Best and Worst Draft Teams since 1980

[vadim sharifijanov]

You will NEVER find a better draft record than that of the Edmonton Oilers between 1979-1981. Drafting 5 HOFers in 2 years is craziness.

montreal from '73-'75 came pretty close though. well, close in terms of number of hall of famers. the oilers got some other very good players in those three drafts (lowe, moog, steve smith), while the habs didn't get much of anything other than the four hall of famers (poor guys, right?)

1973 Amateur
Draft Num. Round Player Pos Drafted From GP G A Pts PIM
1973 Amateur 8 1 Bob Gainey F Peterborough Petes [OHA] 1160 239 263 502 585

1972 Amateur
Draft Num. Round Player Pos Drafted From GP G A Pts PIM
1972 Amateur 4 1 Steve Shutt F Toronto Marlboros [OHA] 930 424 393 817 410

1971 Amateur
Draft Num. Round Player Pos Drafted From GP G A Pts PIM
1971 Amateur 1 1 Guy Lafleur R Quebec Remparts [QMJHL] 1127 560 793 1353 399
1971 Amateur 20 2 Larry Robinson D Kitchener Rangers [OHA] 1384 208 750 958 793

but in terms of sheer volume of real NHL players who played for a long time, the best i can think of is the wings from '89-'91:

1991 Entry
Draft Num. Round Player Pos Drafted From GP G A Pts PIM
1991 Entry 10 1 Martin Lapointe R Laval Titan [QMJHL] 991 181 200 381 1417
1991 Entry 32 2 Jamie Pushor D Lethbridge Hurricanes [WHL] 521 14 46 60 648
1991 Entry 54 3 Chris Osgood G Medicine Hat Tigers [WHL] 744 1 19 20 137
1991 Entry 76 4 Mike Knuble R Kalamazoo (NAHL) 962 264 254 518 587

1990 Entry
Draft Num. Round Player Pos Drafted From GP G A Pts PIM
1990 Entry 3 1 Keith Primeau C Niagara Falls Thunder [OHL] 909 266 353 619 1541
1990 Entry 45 3 Vyacheslav Kozlov L Voskresensk Khimik [Russia] 1182 356 497 853 704
1990 Entry 129 7 Jason York D Kitchener Rangers [OHL] 757 42 187 229 621

1989 Entry
Draft Num. Round Player Pos Drafted From GP G A Pts PIM
1989 Entry 11 1 Mike Sillinger C Regina Pats [WHL] 1049 240 308 548 644
1989 Entry 32 2 Bob Boughner D Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds [OHL] 630 15 57 72 1382
1989 Entry 53 3 Nicklas Lidstrom D Vasteras IK [SEL] 1487 251 854 1105 486
1989 Entry 74 4 Sergei Fedorov C CSKA Moscow [Russia] 1248 483 696 1179 839
1989 Entry 116 6 Dallas Drake R Northern Michigan University [WCHA] 1009 177 300 477 885
1989 Entry 221 11 Vladimir Konstantinov D CSKA Moscow [Russia] 446 47 128 175 838

and the devils had a great five year run from the brodeur draft to the elias draft.

they also had a very good four year run from '82 to '85, even though they spent high picks on rocky trottier (bust) and craig wolanin (unspectacular, but it was a very weak draft).

 

[bassassin]

Can you elaborate on that one?

The tale goes that at the time when they drafted Lecavalier they picked Richards for a couple of reasons:

1. To keep Lecavalier happy, they rightfully saw him as the future of the franchise. Keeping him happy was in everyones interests.
2. At the time the team was tight for cash, so scouting was VERY limited, Richards was projected to go 7th-9th round due to skating/size. At the draft a lot of laughing went on at the Lightnings expense due to drafting 2 players from the same team as in they couldnt afford to scout any other teams. As much as it worked out for the Lightning it was kind of true.
3. Phil liked what he saw.

Combo of the 3 factors. Will look for a link though.

 

[Hardyvan123]

There were 4 Nathan Smiths?

You'd think they'd know not to draft the other three after they'd already tried out one.

