GDT: Draft thread - 2023

[Seachd]

MTL takes Florian Xhekaj.

 

[Soli]

Montreal that was way too high lol.

 

[Seachd]

CHI takes Marcel Marcel.

 

[backhandsauce]

Do we take a goalie with our 6th or 7th?

 

[Jimmi McJenkins]

Neal's brother just went.

Do we take a goalie with our 6th or 7th?

If Thomas Milic is there, I would happy if they did.

 

[Seachd]

Milic goes to WPG.

 

[5 Mins 4 Ftg]

CHI takes Marcel Marcel.

Best name of the draft.

 

[Jimmi McJenkins]

And never mind, Milic is gone.

 

[Seachd]

 

[Seachd]

DAL takes Arno Tiefensee... they reached deep for that one.

 

[5 Mins 4 Ftg]

let’s Go Beau! When you Know you Know!!!

 

[Jimmi McJenkins]

These picks remind me of how expansive the NHL team's draft lists are compared to our mock draft lol.

 

[Soli]

Not sure what's left on my list. Has Mazden Leslie went yet?

 

[Jimmi McJenkins]

Not sure what's left on my list. Has Mazden Leslie went yet?

I don't think so.

 

[Seachd]

And CGY takes Egor Egorov (or Yegor Yegorov if you're one of those people).

 

[Jimmi McJenkins]

And CGY takes Egor Egorov (or Yegor Yegorov if you're one of those people).

The Nikita Nikitin of goalies

Just encase it wasn't clear, I'm no expert, but there are some interesting names still out there for the Oilers.

 

[Beerfish]

oiler pick coming up! 'objects in mirror are closer than they appear'

 

[McAsuno]

 

[Seachd]

The Oilers take Nathan Day (G) - 6'2" 180.

 

[oil Leaks]

Nathaniel Day

 

[Jimmi McJenkins]

So a goalie. Interesting.

 

[Fourier]

Not that I doubt you but I'd like to see this outlined because I find that hard to believe. Also, which timeframe are we discussing?

Without eyeballing their drafting history now, I'd wager a guess that the Oilers are one of the worst franchises at developing players outside of the 1st round in the last 30? years. Ironically, I believe Tyler Wright was their draft pick around 30 years ago.

Now going through the last 30+ years, this is who I see outside of the 1st rounder that have been regular NHLers...

1990s
Nobody in 1990
None in 1991 (Wright and Rucinsky were the 1st round picks - meh and pretty good but for other teams)
1992 - Maltby and Gager I guess? (Hulbig was the 1st pick - barf)
1993 - Satan and Vyborny (Arnott was the 1st pick - very good)
None really in 1994 (Bosignore - major barf and Smyth - Legend)
1995 - Laraque (Steve Kelly was the 1st pick - barf)
1996 - Poti and Pisani (Devereaux was the 1st pick - meh)
1997 - Chimera (Riesen was the 1st pick - barf)
1998 - Horcoff (Henrich was the 1st pick - barf)
1999 - Comrie and Semenov (Rita was the 1st pick - barf)

The 90s had a few finds, I'd say 5 that had impacts on the Oilers (Satan, Poti, Pisani, Horcoff and Comrie, throw Laraque in there too) but was offset by horrendous 1st round picks. Arnott and Smyth were the only 1st round hits in a decade.

2000s
2000 - Lombardi (The infamous Russian Tank Mikhnov was the 1st pick - barf)
2001 - Markannen (Hemsky was the 1st pick - finally a good one)
2002 - Stoll and Greene (Niinimaki was the 1st pick - barf)
2003 - Brodziak and Stortini, the rest were fringe guys (MAP was the 1st pick - major barf considering how good this draft was)
2004 - None unless you count Schremp and Reddox (Dubnyk was the 1st pick - very good but not with Edmonton)
2005 - Chorney and Vandevelde I guess (Cogliano - Ok for a 1st but best years away from Edmonton)
2006 - Petry but had best years elsewhere
2007 - Nash who had a career elsewhere (Gagner - Solid career but underwhelming for his draft position)
2008 - Nothing (Eberle - Very good)
2009 - Paajarvi and that's it and I'm being kind with list MPS
2010 - Pitlick (better years away from Edmonton), Marincin and Davidson I guess (Hall - Very good but 1st overalls should be)

2000s had Stoll, Greene, Brodziak for a brief time and Petry that had any sort of impact with the Oilers outside of the 1st. Petry and Stoll were the only ones above Bottom pairing/bottom 6 level in an entire decade.

