News Article: Sens big losers of draft, per TheScore

[YouGotAStuGoing]

Which is why I prefaced it with "Food for thought". And yes, points only isn't a perfect way of looking at quality, but there isn't much discrepancy between positions taken by team.

In a vacuum, you're not wrong – but I think it's reasonable to say a forward drafted first overall is expected to have many more points than a forward drafted in the seventh round. There's got to be more weighting given to the position in which they were drafted, or else your results will always be skewed.

 

[Micklebot]

This is cherry-picking a stat, though. Since 2005, Colorado has had a first overall pick, a second overall pick and a third overall pick. Pretty hard to screw those up. Comparatively, the Sens' three highest picks in that time frame are 6, 9 and 9 – the latter two of which were spent on defencemen. Can't rank the quality of a defensive defenceman by the amount of points scored (not that I'm defending Cowen or Lee – they couldn't defend themselves, let alone a defensive zone.) But basing your assessment of drafting prowess by virtue of points per player drafted seems a bit flawed, in my eyes.

That said, I do agree with the second part of your argument. A few guys we've drafted probably wouldn't see ice time on other teams.

And those guys likely lower our pts/g numbers.

 

[DuckedUpOnQuack]

So I'm assuming this chart looks at players drafted 2005 and onward, because the title is a bit confusing.

IMO this gets highly skewed based on one or two players combined with organizational need. If you draft a goalie in the first round? There goes your points! If you're drafting outside of the top-5 chances are you're getting at best a 2nd liner.

To be included in this chart, I'd like to see number/percent of draft picks who played over ~25 games in the NHL. I personally think that's just as important as GP and PTS, since it shows your scouts' ability to identify NHL quality talent, no matter what your draft position is. Furthermore, some sort of metric associated with late round drafting would be interesting as well.

It's also highly dependent on your GM's strategy. Is your prospect pipeline full? Sure, go off the board and draft a high risk / high reward player. Not that this was Ottawa's strategy, but I think this type of analytical work is quite lacking.

Edit: Looks like Micklebot did all my homework for me.

 

[Micklebot]

So I'm assuming this chart looks at players drafted 2005 and onward, because the title is a bit confusing.

IMO this gets highly skewed based on one or two players combined with organizational need. If you draft a goalie in the first round? There goes your points! If you're drafting outside of the top-5 chances are you're getting at best a 2nd liner.

To be included in this chart, I'd like to see number/percent of draft picks who played over ~25 games in the NHL. I personally think that's just as important as GP and PTS, since it shows your scouts' ability to identify NHL quality talent, no matter what your draft position is. Furthermore, some sort of metric associated with late round drafting would be interesting as well.

It's also highly dependent on your GM's strategy. Is your prospect pipeline full? Sure, go off the board and draft a high risk / high reward player. Not that this was Ottawa's strategy, but I think this type of analytical work is quite lacking.

Edit: Looks like Micklebot did all my homework for me.

Credit goes to the blog I posted a link to, they did all the hard work for all the teams, though it goes back to 2000 which would include all of Muckler's era and a couple years prior.

Since Muckler was quantifiably poor at drafting, I don't really mind the inclusion as I feel the point stands.

 

[Frank8]

Do Make Say Think posted the original chart and I responded with my own column. I couldn't find the original article nor did I read the one posted by MB.

 

[Frank8]

Here's some stats on Sens picks vs league average from 2000-2012.

First, specific to Ottawa:

Position|Drafted|GP|PTS
Center |18 |3465 |1859
LW |18| 906| 385
RW |13| 1261| 483
D |41 |4232| 1156
G |8| 656| 11
Unspecified |8 |0| 0
Total| 106| 10520| 3894

First thing you might notice is that we drafted 41 D out of 106 picks. That's a bit above average, and will certainly affect raw pts, and pts per game numbers. In fact, we've actually drafted more d in the first round than any team during this period (with a couple mulligans we'd like back in Cowen and Lee).

Category|League Avg.|Ottawa|Difference
Draftees |106 |106| +0
100+ GP |23| 27| +4
100+ GP (%)| 22% |25%| +3%
Total GP| 8939| 10520| +1581
Skater PTS| 3426| 3883| +457
Skater PPG |0.40| 0.39| -0.01
AVG PTS| 36| 40| +4
AVG GP| 84 |99| +15

Ok, so here, you'll notice the only category we fall below average (slightly) in is pts/g, which makes sense when you draft more D than average as they tend to score less.

Now, as other's have mentioned, not every draft pick is equal, some teams have more 1st rounders, other's have higher picks on average.

Courtesy of some hard work found here, where he used the standards from Cullen's article on TSN to define successful picks we can see Ottawa success round by round relative to the league:

Round|Expected Success Rate|Actual Success Rate
1 |60 – 66%| 73%
2 |26 – 32%| 30%
3 |21 – 26%| 20%
4+ |10 – 15%| 15%

Some quick excerpts from the article:









So, while it's nice that you think that Ottawa is a poor drafting team, the evidence seems to consistently suggest otherwise. Now, the argument is a bit different for those suggesting Ottawa is an elite drafting team, I'm not sure that's a fair assessment either, but we are certainly not a poor one.