Nathan Smith translated into Czech is Libor Polasek and the American version was Patrick White.

 

[Seanconn*]

I should have clarified in the original post, that I was looking for the teams that made the best choices or worst choices with their draft picks, in terms of which players turned out to be the best after they were drafted.

Ottawa made a good choice in Yashin as their pick in the 1992 draft.

Daigle was aboslutely horrendous, considering you could have picked Kariya, Pronger or even Koivu instead.

could have picked Iginla instead of Berard as first overall in 1995.

number one pick in 1996 too, that they used to pick Chris Phillips... when there turned out to be a handful of better player in that draft year.

just seems they made some poor picks with high picks in the first round in the 90's...

I really should have clarified this wasn't so much who made the best choices "at the time" but what choices turned out to be the best, and what teams really passed over some amazing players.

 

[BSHH]

(...) Daigle was aboslutely horrendous, considering you could have picked Kariya, Pronger or even Koivu instead. (...)

At least this pick should not be judged solely in hindsight. Perhaps there was two much hype around Daigle, but almost everyone expected him to become at least a very good franchise player. I sincerely doubt that many teams would have picked Koivu over Daigle then, and we should not pretend to be so much cleverer than all the professional scouts.

The best single pick in relation to number and outcome might be Nicklas Lidström; at least after you sort out all those Eastern Bloc players, whose draft position was mainly influenced by the political situation. Lidström went from a third-round pick to an important player and later the anchor of an extremely successful Red Wings era. To my mind, his constant dominance even shadows Roy's incredible playoff success.

Gruß,
BSHH

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Ottawa is a cautionary tale. They all but tanked to get Daigle, in hindsight if they'd gotten one more point they may have "had" to take Pronger or Kariya..who knows how that would have changed the course of that franchise. Though, given the genius of the Senators brain trust at the time they probably would have picked Chris Gratton.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Having read up on it again I actually have to apologize, if they hadn't drafted Daigle they would have taken Pronger.

The Senators apparently rated Pronger above Daigle but went for Daigle, first, because they thought they could swing a monster deal with Quebec for him, something like the Lindros trade. They were said to have wanted Forsberg or some other big assets. Eventually though they thought they needed to draft Daigle and keep him, simply because a D-man doesn't attract hype and they thought they needed hype to get an arena built.

Well, they did at least get the arena built.

 

[begbeee]

What about Islanders???
If not Mad Mike they could be a powerhouse during 2000's.
Someone would be so nice and name them.
Spezza, Chara, Berard, Bertuzzi, Redden, DiPietro...to name a few during period.

 

[Blackhawkswincup]

1986-2001 Hawks drafting was horrendous

1986 1st round - Everett Sanipass (14th overall) = Bust
Franktisek Kucera and Mike Hudson played some years as role players as mid/late round picks each playing 400+ games in NHL

1987 1st round - Jimmy Waite (8th overall) = Absolute bust
Cam Russell only player drafted to see significant time in NHL with 300+ games as a role player

1988 1st round - Jeremy Roenick (8th overall) = Franchise player
None of the 10 other guys we picked ever played a game in NHL

1989 1st round - Adam Bennett (6th overall) = Megabust
Bennett played 60+ games in NHL and Milan Tichy was only other pick in that draft to ever play in NHL (23 games)

1990 1st round - Karl Dykhuis (16th overall) = 4-5 dman in NHL
Dykhuis and Steve Dubinsky played some in NHL as role players. Only other player to play in NHL from that draft was Ivan Droppa (19 games)

1991 1st round - Dean McAmmond (22nd overall) = Checking line player in NHL
D Igor Kravchuk as a 4th round pick was good value and had a long career in NHL. Only 2 guys playing single digits got in NHL form rest of picks (Zac Boyer and Alexander Anrievski). 11 draft picks never played in NHL

1992 1st round - Sergei Krivokrasov (12th overall) = Bottom 6 winger
Hawks drafted 2 bottom 6 role players with our 1st 2 picks (Krivo + Shantz). Both played 400+ games in NHL. Everyone else in draft failed to do anything