2010s
2011 - Rieder who had his best years elsewhere (RNH - good and Klefbom - good)
2012 had Gustavsson who had his best years elsewhere and Khaira (Yakupov - barf)
2013 - Nothing (Nurse - Very good)
2014 - Nothing (Drai - Legend)
2015 - Jones, Bear, Marino (Connor - GOAT)
2016 - Desharnais (Pulju - Barf)
2017 - Skinner (Yamamoto - Meh)
2018 - McLeod (Bouchard - Very good)

Yikes, where to start.
The only player of any significance for the Oilers between 2011-2014 was Khaira and he's very bottom of the roster.
2015 was the best drafting but the only real significant player is Marino who did that elsewhere. The Oilers have nothing to show for that trade outside of Foegele through Bear.
Really, the only significant Oiler contributors of that 8 year period is Desharnais, McLeod and Skinner. That's really bad.

Too early to tell
2019 - Lavoie possibly but is a longshot really (Broberg - still hasn't contributed yet)
2020 - Tullio and Savoie are a ways away (Hollway - same as Broberg)
2021 - Wanner is promising, I think Petrov is a longshot (Bourgault - way early obviously but 1st pro season was rough)
2022 - Schaefer helped us get Ekholm so no problem there. The Russian kid had a promising first year

If you look at the last 30+ years in totality, these are the players outside of the 1st that have made an impact of any significance on the Oilers...

Satan, Poti, Pisani, Horcoff, Comrie, Laraque, Petry, Stoll, Greene, Brodziak, McLeod and Skinner.
That's 12 in 33 years and I'd say that out of those guys, the only ones that had more than a bottom 6/bottom pairing role were Satan, Poti, Stoll and Greene for a brief time. This is really bad Fourier,

The time frame was the last two decades. But in reality it comes down to what are reasonable expectations from drafts. Typically they are far too high in comparison with what happens in reality.

There is not set criteria for measuring draft success so it is very subjective. But there have been attempts to assess team by team success. Here are two such studies. The first looks at fairly standard measures.

Ranking the Last Decade of NHL Draft Results

As everyone painstakingly pores over spreadsheets and draft profiles, how has each NHL team fared at the draft the last 10 years?

thehockeywriters.com

The second is a bit different in that it looks at success rate for picks deemed low probability of making the NHL.

Ranking the Last Decade of NHL Draft Results

As everyone painstakingly pores over spreadsheets and draft profiles, how has each NHL team fared at the draft the last 10 years?

thehockeywriters.com

This one looks at individual picks and assesses how they did relative to expectations.

https://morehockeystats.com/drafts/picksuccess

At one point I did a compilation from the latter source and as I said the Oilers came out about middle of the pack.

The one resource that has them doing poorly is this one which is based only on players making the 160 game mark. But this is for the period form 1990-2012 and you are correct that the drafting in the 90's and early 2000's was poor.

Which NHL Teams Are Good At Drafting?

Lots has been written about the value of draft picks in the NHL. David Wilson even wrote his Master’s thesis on the topic. I will quickly…

medium.com

When he refines this to look at quality of picks the Oilers even then come out pretty much in the middle. Still I am also a bit concerned by a metric that would see Sven Baertschi as a better pick than Sam Gagner.

In the end though one significant flaw in all of these studies is that they do not have any mechanism for accounting for the quality of an individual draft class. For example, if you look at the Yakapov pick by any of the normal metrics for 1st overall it is a disaster. But the reality is that all of the top 4 in that draft were at best extremely underwhelming. In contrast if you look at a guy like Yamamoto compared with the forwards in his draft class he was actually a very good pick. But if you look at the guys picked in the 20-24 range in the draft prior to his he would be very underwhelming. Similarly with McLeod. He has actually out performed his draft slot by a fair bit compared with the players in his draft. But since he is not Kucherov he is called a "meh" pick.

In your post you mention the period form 2011 -2014 as being dismal. Yet the 2010-2011 drafts were actually very strong. And I would argue that 2014 was a home run simply because of Draisaitl but getting 60 games out of a 4th rounder is also a plus. Since they never had a pick in rounds 2-3 you can be critical of that draft.

2012 produced two players in the rounds 2-4 playing over 300 games. That is actually a big plus relative to expectations. But the draft is a dud because of the Yakupov pick which was in the end as much about bad luck as it was about bad judgement. It's actually not even uncommon for teams to hit a home run in a late round but completely miss on their first. Chicago during the years they were credited with being a very good drafting team often did this. Since 1st rounders are by far the most important picks I was never a fan of only evaluating drafting by later round success.

The reality is that few teams actually consistently draft "well" the standards that most seem to use. But the as I say the most important picks are by far the first rounders. And the Oilers have McDavid, Draisaitl, Nuge, Nurse, And Bouchard at the very least as a core.

 

[CycloneSweep]

No OHL scout but we drafted both guys from the OHL, intrigue b

 

[5 Mins 4 Ftg]

No OHL scout but we drafted both guys from the OHL, intrigue b

Staois was our OHL scout this year amongst his other duties. The “No OHL Scout” was media clickbait.

 

[Jimmi McJenkins]

If Aiden Fink is there for the Oilers they should pick him. imo.