Skater PPG is lower than average while GP is 1500 over the league average which certainly affects our success rate per round. (Your adjustment for D holds some water but I would expect Karlsson's numbers to offset some of that.) I think this goes to my point that we draft a lot of average players who get playing time out of necessity.

In fairness, I said way back that we're an average drafting team, not a great one

 

[danielpalfredsson]

When ranking how effective a team is at drafting, it is more important to look at the quality of players they are getting versus the expected value of certain picks.

For example, the Oilers got Hall/RNH/McDavid/Draisaitl with picks that these days are almost impossible to screw up. Take those away, and their only real great pick outside of that would be getting Eberle where they got him.

Ottawa hasn't gotten that type of can't miss opportunity at a top pick in 15 years yet they've still managed to find stars in the draft that are much better than what should be expected at the spots where they've been picked.

 

[Frank8]

Interesting example. Edmonton are actually middle of the pack on my chart. and the top 5 teams have 4, 3, 4, 5, and 3 first round picks respectively. Ottawa had 3.

 

[Micklebot]

Interesting example. Edmonton are actually middle of the pack on my chart. and the top 5 teams have 4, 3, 4, 5, and 3 first round picks respectively. Ottawa had 3.

Sure however:

Boston: Kessel (5th), Seguin (2nd)
Pittsburgh: Crosby (1st), Staal (2nd)
Colorado: McKinnon (1st) Landeskog (2nd) Duchene (3rd)
Tampa: Hedman (2nd) Stamkos (1st)
Chicago: Toews (3rd), Kane (1st)

Compared to Ottawa who's highest pick is Zibanejad at 6th, and their next two highest were Dmen (who busted as well in Lee a and Cowen both at 9th). Our 3 top ten picks are very different than Boston, Pitts, Col, Tampa, and Chicago's.

 

[BonkTastic]

I want to see what the list looks like when you omit the 1st rounders.

It doesn't take a genius to draft Sidney Crosby or Connor McDavid 1st overall. Consistently finding top-6 forwars and/or a top-4 defencemen in the later rounds is what separates the men from the boys.

 

[Xspyrit]

What does Bryan Murray have to do with John Muckler's craptastic draft picks?

I mean, you have even identified the Muckler era in the same post...

Hmm I guess I should have put the sarcasm emoticon... I thought it was obvious, it was just to joke around because every once in a while, somebody come up with a "Murray drafted Lee" comment and I always find it funny

This is cherry-picking a stat, though. Since 2005, Colorado has had a first overall pick, a second overall pick and a third overall pick. Pretty hard to screw those up. Comparatively, the Sens' three highest picks in that time frame are 6, 9 and 9 – the latter two of which were spent on defencemen. Can't rank the quality of a defensive defenceman by the amount of points scored (not that I'm defending Cowen or Lee – they couldn't defend themselves, let alone a defensive zone.) But basing your assessment of drafting prowess by virtue of points per player drafted seems a bit flawed, in my eyes.

That said, I do agree with the second part of your argument. A few guys we've drafted probably wouldn't see ice time on other teams.

That would be fun to make a list of BPA drafted by the Sens, with polls. Like a Re-draft since 2008

Karlsson would be first, Stone would probably be 2nd.

I am going to try that

 

[BonkTastic]

Hmm I guess I should have put the sarcasm emoticon... I thought it was obvious

This is HFSens.

Much crazier things have been posted in the past in full honesty.

 

[Xspyrit]

lol I know it's confusing at times, so many people

 

[Frank8]

The first part of your argument I agree with. The second part is what I'm trying very hard to dispel.

We currently have one superstar and two impact players on our roster whom we've drafted in the last 10 years. It's not enough.

We're a middling team, never placing low enough to get into the top five or good enough to win anything. Some of that is circumstance - we don't have a lot of money to spend, Ottawa may not be the ideal location for free agents, etc. Some of it is fluke - Andrew Hammond. But a lot if it is our management making questionable choices - the coaching carousel, not tanking when we should, going for it when we shouldn't, letting star players walk for nothing, trading assets for players we don't need (You want your top 10 pick? See if you can get the one from 2014 back) and giving up on good players and the years it took grooming them so that they can be turned into throwaway picks at the draft.

This causes some to become overly negative but most go the other way by refusing to see it and invent feel good narratives in lieu of having a winning team. We separate the men from the boys? Props for grabbing Stone and Hoffman - whom we've subsequently mishandled the ***** out of. But you know who else grabs good players late, or lucks in on undrafted players, or brings over a sublime Russian? Pretty much everybody else. Yay! We got Pageau in the 4th! Pretty sure Calgary feel better about Gaudreau a few picks later. Pretty sure Tampa feels good about Palat a few rounds later, or signing the undrafted Johnson.

Holding on to this notion that we're great at finding diamonds in the rough when in reality, we're about as lucky as everyone else, isn't going to turn this team into a winner. One way or another we need to draft better players and we need to stop mishandling assets, because if we continue to be "just good enough" we're not going anywhere.

