What's considered a good draft pick? (A look back)

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

But one thing that is kinda ridiculous about your ratings here... Stuff like Mike McKee is a 4? Mike McKee was just as good a draft pick as Tyler Bertuzzi, Nashville Predators regular Calle Jarnkrok, Martin Frk, etc.

How many seconds of regular season NHL hockey has Mike McKee played? Not minutes, seconds. I think you'll find that answer to be zero. Sure, he was taken in a low value area of the draft... but he's a nothing value player.

Also, why do so many of the benders that never had any prayer of making the show given a 3? A guy like Cayer (who?) is somehow an average pick at 151. What's the difference between him and Vahato at 161? Or McNulty or any of the other guys who got 1s?

If you take a guy in the draft and he never suits up in a single game for you or isn't used as an asset to improve your team in some way, it's a bad pick. I don't care about the expectations.

 

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

As draft picks, we get to ignore the idiotic contacts that players get signed to.

But even having said that, Abdelkader is definitely not a 5 for where he was selected. I can live with a 4, but the guy's total body of work suggests that he's a middle 6 winger that was stapled to superior talent more often than he deserved. A worthwhile pick, but not at all a 5/5.

I would also raise Sheahan to a 2 and lower Smith to a 3.

The Wings have two 5*s in this drafting system as I see them.

Nyquist at 121 and AA at 110.
Mrazek, Abby, Helm, Marchenko are all good picks, but Marchenko was a replacement level D. Yes, that is good for a 205 pick... but Ericsson was a top 4 D for a while as the last pick overall. What rating would he get? These guys are all 4s.

The duffers who never wore the Winged Wheel and were never utilized as an asset anywhere in the system... those are all 1s. Cayer, Lofberg, all those guys. Wasted picks, I don't care where in the draft they were taken.

 

[jkutswings]

The Wings have two 5*s in this drafting system as I see them.

Nyquist at 121 and AA at 110.
Mrazek, Abby, Helm, Marchenko are all good picks, but Marchenko was a replacement level D. Yes, that is good for a 205 pick... but Ericsson was a top 4 D for a while as the last pick overall. What rating would he get? These guys are all 4s.

The duffers who never wore the Winged Wheel and were never utilized as an asset anywhere in the system... those are all 1s. Cayer, Lofberg, all those guys. Wasted picks, I don't care where in the draft they were taken.

I don't disagree, although you didn't mention Tatar. How would you rate him?

 

[Flowah]

I would delete your comment if i could. Move along if you have nothing to add.

Alright you burnouts, pretend i said regular instead of core. Cause i guess you think core means star.

Core means core. Core means who you build the team *around* as implied by the word itself. Pretty much everyone gets that but you.

But keep getting super riled up about it.

 

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

I don't disagree, although you didn't mention Tatar. How would you rate him?

Sorry, he's a 4 star. He's a 20-25 goal winger who has some defensive deficiencies. For him to be a 5*, I gotta have the pick be in the fourth or later OR he's a bonafide top line star. He was taken at 60. There should still be some expectations attached to a #60 OA.

 

[jkutswings]

Sorry, he's a 4 star. He's a 20-25 goal winger who has some defensive deficiencies. For him to be a 5*, I gotta have the pick be in the fourth or later OR he's a bonafide top line star. He was taken at 60. There should still be some expectations attached to a #60 OA.

