ScoresFromCentre
Registered User
- Jan 29, 2016
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Second-round picks are the hottest commodity in the OHL these days. Fifteen such picks have changed hands since the beginning of September, and we may see as many as a dozen more moved before the Jan. 10th trade deadline.
When trade details come out, however, the media often focuses on the number of second-round picks traded, not their value. Basic economics tell us that a 2018 pick is worth more than a 2020 pick, but without access to a more complete list of past OHL transactions than the OHL site offers or to some team's proprietary data on pick valuation, we probably can't create a particularly useful model for discounting future picks. What we can do pretty easily, however, is ask which team's picks are more valuable than which other teams', based on where they fall in the round. It's usually safe to assume that Sudbury will pick higher than London*, but just how much higher? To find out, I decided to compute every OHL team's average assigned draft slot since 2005. This is almost an exact inversion of the team's finish in the previous year's regular season standings (with exceptions being year-end ties in point totals and the fact that the four teams who miss the playoffs each year always receive the top four slots in the following draft).
Why start with 2005? Simply put, we're living in Mark Hunter's OHL. The 2004 Knights were arguably the league's first super-team, but the 2005 Knights remain the benchmark for OHL excellence to this day, and, perhaps more important, London's big deadline trades with Sarnia and Guelph that year touched off the deadline arms race-type activity we've seen in almost every season since. Since 2005, you've basically had to be a super-team to win the OHL**.
Obviously this data has its limits. Many teams have seen changes in management or shifts in organizational focus in the past twelve or even five years, and of course competitiveness in the OHL is cyclical, with most teams attempting to compete every four years or so. But I thought some people might be interested to see where their teams have been drafting over the past decade-plus and where they might expect any upcoming picks their team holds to fall.
Average OHL Draft Position Since 2005
Sudbury - 6.92
Peterborough - 7.25
Sarnia - 7.50
Kingston - 8.33
Erie - 9.08
Mississauga/Toronto - 9.17
Oshawa - 9.58
Hamilton/Belleville - 9.83
Windsor - 10.08
Saginaw - 10.25
Ottawa - 10.42
Owen Sound - 10.50
Sault Ste. Marie - 10.50
Guelph - 10.67
Niagara/Mississauga - 11.25
Flint/Plymouth - 11.33
North Bay/Brampton - 12.58
Barrie - 13.25
Kitchener - 13.92
London - 17.58
If you prefer a more immediate snapshot, here's the draft order since 2011 (effectively an arbitrary period; I just took the latter half of the data set):
Average OHL Draft Position Since 2011
Peterborough - 5.00
Sudbury - 6.83
Hamilton/Belleville - 8.00
Windsor - 8.33
Sarnia - 8.50
Mississauga/Toronto - 8.50
Saginaw - 9.33
Kingston - 9.67
Flint/Plymouth - 9.83
Ottawa - 10.50
Guelph - 10.50
Sault Ste. Marie - 10.83
Erie - 12.00
Niagara/Mississauga - 12.17
Kitchener - 12.17
Owen Sound - 12.50
North Bay/Brampton - 12.50
Barrie - 12.83
Oshawa - 13.17
London - 16.83
Most strikingly, we can see in the data that, over the last six years, the average Peterborough pick has landed almost twelve spots higher than the average London pick. Of course, every draft has its late-round surprises and early-round busts, but higher picks greatly increase a team's odds of having a successful draft. When you're talking about the 20th versus the 32nd pick in the draft, that's a hugely significant difference in expected pick value.
If anybody's interested in the full sortable table of draft orders or the standard deviation of the data sets, a Google document is available here. Feel free to use the data for anything you like, or let me know if you can think of any other good uses for it.
-------------------------
*London has not picked ahead of Sudbury (or Kingston, Peterborough or Sarnia) in the last 12 years.
**Or heroically defy the odds like the 2011 Hishon Sound Attack.
When trade details come out, however, the media often focuses on the number of second-round picks traded, not their value. Basic economics tell us that a 2018 pick is worth more than a 2020 pick, but without access to a more complete list of past OHL transactions than the OHL site offers or to some team's proprietary data on pick valuation, we probably can't create a particularly useful model for discounting future picks. What we can do pretty easily, however, is ask which team's picks are more valuable than which other teams', based on where they fall in the round. It's usually safe to assume that Sudbury will pick higher than London*, but just how much higher? To find out, I decided to compute every OHL team's average assigned draft slot since 2005. This is almost an exact inversion of the team's finish in the previous year's regular season standings (with exceptions being year-end ties in point totals and the fact that the four teams who miss the playoffs each year always receive the top four slots in the following draft).
Why start with 2005? Simply put, we're living in Mark Hunter's OHL. The 2004 Knights were arguably the league's first super-team, but the 2005 Knights remain the benchmark for OHL excellence to this day, and, perhaps more important, London's big deadline trades with Sarnia and Guelph that year touched off the deadline arms race-type activity we've seen in almost every season since. Since 2005, you've basically had to be a super-team to win the OHL**.
Obviously this data has its limits. Many teams have seen changes in management or shifts in organizational focus in the past twelve or even five years, and of course competitiveness in the OHL is cyclical, with most teams attempting to compete every four years or so. But I thought some people might be interested to see where their teams have been drafting over the past decade-plus and where they might expect any upcoming picks their team holds to fall.
Average OHL Draft Position Since 2005
Sudbury - 6.92
Peterborough - 7.25
Sarnia - 7.50
Kingston - 8.33
Erie - 9.08
Mississauga/Toronto - 9.17
Oshawa - 9.58
Hamilton/Belleville - 9.83
Windsor - 10.08
Saginaw - 10.25
Ottawa - 10.42
Owen Sound - 10.50
Sault Ste. Marie - 10.50
Guelph - 10.67
Niagara/Mississauga - 11.25
Flint/Plymouth - 11.33
North Bay/Brampton - 12.58
Barrie - 13.25
Kitchener - 13.92
London - 17.58
If you prefer a more immediate snapshot, here's the draft order since 2011 (effectively an arbitrary period; I just took the latter half of the data set):
Average OHL Draft Position Since 2011
Peterborough - 5.00
Sudbury - 6.83
Hamilton/Belleville - 8.00
Windsor - 8.33
Sarnia - 8.50
Mississauga/Toronto - 8.50
Saginaw - 9.33
Kingston - 9.67
Flint/Plymouth - 9.83
Ottawa - 10.50
Guelph - 10.50
Sault Ste. Marie - 10.83
Erie - 12.00
Niagara/Mississauga - 12.17
Kitchener - 12.17
Owen Sound - 12.50
North Bay/Brampton - 12.50
Barrie - 12.83
Oshawa - 13.17
London - 16.83
Most strikingly, we can see in the data that, over the last six years, the average Peterborough pick has landed almost twelve spots higher than the average London pick. Of course, every draft has its late-round surprises and early-round busts, but higher picks greatly increase a team's odds of having a successful draft. When you're talking about the 20th versus the 32nd pick in the draft, that's a hugely significant difference in expected pick value.
If anybody's interested in the full sortable table of draft orders or the standard deviation of the data sets, a Google document is available here. Feel free to use the data for anything you like, or let me know if you can think of any other good uses for it.
-------------------------
*London has not picked ahead of Sudbury (or Kingston, Peterborough or Sarnia) in the last 12 years.
**Or heroically defy the odds like the 2011 Hishon Sound Attack.
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This is a great post!
