WRITTEN BY- Robertson Davies’ Beard
The NHL Draft has come and gone. The Seattle Kraken draft too. The annual free agency frenzy that followed these much anticipated events has gone from a torrent of signings to little more than a few dribs and drabs of rather brackish activity. To top it all off, there’s been an unreasonably long lull in activity from the Ottawa Senators front office. Drake Batherson signing? Nope. Brady Tkachuk news? Nada.
The pain of your impatience is real. Beyond waiting for the achingly slow countdown to the opening of training camp, what are suffering Sens fans to do?
Sacred Cows No More?
Here’s an idea. Let’s talk about the draft. Not the one that’s just passed. I’m talking about The Draft. The whole kit and kaboodle. For years, Sens fans have taken solace in the fact that no matter how the team performs on the ice, the Ottawa Senators can always be counted on to deliver results at the annual draft. Year in and year out, Pierre Dorion and his crack scouting staff led by Trent Mann have usually crushed it at the draft.
Or so we’d like to think…
Wait a sec, is your ol’ pal RDB about to take an axe to one of the Senators’ few sacred cows? No. Well, actually… maybe.
To begin with, let’s get the ground rules straight. Before we can legitimately claim that the Sens are the kings of the draft, or at least vastly superior at drafting players than the Habs, Leafs, and…err the Kings, we need to at least agree on how to properly measure draft success.
(Still with me? Good. I’m trying to make this more interesting than the federal election. I know, I know. It’s not a very high bar.)
Quantify This
So, what should go into determining a team’s draft success? To start, we can make use of Hockey DB’s Draft Stats and use the following relatively easily sourced quantitative criteria:
1. Total drafted players to play in the NHL
2. Percent of players to play in NHL
3. Total number of total games played
4. Average career goals
5. Average career NHL points
6. Average career NHL pims
7. Year by year comparisons to the league at large
But because this is hockey and since we expect hockey players to do other things than simply lacing up their skates and putting points and penalty minutes on game sheets, we also need to include some more qualitative and subjective components. If we can figure those things out, then we really are going to be closer to crowning the true King of NHL teams. Well at least when it comes to scouting, that is.
Rhubarb, For Your Consideration
The subjective stuff is tough, and sure to rub a few people’s rhubarb the wrong way; but here are a few items for your consideration, hockey fans.
1. How many major individual awards has a team won over a given period?
2. How many playoff rounds has a team won?
3. How many Stanley Cup Finals has a team been to?
4. How well has a team performed in the NHL.com re-drafts?
Ok. There’s a lot for you to unpack here and meditate upon. Based on the above, it’s pretty clear that it’s not easy to simply declare one team as being superior to all the others since, let’s say, the 2000 entry draft. Caution and respect for the work of others dictates that we should seriously consider these things. Certainly, I haven’t presented the type of data that would allow me to take my axe (or my laptop for that matter) and maniacally slash away at the Pierre Dorion regime’s scouting record.
King Pierre The Firstest?
I do, however, have good news for Sens fans from the 2018, 2019, and 2020 drafts. Based on some cursory Hockeydb.com reports, I am pleased to say that Sens draft picks are performing very well in several key categories.
-Brady Tkachuk is 1st in goals, 1st in PIMs, and 2nd in points and games played in the 2018 class.
-Shane Pinto is 1st in points per game in the 2019 class
-Tim Stützle is 1st in goals, assists, points, and PIMs in the 2020 class
Small sample sizes, sure. But based on the quantitative data available to us, Pierre Dorion is at least the current King of the 2020 NHL Draft Class.
So, now we come to the end of the first instalment of our omnibus NHL Draft King Review. In our next ChirpEd, we are going to look at the last 20 years of NHL Drafts and see how the Sens have fared. But first, it’s time for you to wade in and share your thoughts.
Have at it.