I didn't have Frk It's full chart handy, but here's a 2015 article from TSN:

Statistically Speaking: Expected value of NHL Draft picks - Article - TSN

Here's the key to their rankings:

10 - Generational
9 - Elite Player
8 - First Line, Top Pair D
7 - Top Six Forward, Top Four D
6 - Top Nine Forward, Top Six D
5 - NHL Regular, 350+ NHL games
4 - Fringe NHLer, 200+ NHL games
3 - Very Good Minor Leaguer, 50-200 NHL games
2 - Minor Leaguer, under 50 NHL games
1 - 10 or fewer NHL games

For picks 56-60, it says this:

No. 56-60
Average Rating: 2.39
Best: Zdeno Chara, Michael Nylander, Brandon Dubinsky, Jiri Hudler
Ranked 7 or better: 5.7%
Ranked 5 or worse: 89.5%
At least 100 NHL games (or extremely likely):28.6%


Considering that Tatar is definitely a 7, and Hudler is included in the list of best picks ever for that range, I'd give Tatar a 5...but it's not a hill that I'd die on, if you feel strongly about giving him a 4.

(Really, I replied to include the TSN averages for context, more than anything.)

 

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

I didn't have Frk It's full chart handy, but here's a 2015 article from TSN:

Statistically Speaking: Expected value of NHL Draft picks - Article - TSN

Here's the key to their rankings:

10 - Generational
9 - Elite Player
8 - First Line, Top Pair D
7 - Top Six Forward, Top Four D
6 - Top Nine Forward, Top Six D
5 - NHL Regular, 350+ NHL games
4 - Fringe NHLer, 200+ NHL games
3 - Very Good Minor Leaguer, 50-200 NHL games
2 - Minor Leaguer, under 50 NHL games
1 - 10 or fewer NHL games

For picks 56-60, it says this:

No. 56-60
Average Rating: 2.39
Best: Zdeno Chara, Michael Nylander, Brandon Dubinsky, Jiri Hudler
Ranked 7 or better: 5.7%
Ranked 5 or worse: 89.5%
At least 100 NHL games (or extremely likely):28.6%


Considering that Tatar is definitely a 7, and Hudler is included in the list of best picks ever for that range, I'd give Tatar a 5...but it's not a hill that I'd die on, if you feel strongly about giving him a 4.

(Really, I replied to include the TSN averages for context, more than anything.)

Thanks for adding them. Gives a little more context than "I think Stefan Lofberg was a great pick even though he had zero prayer of ever making it to the show.

And yeah, Tatar is more a 4.5 than either a 4 or a 5, he is a really good pick, but he does have some pretty massive holes in his game to be a great one. And he's a second rounder. Yes, the average chance of success drops precipitously, but you are taking your 2nd rounders with the expectation that they're going to be vital players for you. Once you get to 100 picks in, you start reaching for home runs. It's all or nothing. Tatar is a solid line drive double pick.

 

[Flowah]

And yeah, Tatar is more a 4.5 than either a 4 or a 5, he is a really good pick, but he does have some pretty massive holes in his game to be a great one..

He's got some minor holes. For me, he's not quite quick enough. He's not quite tenacious enough. He's not quite skilled enough to be a top tier player. If he could make the moves he wants to make more consistently he'd be a force. But he is consistently well positioned, knows which passes to make. He's got a good shot. He's reasonably productive.

What do you consider his massive ones?

 

[Redder Winger]

Just from reading threads about our draft history and draft info in general I'm left with the question... What is a good draft pick? I often see things typed like "bad pick when we could have picked star player X". Out of a 100 picks afterward you can't cherry pick the best one. That doesn't make sense does it?

Example, it's 2005 and you have the 42nd pick. You pick Abdelkader. There's another 150 or so picks afterwards. Within those 150 there's gonna be some players equal to or better than Abdelkader. Having some great players picked afterwards doesn't really downgrade the quality of the pick.

So what makes a good pick?

• Draft position / round / expectation
• Games played / Points
• Players chosen afterward / The amount of good players afterwards
• Circumstances / potential of payout

I got all the years written down, I'll start with 2005. Wings picks and other notable picks. Probably missed some. Just did a quick scan. I'll throw up a 1-5 score for each. Not gonna put much thought into it, just for discussion sake.


