- I don't think there's any particular position that's important to draft early. For the first few rounds I would tend to take a best-player-available approach, of course that means BPA aside from a position I've already drafted.
- Just looking at the draft list here, it's pretty hard for me to give advice. You guys are in a completely different world here. You are much more casual fans than historians, and it shows in how you've drafted players. It appears that a major bonus is being given in value to players that you can remember/played more recently. Whether that's because there's a prevailing sentiment that newer = better*, or whether GMs are being lazy/making the "safe" pick, I can't really say, but it throws any advice that I can give out of whack. I see that there is voting on the teams being done. I could tell you all kinds of steals that are out there, but if other people agreed they were steals, they'd have already picked them themselves, and they'll vote accordingly.
- Just some rough comments on who's been drafted already,
here are some teams that got excellent value:
- LA getting Gordie Howe 4th (anytime someone whiffs on Lemieux then the guy in 4th gets to take one of the big 3)
- NYR getting Maurice Richard 16th (I'm hard on him myself, but he's clearly better than the 7 players taken before him, for sure)
some guys who got reasonable value:
- nothing wrong with Gretzky at 1st of course
- Orr at 3rd was a perfectly logical choice
- Buffalo taking Hasek 7th
- Montreal getting Beliveau 8th
these would be considered slight reaches in an actual All-time draft but compared to the players that went around them, they're studs:
- Messier at 9th
- Bossy at 15th
- Potvin at 18th
- Lafleur at 19th
- questionable picks but not team-damaging:
- taking Mario 2nd when Orr and Howe are on the board
- Jagr at 5th
- Lidstrom at 6th
- Sakic 1th
- Yzerman 12th
- players who have no earthly business being selected anywhere near where they were taken and their teams need to hit home runs in rounds 2 and 3:
- Lindros 10th
- Forsberg 13th
- Bure 14th
- Hawerchuk 17th
off the top of my head, it's absurd that the board is 19 picks in and no one has taken Bourque, Harvey, Shore, Roy, Bobby Hull or Crosby.
some good easy-to-digest resources:
Top-100 Hockey Players of All-Time (Part 2) - the top-100 of all-time, completed a year ago
Top Players of All Time Lists - once you've exhausted the top-100, plenty more great options on these positional lists
ATD 2020 Draft Thread V - an all-time draft done by the pros. pay attention to the order of selections. It gives you a good idea of how long you can wait to take a player. Like, if you seriously think Mats Sundin should be picked next, good for you, but you can probably wait till at least round 4 to be silly, even in this section.
Anyway, anyone reading can feel free to take my advice while at the same time understanding that the voting bloc is predominantly people who think Lindros, Forsberg, Bure and Hawerchuk are top-20 players of all-time (and Jagr/Lidstrom top-10, and Sakic/Yzerman top-12), so while this advice will get you a better team, it may not actually help you win.
*newer IS better. The top-50 players of all-time, in an absolute sense, are probably Crosby, Ovechkin, Malkin, Kane, Gretzky, Lemieux, Orr, McDavid and the 43 other best active players under 30 today. But there's no point in debating such points. All-time lists are meant to reflect dominance in one's own era, not what would happen if Gordie Howe stepped into a time machine, walked out in 2020 and tried to play with his 1940s training, nutrition and equipment. If this main concept is not established and agreed upon before beginning drafting, then there will be widely divergent opinions on the quality of players and teams.