1993 1st round - Eric Lecompte (24th overall) = Bust never played in NHL
Eric Daze as a 4th round pick was only success from this draft

1994 1st round - Ethan Moreau (14th overall) = Became good 3rd line LW in NHL
No other picks amounted to much. Jean Yves-Leroux played 200+ games in NHL (He was awful though)

1995 1st round - Dmitri Nabokov (19th overall) = Bust
Christian Laflamme became a bottom pairing dman in NHL for a few years. All other picks failed

1996 No 1st round pick
Our 2 2nd round picks (Remi Royer and Jeff Paul) played a combined 20 games in NHL and no other picks played

1997 1st round - Daniel Cleary (13th overall) = Would have been bust but revived his career in Det
1st roudn - Ty Jones (16th overall) = Absolute bust
Kyle Calder was a solid player on bad Hawk teams and played almost 600 NHL games. Rest of draft sucked

1998 1st round - Mark Bell (8th overall) = Bust

Tyler Arnason as 7th rounder played 400+ games in NHL but wasn't any good when not playing 1st line minutes on terrible Hawks team

1999 1st round - Steve McCarthy (23rd overall) = Bust
Only Micheal Leighton (6th round) made it to NHL from rest of picks

2000 1st round - Mikhail Yakubov (10th overall) = Bust
1st round - Pavel Vorobiev (11th overall) = Bust
15 draft picks that year and none played more then 60 NHL games

2001 1st round - Tuomo Ruutu (9th overall) = Good NHL player but injuries hurt him
1st round - Adam Munro (29th overall) = Bust
Only pick in rest of draft to make impact in NHL is Craig Anderson (3rd round). Hawks 10 other picks either played sparingly in NHL (Keith) or never at all (The other 9)

Hawks have to be the worst team draft sucess wise in that stretch. Only 2 good picks (Roenick and Daze)

 

[MS]

You will NEVER find a better draft record than that of the Edmonton Oilers between 1979-1981. Drafting 5 HOFers in 2 years is craziness.

.... and then their record for the next 15-20 years after that was absolutely ghastly.

For the bulk of the 1990s, Edmonton and Chicago were the worst drafting teams.

But a 30-year window is not really a revealing way to look at things, as GMs/regimes change so many times over that length of time that a club's drafting can go from good to bad and back again several times.

NJ were unreal during the 1990s but have been pretty much crap in the last 10 years save for the Parise pick.

Canucks were *horrible* in the 1980s, 1982-87 especially.

Columbus, Minnesota, and Atlanta have all been crap since entering the league together as expansion cousins (Atlanta one year earlier) and have all had nightmarish returns when you consider the amount of really high picks they've had.

Columbus has to take the cake, though, in the last 10 years. In 11 drafts, they have yet to take a guy who is an above-average NHL defender, and have picked only 3 guys who went on to become regular NHL blueliners. Rick Nash is the only decent forward they got out of their first 6 drafts, during which time they never drafted lower than 8th overall. If you want a blueprint for the failure of a franchise, that's it.

 

[begbeee]

.... and then their record for the next 15-20 years after that was absolutely ghastly.

For the bulk of the 1990s, Edmonton and Chicago were the worst drafting teams.

But a 30-year window is not really a revealing way to look at things, as GMs/regimes change so many times over that length of time that a club's drafting can go from good to bad and back again several times.

NJ were unreal during the 1990s but have been pretty much crap in the last 10 years save for the Parise pick.

Canucks were *horrible* in the 1980s, 1982-87 especially.

Columbus, Minnesota, and Atlanta have all been crap since entering the league together as expansion cousins (Atlanta one year earlier) and have all had nightmarish returns when you consider the amount of really high picks they've had.

Columbus has to take the cake, though, in the last 10 years. In 11 drafts, they have yet to take a guy who is an above-average NHL defender, and have picked only 3 guys who went on to become regular NHL blueliners. Rick Nash is the only decent forward they got out of their first 6 drafts, during which time they never drafted lower than 8th overall. If you want a blueprint for the failure of a franchise, that's it.