2005

19. Kindl - 1 star? - We all know Kindl wasn't the player we hoped he was, but he made the show. I'd rank him 2 stars but we just needed this 1st round defenseman dude to hit. We didn't miss out on any superstar guys close to / after 19.
21. Tuuka Rask
24. Oshie
25. Cogliano
28. Niskanen
29. Downie
33. Neal
35. Vlasic
41. Pavelec
42. Abdelkader - 5 stars? It's a solid pick. Getting a core piece at 42 seems like a success.
44. Stastny
55. McQuaid
57. Kassian
62. Letang
67. Russel
72. Quick
80. Lofberg - 3 stars. Weird rating for a guy that didn't hit at all, but looking further down the board we didn't miss on much. Hakan loved him. It was worth the swing.
85. Bishop
88. Hensick
101. Boll
103. Ritola - 3 stars? - He got a cup of coffee from the 103 spot. Seems decent.
105. Yandle
106. Sobotka
108. Hjalmarsson
132. Helm - 5 stars all day. Great pick.
137. Ryno - 2 stars. Already have HAkan a pass on Lofberg. But at 137 really there's no expectation. Nothing good below us.
142. Gerbe
151. May - 2 stars. Can't really complain about a late pick, not doing anything. They rarely do.
155. Fayne
175. Meilonen - 2 stars. Can't really complain about a late pick, not doing anything. They rarely do. (I don't even remember this dude)
200. Kostisyn
204. Greening
214. Stamler - Stamler's mom has got it doing on. Regardless. 1 star. Just because there's some 7th round homeruns listed below.
216. Stralman
230. Hornquist

Overall, Kindl hurts but getting Abby and Helm out of what looks like a **** draft is decent.

Thoughts?

Abdelkader is a good pick. but 5 stars?
He's only a core piece if your core sucks.
And how do you give Lofberg more stars than Ryno? Lofberg barely had a career in Europe. Ryno was picked lower and made it North America and he's had a very good career in Sweden while Lofberg retired years ago.

I was always suprised Jeff May didn't get a contract.

 

[Redder Winger]

I don’t see what that has to do with anything, he isn’t a core guy and even if he was that’s a pretty bad core piece. He’s a 4

I’d say for sheahan it doesn’t matter who was available he’s a 3rd line center in the nhl. So it makes him a 2. You could do 1 and a half if you wanted.

The rest are pretty spot on except some guys that really aren’t known should be 1 lower

I'd give Sheahan a 2.5 to 3 stars.
Guy is a regular NHLer.

 

[Pavels Dog]

Good topic of discussion Leadzedder. There's so much more that goes into whether a draft pick was good or not than simply the end result.

For example, there's an outcry for us to draft a lot of boom/bust players right now. Considering most of those players will actually bust, most of those picks would look really bad in hindsight if you only use NHL games/points to judge them. But of course it could be worth it if just one of those boom/bust kids turn into a superstar.

Hampus Melen was a good 7th round pick that got his career derailed. Holmstrom is still a very good looking 7th round pick. Johan Ryno and Dick Axelsson were great picks imo. Sproul and Jurco were good picks. Pulkkinen has to be seen as a good pick, and Mrazek a great one. In the end most boom/bust picks look bad statistically though.

 

[Redder Winger]

A good pick would be a nhl player or a very good ahl player in the later rounds

It varies in the earlier rounds

Sheahan wasn’t a bad pick. He wasn’t good either. Bad picks are you miss and there’s a bunch of other nhlers no matter where (or taking a goalie in the first round)

Sheahan is a bad pick because Kuznetsov was still on the board.

 

[Unfriendly Ghost]

You're being much too forgiving of picks just because they're pro-worthy. It's not actually that hard to pick players who can be AHLers or even fringe NHLers, imo. They shouldn't get 3 stars for that. That's a bust to me anywhere but the late rounds. Lofberg, for example, is a 0.

The other thing is, if there was a drastically better player at that position drafted within about 10 picks, I expect my scouting team to have been able to know that. Not being able to tell that one of the guys we're looking at is going to be a lot better is a failure to me.

