Historical Draft performance across the OHL

[sfan]

I have been wondering about draft performance. Essentially... if scouting, draft decisions, and subsequent player development was theoretically perfect across the league, the the rank at which a player is drafted should closely match the player's subsequent performance in the league. I realize this is an extreme hypothetical but I thought it could at least be meaningfully examined.

Attached is a spreadsheet that looks at all the forwards in the 2013 priority selection that have had a playing career in the league. I have used data from the EliteProspects website. The first column lists each player's rank in terms of career points per game. The second column is the player's overall draft rank. The players are sorted by team and, within each team, their career average PPG. I have subjectively highlighted forwards that have performed, on a PPG basis, significantly better than their draft position would have predicted (ignoring some where the absolute point production was not enough to be significant).

Some observations based on this limited data:
- There is substantial differences in the the results per team.
- Many players, including many from relatively deep in the draft, substantially improved

Before I bother go further with this analysis (other years, other roles), I'd be interested in critical feedback.

Click to read more...

 

[noobie1]

Sfan,

Great list and great work. But it makes me wonder now what a similar list would lokk like for prior drafts where you can see players that may have had 4 to 5 year careers in the OHL. As that is also an indicator as to how successful the draft may have been. You could then see someone who has contributed over a longer time vs someone who came in for 1 or 2 years and was gone.
Again, Awesome work!!!

 

[sfan]

Sfan,

Great list and great work. But it makes me wonder now what a similar list would lokk like for prior drafts where you can see players that may have had 4 to 5 year careers in the OHL. As that is also an indicator as to how successful the draft may have been. You could then see someone who has contributed over a longer time vs someone who came in for 1 or 2 years and was gone.
Again, Awesome work!!!

Thanks and yes, doing this for multiple years, including capturing full OHL careers will help. It may also show if a pattern exists or not with team drafting performance. It would also be good to know the GMs for each year.

One thing that would be nice to know (if the data is easy to assemble) would be to identify any OHL drafted players that go NCAA for a time. This would typically mean they'd be drafted lower in the O and then become quickly productive when they transfer to the O.