Paul Martin, Rupp, Zajac, Parise, Tedenby, Josefsson, Urborm, Zharkov. Not bad considering draft positions.

 

[MS]

Paul Martin, Rupp, Zajac, Parise, Tedenby, Josefsson, Urborm, Zharkov. Not bad considering draft positions.

Tedenby, Josefsson, Urbom, and Zharkov have proven a combined zilch so far, and I don't even think they have 100 NHL games between them.

In their 2001-2007 drafts, they picked Parise and Zajac and no-one else of any quality. Bergfors got some hype out of scoring 20 goals as a rookie but is a crap player who played himself out of Atlanta and will probably have a short NHL shelf life.

Devils' drafting has gone downhill, big-time, since 2000. They drafted 24 players between 1991 and 2000 who'd go on to play 400 NHL games ... they won't hit 10 in the 2001-2010 period, will be lucky to get more than 3-4 out of the 2001-07 stretch.

 

[Galchenioretty]

What about Islanders???
If not Mad Mike they could be a powerhouse during 2000's.
Someone would be so nice and name them.
Spezza, Chara, Berard, Bertuzzi, Redden, DiPietro...to name a few during period.

Spezza wasn't actually drafted by the Islanders (they traded the pick and Ottawa took him) and also Berard wasn't officially drafted by the Isles either, he was taken by Ottawa and Redden was taken by the Isles as far as I remember and you have Redden on your list, so I assume you know that.

 

[SenzZen]

You mean schmafting?

 

[tarheelhockey]

Rob Blake-Drew Doughty
Alexei Zhitnik-Larry Murphy
Darryl Sydor-Lubomir Visnovsky
Garry Galley-Kimmo Timonen
Andreas Lilja-Joe Corvo
Aki Berg-Denis Grebeshkov

Holy crap that is a lot of good defensemen!

 

[tarheelhockey]

This is the CAR/HAR contribution:

Geoff Sanderson - Ron Francis - Kevin Dineen
Erik Cole - Eric Staal - Jeff O'Neill
Andrew Ladd - Ray Ferraro - Scott Young
?Jeff Skinner? - Bobby Holik - Sami Kapanen

Chris Pronger - Ulf Samuelsson
Sylvain Cote - Jack Johnson
Joe Reekie - Dana Murzyn

Cam Ward
J.S. Giguere

"In the minors"

Sylvain Turgeon - Michael Nylander - Craig Adams

Adam Burt - Marek Malik

Manny Legace

 

[pirate94]

pretty simple, what teams made the absolute worst draft choices in hindsight...

and which Teams made the best choices. and i guess which ones just did "okay"

discuss.

Ottawa and Winnipeg come to mind as two of the worst, while Detroit seems to be the clear cut number one. considering how many amazing players they drafted outside of the first round...

I'd have to say you're off as far as Winnipeg being worst, you've moved past Florida and went right to Winnipeg?
I'm not sure what you're thinking of as far as worst draft choices

 

[Seanconn*]

I'd have to say you're off as far as Winnipeg being worst, you've moved past Florida and went right to Winnipeg?
I'm not sure what you're thinking of as far as worst draft choices

picking this guy ______ instead of someone better.

look at who the Jet's drafted from 89' to 1995... they picked tons of guys who didn't become stars at all, and could have picked wayyyy better players in hindsight. Like Lidstrom or Kolzig.. or Kovalev...

you can say the thing for a lot of teams... but Winnipeg made a few good first round picks, but a bunch of not so good ones.

 

[MuzikMachine]

I haven't looked at the history, but I have a feeling Edmonton's draft record during that same period (1986-2001) is probably worse than Chicago's. What's worse, a bunch of the Chicago draft picks ended up getting traded to Edmonton after their tenure with the Blackhawks - including the "Megabust".

Go back one more year to 1985 and Chicago's 1st round pick (11th overall) was Dave Manson, who played 1103 games in the NHL over 18 seasons.