 

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

He's got some minor holes. For me, he's not quite quick enough. He's not quite tenacious enough. He's not quite skilled enough to be a top tier player. If he could make the moves he wants to make more consistently he'd be a force. But he is consistently well positioned, knows which passes to make. He's got a good shot. He's reasonably productive.

What do you consider his massive ones?

All of those in aggregate are the massive hole. When you're talking about a top line guy, the ability to get the moves off that you want to get off is the be-all, end-all. If you can't in a consistent manner, you are mediocre.

Also, he lacks both size and the tree-trunk resilience of a Zetterberg or Datsyuk. They're all of similar stature, but Hank never gets knocked off the puck, Datsyuk never got knocked off the puck. Tatar gets neutralized by a big guy taking away his space.

Maybe I was a bit harsh by saying massive holes... but in sum total, his play reflects a massive hole by him being JUST not good enough in all aspects to only be a passenger.

I agree that he has a wide range of assets as a player. He's just good but not quite great at anything. Tomas Tatar is the new age Slava Kozlov. (And I say this being just about the biggest Kozlov fan ever. Loved that guy) He's fantastic if he's the third option on a line. He's fantastic if you can let him pick off the weaker parts of the defense. But if you try to run offense through him, you are going to be sorely disappointed.

 

[Pavels Dog]

You're being much too forgiving of picks just because they're pro-worthy. It's not actually that hard to pick players who can be AHLers or even fringe NHLers, imo. They shouldn't get 3 stars for that. That's a bust to me anywhere but the late rounds.

The other thing is, if there was a drastically better player at that position drafted within about 10 picks, I expect my scouting team to know that. Not being able to tell which guy is going to be better is a failure to me.

"within 10 picks" may sound like they're really close and they only needed to weigh 10-15 players against eachother. In reality if we're talking about a non-1st round pick, there's a huge player pool to choose from and it can come down to things like prospect X having a great game with team Y was scouting him, but a terrible game when team Z was scouting him. That's where luck comes into play. You can't expect scouts to see multiple games of 300+ prospects every year, it's just mathematically unreasonable. Even if you factor in seeing games where multiple interesting prospects play, you can't zone in on all of them in the same game.
That's beyond the fact that obviously the same scouts aren't watching every prospect, beyond 1st rounders it can come down to the opinion of just one scout.

If you miss hard in the top 10, you've made a big mistake. Missing in the 2nd or 3rd or 4th round, even if you have a star drafted in the 5th round, is more than anything evidence of what a crapshoot drafting really is.

 

[Unfriendly Ghost]

"within 10 picks" may sound like they're really close and they only needed to weigh 10-15 players against eachother. In reality if we're talking about a non-1st round pick, there's a huge player pool to choose from and it can come down to things like prospect X having a great game with team Y was scouting him, but a terrible game when team Z was scouting him. That's where luck comes into play. You can't expect scouts to see multiple games of 300+ prospects every year, it's just mathematically unreasonable. Even if you factor in seeing games where multiple interesting prospects play, you can't zone in on all of them in the same game.
That's beyond the fact that obviously the same scouts aren't watching every prospect, beyond 1st rounders it can come down to the opinion of just one scout.

If you miss hard in the top 10, you've made a big mistake. Missing in the 2nd or 3rd or 4th round, even if you have a star drafted in the 5th round, is more than anything evidence of what a crapshoot drafting really is.

I agree that's true of later rounds, but I disagree that it's true of the 2nd round. That's still where most players are products of the CHL, college hockey, and mainstream European leagues. You're supposed to have seen those players several times. (That's what teams claim, anyway.) If you've got a bunch of prospects in your comparison group for a given pick and you take the wrong one, that should be a hit on your record. That's not a '3', that's a '0'.

