that remains constant, year after year?
I’d be shocked if he’s still here next summer unless we make a major step forward next year in playoffs, and in my mind, this means nothing less than Stanley Cup final.
It’s funny that you mention the Sharks only Marquee signing from the UFA world is Rob Blake. The other day I was thinking about the California teams in general and what kind of UFA signing have they made that were marquee/superstar players. It just doesn’t happen.
I think I saw Anaheim had signed Selanne(though he’d played with them before) and Scott Neidermayer(wanted to play with his brother) aside from that they are comprised of either draft picks or traded players(their big name players). That’s similar to the Sharks. I did not have a chance to go looking through the Kings.
Perhaps that’d be a good blog for you Mike.
The Penguins are a pretty poor example of how to build a consistent winner. Not every team has TWO generational talents simply fall into their lap at virtually the same time. They deserve their cup, but unlike the Red Wings, theirs is due almost solely to the players as opposed to coaching or the skill of their GM. Dismissing DW, at least in the near future, would be a HUGE mistake for the Sharks.
And that stuff about the draft sounds pretty much right on as to what I was saying about that Pronger trade. People are saying this is a coup for the Ducks. The coup for the Ducks was PAYING that to get Pronger in the first place. The only redeeming value is that they got pronger long term, whereas Philly gets him for a year. That should have been enough to take away a 1st rounder and the D prospect (assuming the Flyers don’t extend him).
And the Sharks are great at drafting good to great players. They rarely hit the home run, but their drafting allows them room to pay the Joe Thorntons and Dan Boyles.
Ruben –
I wouldn’t go as far as to suggest Penguins only won because they have Malkin and Crosby. They don’t beat Detroit without Staal, Kennedy, Talbot, Guerin, Gonchar, Oprik, Fluery and other players, and it is GMs job that they’re there. For example, most of Penguins fans were demanding Staal to get traded when Penguins were chocking back in Nov/Dec, yet their GM didn’t do it.
It was also GM who made the decision to fire Terrien. Terrien was unable to beat Detroit the year before. Yet it was Balysma who designed their new offense that utilized Malkin to his best advantage and it was Balysma who somehow found a way to completely shut down Detroit in games 4, 6 and 7. Was it the luck of the draw that all these things fell together nicely?
I don’t know how Sharks owners will be able to look at another early playoff exit and say to Wilson, “sure, one more year, our friend! keep trying, boy!”
I’m seeing this as DW’s team, especially since he’s been in charge for six years and I wouldn’t want him to have a free pass every year just because we have good regular seasons.
It would be absolutely ludicrous to let DW walk anytime in the near future unless he trades Joe and Boyle to NY for Antropov and Redden. The guy has built a consistent winner, and pretty cheaply with the exception of this past year. He has made the necessary trades to take the team to a new level (Campbell, Boyle). And the hiring of McLellan was the perfect hire for our talent. Moreover, his drafts have been exceptional in evaluating and getting good talent. It seems that the general consensus is that we don’t have enough grit or nastiness, but he’s tried to remedy that too acquiring Shelley, Moen, and signing Lemieux. Everybody complains about Marleau being so passive, but get this: DW didn’t draft Marleau. What more could you want from the guy? To blame this year’s failure, or any other since the lockout, on DW is completely unfair. In my opinion, he is arguably the best GM in the game, right up there with Burke.
And Ken Holland.
And yet here we are, on a losing end of 4 of the last 7 playoff series since the lockout, just about every time as a higher seed, Detroit 07 series being the only exception.
Let me state my point more clearly here – DW has done a good job building a team for a regular season, but has done a very poor job building a playoff contender. Take off your teal colored glasses for a second and you may just understand why the rest of the league was laughing at us yet again this spring. Not all of this is DW’s fault, but he’s not going to rule forever here unless we finally achieve a goal of a long playoff run.
With out or without Marleau, Boyle, Nabokov, Thornton, Vlasic, Seto – I no longer care. I’m tired of being a joke of a league whenever it comes to playoff discussions.
JBo signed with Calgary.
It’s going to be a very interesting day tomorrow, or so I hope.