Oct 2, 1991: Dave Manson <--> Steve Smith (note: Edm would later trade Manson to Winnipeg for Boris Mironov)
Oct 7, 1993: Adam Bennett <--> Kevin Todd
Feb 24, 1993: Dean McAmmond & Igor Kravchuck <--> Joe Murphy
Mar 22, 1993: Mike Hudson <--> Craig Muni
Mar 20, 1999: Ethan Moreau, Christian Laflamme, Daniel Cleary <--> Dean McAmmond, Boris Mironov, Jonas Elofssen

1986-2001 Hawks drafting was horrendous

1986 1st round - Everett Sanipass (14th overall) = Bust
Franktisek Kucera and Mike Hudson played some years as role players as mid/late round picks each playing 400+ games in NHL

1987 1st round - Jimmy Waite (8th overall) = Absolute bust
Cam Russell only player drafted to see significant time in NHL with 300+ games as a role player

1988 1st round - Jeremy Roenick (8th overall) = Franchise player
None of the 10 other guys we picked ever played a game in NHL

1989 1st round - Adam Bennett (6th overall) = Megabust
Bennett played 60+ games in NHL and Milan Tichy was only other pick in that draft to ever play in NHL (23 games)

1990 1st round - Karl Dykhuis (16th overall) = 4-5 dman in NHL
Dykhuis and Steve Dubinsky played some in NHL as role players. Only other player to play in NHL from that draft was Ivan Droppa (19 games)

1991 1st round - Dean McAmmond (22nd overall) = Checking line player in NHL
D Igor Kravchuk as a 4th round pick was good value and had a long career in NHL. Only 2 guys playing single digits got in NHL form rest of picks (Zac Boyer and Alexander Anrievski). 11 draft picks never played in NHL

1992 1st round - Sergei Krivokrasov (12th overall) = Bottom 6 winger
Hawks drafted 2 bottom 6 role players with our 1st 2 picks (Krivo + Shantz). Both played 400+ games in NHL. Everyone else in draft failed to do anything

1993 1st round - Eric Lecompte (24th overall) = Bust never played in NHL
Eric Daze as a 4th round pick was only success from this draft

1994 1st round - Ethan Moreau (14th overall) = Became good 3rd line LW in NHL
No other picks amounted to much. Jean Yves-Leroux played 200+ games in NHL (He was awful though)

1995 1st round - Dmitri Nabokov (19th overall) = Bust
Christian Laflamme became a bottom pairing dman in NHL for a few years. All other picks failed

1996 No 1st round pick
Our 2 2nd round picks (Remi Royer and Jeff Paul) played a combined 20 games in NHL and no other picks played

1997 1st round - Daniel Cleary (13th overall) = Would have been bust but revived his career in Det
1st roudn - Ty Jones (16th overall) = Absolute bust
Kyle Calder was a solid player on bad Hawk teams and played almost 600 NHL games. Rest of draft sucked

1998 1st round - Mark Bell (8th overall) = Bust

Tyler Arnason as 7th rounder played 400+ games in NHL but wasn't any good when not playing 1st line minutes on terrible Hawks team

1999 1st round - Steve McCarthy (23rd overall) = Bust
Only Micheal Leighton (6th round) made it to NHL from rest of picks

2000 1st round - Mikhail Yakubov (10th overall) = Bust
1st round - Pavel Vorobiev (11th overall) = Bust
15 draft picks that year and none played more then 60 NHL games

2001 1st round - Tuomo Ruutu (9th overall) = Good NHL player but injuries hurt him
1st round - Adam Munro (29th overall) = Bust
Only pick in rest of draft to make impact in NHL is Craig Anderson (3rd round). Hawks 10 other picks either played sparingly in NHL (Keith) or never at all (The other 9)

Hawks have to be the worst team draft sucess wise in that stretch. Only 2 good picks (Roenick and Daze)

 

[Stephen]

picking this guy ______ instead of someone better.

look at who the Jet's drafted from 89' to 1995... they picked tons of guys who didn't become stars at all, and could have picked wayyyy better players in hindsight. Like Lidstrom or Kolzig.. or Kovalev...

you can say the thing for a lot of teams... but Winnipeg made a few good first round picks, but a bunch of not so good ones.