And this is one of those cases where not having done your homework shouldn't save you. I don't think teams should have encyclopedic knowledge of late round picks. But 2nd and 3rd rounds? They should absolutely know what they're talking about. And if they can't tell the difference, they either aren't seeing enough games or they aren't good enough.

Like one of my primary complaints is that Detroit whines about drafting late in the round, but they never pick up good players from the round after. Late 1st? There will be several excellent 2nd round guys that apparently Detroit was oblivious to. Late 2nd? Same deal with the 3rd round. It comes across like Detroit relies a good deal more on being lucky than being good. It makes me wonder if the new "we're going to start a trend!" thing is oriented more in the fact that they were pretty terrible at drafting players under the existing trend than anything else. They think they'll have more success drafting players who aren't in such high demand.

 

[Reddwit]

You're being much too forgiving of picks just because they're pro-worthy. It's not actually that hard to pick players who can be AHLers or even fringe NHLers, imo. They shouldn't get 3 stars for that. That's a bust to me anywhere but the late rounds. Lofberg, for example, is a 0.

The other thing is, if there was a drastically better player at that position drafted within about 10 picks, I expect my scouting team to have been able to know that. Not being able to tell that one of the guys we're looking at is going to be a lot better is a failure to me.

Agreed. You have to take into account a player's situation when looking at games played. Kindl played a ton of games very poorly but got the opportunity because he was a hyped prospect and, more importantly, Detroit had terrible defensive depth. Once he was traded to a team that was actually competitive, he was a 7th option and often a healthy scratch. The guy has been very lucky that Florida has gone back to gutting their roster again and that Demers and Gudbranson leaving gave him yet another chance.

 

[Shaman464]

Good topic of discussion Leadzedder. There's so much more that goes into whether a draft pick was good or not than simply the end result.

For example, there's an outcry for us to draft a lot of boom/bust players right now. Considering most of those players will actually bust, most of those picks would look really bad in hindsight if you only use NHL games/points to judge them. But of course it could be worth it if just one of those boom/bust kids turn into a superstar.

Hampus Melen was a good 7th round pick that got his career derailed. Holmstrom is still a very good looking 7th round pick. Johan Ryno and Dick Axelsson were great picks imo. Sproul and Jurco were good picks. Pulkkinen has to be seen as a good pick, and Mrazek a great one. In the end most boom/bust picks look bad statistically though.

Boom/bust isn't a one size fits all term. A boom/bust 5-10 OA is a player that could be a star but if busts will still make the NHL. A boom/bust 100 OA is a player that has the tools to be a star if all the stars align but is likely to be a career minor leaguer. Its not the same.

 

[vicehf]

Nice look back. Inspired me to take a look with slightly different methodology as hindsight regarding other available players is 20/20 and nobody has a crystal ball on draft day to tell that a guy like Anton Stralman became what he did. I used the same time period - 2005 through 2014.

First, I created an expected GP threshold for each round. To account for more recent drafts, I created a multiplier using the number of first round picks with >100 GP in that draft (2014 was 40%, 2013 was 63.3%, 2012 was 76.7%) which was used to change the GP threshold that determined a successful pick. Often times, people use the 100 GP threshold to determine whether a team got a NHL player out of it - but there's a difference between a fourth overall pick and a fourth round pick playing 100 games. One is expected as a lock, and the other is a bit of a surprise. Secondly, I slotted the players into Player Ratings (Superstar / Top Line / Top Six / Bottom Six / Depth / Bust for forwards) based on their career statistics. Each of these ratings was assigned an associated percentage. The most alarming thing here is that we have drafted no defensemen that have performed

Finally, I multiplied the Player Rating and GP Rating together to determine an overall percentage, and therefore, letter grade for each draft pick.

I have labeled the rest of the players as busts (42).

Final Letter Grade	% of Total
A	8.5%
B	2.8%
C	1.4%
D+	1.4%
D	4.2%
F	22.5%
Bust	59.2%

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

And the player specific detail. Quite a few of the players in the lower ratings I expect to improve over time, but this is based on their career performance so far and doesn't factor in future potential.

