there is a weird insistence here that you have to use a high draft pick to draft a dman who will make the league quickly. this in turn requires that high draft pick dmen must be athletes who physically mature early so they can play with men before they are 20.
biturbo did us a service by demonstrating that this is not the dominant profile of successful top pair nhl defencemen. that's not surprising. there is absolutely no reason i can think of to correlate early physical maturity with success as an nhl defenceman. there is, on the other hand, every reason to expect that with a year 18 draft the majority of dmen prospects drafted early will be athletes who have physically matured early based on the crudeness of historic nhl drafting patterns.
so basically you are all relying on a false correlation. in an efficient draft market, duncan keith should go in the top 5.
at which point the modern analytics educated nhl fan should ignore the stats generated by the dinosaur gms drafting jared cowens in the top 10 and instead we should be debating whether it's possible to identify later maturing prospects who will thrive as nhl defencemen and, if you do spot them, when do you draft them?
the first question is hard to answer and worthy of debate. i've made the case for juolevi potentially fitting this mold but obviously i could be wrong.
the second question is easy: you draft them based on your assessment of market value. in juolevi's case he was widely considered a top 10 pick, so we did not have the option of waiting for the late second round.
But that analysis is incomplete. It only contains "impact" players. If you expanded it to show every player who played a single game in the NHL regardless of how small their impact you would see that the longer a prospect takes to make the NHL, the smaller the % that they become "impact" players. For every 1 or 2 late round guys who make Bitturbo's list, there are 20-30 guys who don't make the list. So you can't just look at players who have made it, you also have to look at players who didn't make it (i.e. not impact players). For every season that Juolevi can't make the NHL, his odds of becoming one of the impact ones goes down. He might still make it, but it becomes less likely.
There are several other thing that Bit's analysis ignores, namely:
1. NCAA players - guys like Slavin, Mcdonagh have limited contact with NHL teams. They can't attend training camps and "make the team". They essentially have to decide a priori to leave college without having an NHL spot. These guys typically take longer to arrive than CHL players who can attend camps and be under close supervision of NHL teams the entire time.
2. Eurpean players - guys like Klefbom, Kronwall playing in pro leagues in europe are often under contract to their club and can't just come over any time they want. Maybe Pettersson *could* make the club this year, but he won't even get a chance because he's contracted to Vaxjo.
3. Undrafted players - guys like Krug and Tanev who were never drafted are obviously going to take longer to arrive since they are under no team's control and typically don't leave college until their 3rd or 4th year because ... well why would they? Without an NHL contract waiting for them they are better off finishing off their degree before trying to turn pro.
4. Opportunity - Without a doubt 1st round picks (esp top 10 picks) get more opportunity than players drafted later. Teams will keep high picks longer at main camp and even give them their "9 games" for optics. No one wants their high first round pick to be buried in junior and the minors for 4-5 years, giving the impression they made a mistake. See Jake Virtanen and Jared McCann in 2015-16. Guys drafted later get no such advantages.
So honestly, if you are looking to "improve" the quality of your comparables you'd do far better to exclude players who are affected by these factors that don't apply to Juolevi. Just as you've been trying to find better physical comparisons for Juolevi you should consider doing the same for development path comparisons.