Jets still picked pretty decent players out of those years, like Tkachuk, Zhamnov, Khabibulin, B. Mironov, Doan, Ulanov, Ward, Barnes and Draper... add the 88 pick Selanne and that's not a bad core at all.

 

[Stephen]

Tedenby, Josefsson, Urbom, and Zharkov have proven a combined zilch so far, and I don't even think they have 100 NHL games between them.

In their 2001-2007 drafts, they picked Parise and Zajac and no-one else of any quality. Bergfors got some hype out of scoring 20 goals as a rookie but is a crap player who played himself out of Atlanta and will probably have a short NHL shelf life.

Devils' drafting has gone downhill, big-time, since 2000. They drafted 24 players between 1991 and 2000 who'd go on to play 400 NHL games ... they won't hit 10 in the 2001-2010 period, will be lucky to get more than 3-4 out of the 2001-07 stretch.

I wonder what caused the pipeline to run dry like that?

Really seems like Lamoreillo has lost the plot with the new cap era. It seems weird since he was all about drafting, development and a disciplined salary structure a decade before the lockout...

 

[Ogopogo*]

.... and then their record for the next 15-20 years after that was absolutely ghastly.

For the bulk of the 1990s, Edmonton and Chicago were the worst drafting teams.

.

Absolutely. The Oilers were freaking awful at the draft table for nearly 20 years. Starting in 2005, their first rounders have actually played in the NHL - before that it was maybe 1 every 8 or 10 years.

 

[Stephen]

Ottawa is a cautionary tale. They all but tanked to get Daigle, in hindsight if they'd gotten one more point they may have "had" to take Pronger or Kariya..who knows how that would have changed the course of that franchise. Though, given the genius of the Senators brain trust at the time they probably would have picked Chris Gratton.

The Sens franchise was still on solid ground and probably could have won the cup on the strength of their other drafts...

 

[Oroku Saki*]

Heres the Devils notable picks from 1982-2010

Ken Daneyko
Pat Verbeek
John MacLean
Chris Terreri
Viacheslav Fetisov
Kirk Muller
Craig Billington
Kirk McLean
Mike Peluso
Sean Burke
Eric Weinrich
Brendan Shanahan
Kevin Dean
Jim Dowd
Bill Guerin
Martin Brodeur
Mike Dunham
Valeri Zelepukin
Scott Niedermayer
Brian Rolston
Jason Smith
Sergei Brylin
Stephane Yelle
Denis Pederson
Jay Pandolfo
Brendan Morrison
Patrik Elias
Sheldon Souray
Steve Sullivan
Petr Sykora
Chris Mason
Colin White
Willie Mitchell
Scott Gomez
Brian Gionta
Paul Martin
Mike Rupp
Deryk Engelland
Cam Janssen
Zach Parise
Travis Zajac
Niclas Bergfors
Mark Fayne
Nick Palmieri
Mattias Tedenby
Adam Henrique
Patrice Cormier
Jacob Josefson
Alexander Urbom
John Merill

Obviously the newer picks are still proving themselves and there has been a good amount of busts over the years. Early 00's was a dark age.

 

[Unaffiliated]

Pittsburgh 2003-2005 is getting better all the time too and might look unreal in 15 years:

Fleury
Crosby
Malkin
Letang
Goligoski
Carcillo
Kennedy
Moulson

The bolded ones, especially Crosby and Malkin, were basically no-brainers and shouldn't be taken into account when determining a team's drafting "skill" or whatever.


What makes Detroit amazing is things like:

Datsyuk @ 171st overall, round 6

Zetterberg @ 210th overall, round 7

Lidstrom @ 53rd overall, round 3

Fedorov @ 74th overall, round 4





Actually, just Ctrl-F "Red Wings" on this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_NHL_Entry_Draft

Sillinger, Lidstrom, Fedorov, Konstantinov