Final Letter Grade	Player	Player Quality	Notes
A	Darren Helm	Bottom Six
	Dylan Larkin	Top Six
	Gustav Nyquist	Top Six
	Justin Abdelkader	Bottom Six
	Shawn Matthias	Bottom Six
	Tomas Tatar	Top Six
B	Brendan Smith	Bottom Pair
	Calle Jarnkrok	Bottom Six
C	Petr Mrazek	Backup
D+	Andreas Athanasiou	Bottom Six	Expect to improve rating
D	Jakub Kindl	Bottom Pair
	Mattias Janmark-Nylen	Bottom Six
	Riley Sheahan	Bottom Six
F	Alan Quine	Bottom Six	Expect to improve rating
	Alexey Marchenko	Depth
	Andrej Nestrasil	Bottom Six
	Anthony Mantha	Top Six	Expect to improve rating
	Cory Emmerton	Depth
	Jan Mursak	Depth
	Joakim Andersson	Depth
	Landon Ferraro	Depth
	Martin Frk	Bottom Six	Expect to improve rating
	Mattias Ritola	Depth
	Nick Jensen	Bottom Pair	Expect to improve rating
	Ryan Sproul	Bottom Pair
	Teemu Pulkkinen	Bottom Six
	Tomas Jurco	Depth
	Tyler Bertuzzi	Bottom Six	Expect to improve rating
	Xavier Ouellet	Depth

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

 

[Leadzedder]

Why is Smith a 4 and Sheahan a 1 (or 2)? Until last year where it felt apart for Sheahan, he was a more impactful hockey player for the Red Wings than Brendan Smith was. Smith was, for what he could and should have been, a WILD disappointment. An OFD that never potted over 20 points? The only useful thing he ever did for the Wings was land a 2nd and a 3rd round pick. When he was wearing the Winged Wheel he provided nothing but disappointment. All the tools in the world, but the hockey IQ of a particularly stupid rock.

Fair.

 

[Leadzedder]

Here are some stats from 1990 to 2013, might help with what's a "reasonable expectation" for players picked in each round.

Round # -- % played 100 GP -- % became top-6 F/top-4 D/1G -- % became 4th liners or worse

Round 1 -- 71.9% -- 34.1% -- 50.2%
Round 2 -- 33.8% -- 10.4% -- 82.0%
Round 3 -- 28.0% -- 7.5% -- 87.1%
Round 4 -- 19.1% -- 4.3% -- 92.1%
Round 5 -- 14.6% -- 3.7% -- 92.9%
Round 6 -- 15.2% -- 3.3% -- 92.5%
Round 7 -- 8.9% -- 2.1% -- 96.4%
Round 8+ -- 12% -- 3.2% -- 94.4%

First round broken into tiers of 10:
1-10 -- 89.5% -- 53.8% -- 28.6%
11-20 -- 68.6% -- 28.8% -- 56.1%
21-30 -- 57.5% -- 19.6% -- 65.8%

Here's the article with more specific data per pick, I just made the summaries by round:
Statistically Speaking: NHL Draft Pick Value - Article - TSN

So, if you have an average pick in each round, you would end up with about 1.91 guys with 100 GP and 0.65 top-6/top-4/1G...

Good input chad. I guess that’s the data the thread was missing.

Could probably nail down some expectations of each pick using this info.

I’d say the expectation or goal of a 1st round pick would be the second column (top6 /4).

Second and 3rd round, third column (4th line or BETTER? (You typed worse?).

And any other picks past round 3 would use the 100 Games played target.

Grouping picks into 3 categories and results into 3 categories. I might go back through this some other time applying that simple process. So a pick that hits it’s target is good (4). Surpasses expectations is great (5). Etc.

Anyway. Good info.

 

[Leadzedder]

As draft picks, we get to ignore the idiotic contacts that players get signed to.

But even having said that, Abdelkader is definitely not a 5 for where he was selected. I can live with a 4, but the guy's total body of work suggests that he's a middle 6 winger that was stapled to superior talent more often than he deserved. A worthwhile pick, but not at all a 5/5.

I would also raise Sheahan to a 2 and lower Smith to a 3.

You’re right, it’s nice to be able to look past the contracts.

I’m not gonna defend any of my ratings (this is a general response to a lot of feedback) as that wasn’t really the point of the thread. But I will say that while creating the thread I skimmed past a 1000 busts (not much different than my normal online browsing) so all the picks not included were all junk. So to get a “regular player” amidst all the nothing picks... influenced the grades slopped in there.

 

[Leadzedder]

But one thing that is kinda ridiculous about your ratings here... Stuff like Mike McKee is a 4? Mike McKee was just as good a draft pick as Tyler Bertuzzi, Nashville Predators regular Calle Jarnkrok, Martin Frk, etc.

How many seconds of regular season NHL hockey has Mike McKee played? Not minutes, seconds. I think you'll find that answer to be zero. Sure, he was taken in a low value area of the draft... but he's a nothing value player.

Also, why do so many of the benders that never had any prayer of making the show given a 3? A guy like Cayer (who?) is somehow an average pick at 151. What's the difference between him and Vahato at 161? Or McNulty or any of the other guys who got 1s?

If you take a guy in the draft and he never suits up in a single game for you or isn't used as an asset to improve your team in some way, it's a bad pick. I don't care about the expectations.

Why you asking if I know how many seconds McKee played like I don’t know? Ok. So McKee isnt a 4 (good pick). Whatever.

And I’m not gonna argue anything like Cayer vs McNulty. You’re right, all those guys are nothing picks. But that goes to the question... do we look at things like “was it a good gamble at that draft position”.

Is there any consideration to a pick like McKee for what he could have been? Or no? Honest question as it goes back to the title of the thread.

Your last paragraph... do we group round 2 or 3 fails the same as round 6 or 7 fails?

 

[Leadzedder]

The Wings have two 5*s in this drafting system as I see them.

Nyquist at 121 and AA at 110.
Mrazek, Abby, Helm, Marchenko are all good picks, but Marchenko was a replacement level D. Yes, that is good for a 205 pick... but Ericsson was a top 4 D for a while as the last pick overall. What rating would he get? These guys are all 4s.

The duffers who never wore the Winged Wheel and were never utilized as an asset anywhere in the system... those are all 1s. Cayer, Lofberg, all those guys. Wasted picks, I don't care where in the draft they were taken.

Fair.

 

[Leadzedder]

I didn't have Frk It's full chart handy, but here's a 2015 article from TSN:

Statistically Speaking: Expected value of NHL Draft picks - Article - TSN

Here's the key to their rankings:

10 - Generational
9 - Elite Player
8 - First Line, Top Pair D
7 - Top Six Forward, Top Four D
6 - Top Nine Forward, Top Six D
5 - NHL Regular, 350+ NHL games
4 - Fringe NHLer, 200+ NHL games
3 - Very Good Minor Leaguer, 50-200 NHL games
2 - Minor Leaguer, under 50 NHL games
1 - 10 or fewer NHL games

For picks 56-60, it says this:

No. 56-60
Average Rating: 2.39
Best: Zdeno Chara, Michael Nylander, Brandon Dubinsky, Jiri Hudler
Ranked 7 or better: 5.7%
Ranked 5 or worse: 89.5%
At least 100 NHL games (or extremely likely):28.6%


Considering that Tatar is definitely a 7, and Hudler is included in the list of best picks ever for that range, I'd give Tatar a 5...but it's not a hill that I'd die on, if you feel strongly about giving him a 4.

(Really, I replied to include the TSN averages for context, more than anything.)

Cool breakdown.