 

[trentmccleary]

This causes some to become overly negative but most go the other way by refusing to see it and invent feel good narratives in lieu of having a winning team. We separate the men from the boys? Props for grabbing Stone and Hoffman - whom we've subsequently mishandled the ***** out of. But you know who else grabs good players late, or lucks in on undrafted players, or brings over a sublime Russian? Pretty much everybody else. Yay! We got Pageau in the 4th! Pretty sure Calgary feel better about Gaudreau a few picks later. Pretty sure Tampa feels good about Palat a few rounds later, or signing the undrafted Johnson.

Why are you darting all over the place here? Do you expect Ottawa to out-draft all 30 teams combined by picking the best player in every single round?

Maybe you should focus on a couple of teams that you think do better than Ottawa and research it yourself.

Holding on to this notion that we're great at finding diamonds in the rough when in reality, we're about as lucky as everyone else, isn't going to turn this team into a winner. One way or another we need to draft better players and we need to stop mishandling assets, because if we continue to be "just good enough" we're not going anywhere.

St. Louis is right beside us on the graph in terms of pick average (degree of difficulty for scouts). St. Louis finished ahead of us GP (3rd) and Pts (4th). I haven't looked at any other teams yet, only St.Louis. The Murray group has been drafting since 2008. From 2008 to 2012, these teams have drafted:

9 Top-50 Picks: 6, 9, 15, 15, 21, 24, 39, 42, 46
Hoffman – Zibanejad – Stone
Z.Smith – Pageau – Silfverberg


Karlsson
Ceci
Wiercioch – Borowiecki
Cowen – Wideman

Lehner

12 Top-50 picks: 4, 14, 16, 17, 25, 32, 33, 34, 41, 44, 46, 48
Schwartz - - Tarasenko
Lehtera
Jaskin

Pietrangelo
Parayko
Edmundson - Rundblad

Allen


St. Louis had more, higher picks and wound up with less talent across the board.

 

[Micklebot]

Ok, so here's the problem with evaluating drafting by teams:

Teams change scouts, and GMs, which can heavily impact drafting effectiveness.

Muckler's regime was pretty terrible. When he left, the farm was barren, because not only did he trade off any assets we did draft, he drafted poorly (the pick Russians who fell due to the KHL threat was a defensible strategy but it failed).

Murray came in, and the farm system went from abysmal to ranked in the top 5 by many sources after the 2011 draft. So, it's those first 4 draft years (I've opted not to count the 2007 draft as part of Murray's regime, add a year if you want) that really built up Murray, and the Sens' reputation as a strong drafting regime (Sens also were know as strong drafters prior to Muckler).

Since 2011 though, we've seen some lean years. 2012 was a poor year with Ceci meeting expectations, (and had Wikstrand opted to play in NA, you could probably add him) but only Driedger remaining with any hope of an NHL career. I liked the Maidens pick at the time, as we could take that kind of risk with a strong farm system, but it didn't pan out.

2013's draft could go either way; Lazar, while not a bust, was certainly not the best available option, now that we have the benefit of hindsight, but he also wasn't the worst option. After that, Lindberg looks promising, Hogberg could still pan out, and Harpur could have a bottom pair future ahead of him and cement 2013 as a solid but not spectacular draft for us. As it stands, a bit of a disappointment, but hardly terrible.

2014 could go either way. Without a 1st round pick, it needs to be evaluated a bit differently. Englund and Perron could become solid NHL players and we could see surprises bloom late, but expectations need to be tempered as every pick made should be viewed as a project that takes 2-3+ seasons before we know what we have.

2015 looks like a homerun with Chabot and White both exceeding expectations thus far. Gagne and Chlapik will take a couple years before we can chalk them up as write offs or draft wins. Everyone else is a long term project.

 

[Sun God Nika]

found this gem
http://thehockeywriters.com/mike-hoffman-the-hot-streak-is-a-mirage/

 

[Hutz]

Not sure of the pedigree since I don't know the site, but The Draft Analyst strongly disagrees with The Score's sentiment: A-

http://www.thedraftanalyst.com/nhl-draft-2016/report-cards/

 

[Boud]

I don't think we had a particularly strong draft personally.

Not a big fan of the Brown pick, but you have to acknowledge the potential. Not that it is a bad pick, it's really hard to make a BAD pick at that point in the draft, personally I would've liked McLoed or Bean better and especially Sergachev (Who was obviously gone by then) but I know I'm one of the few with that opinion and besides it's hard to pass on Brown. One thing that I do like with this pick is that the Sens went with a bit of a gamble in Brown that could pay big compared to other picks out of the top 10. I think we already have safer prospects so taking a shot a Brown is a gamble we're able to take at this point.

LOVE the Dahlen pick, picked him up in a mock draft at 38 and I was surprised to see him get to 42. A guy that improved dramatically over the year (and so did Brown), he's also a bit of a gamble but his talent, agility and evasiveness will help him succeed in the NHL in a top 6 role down the road. I didn't think we'd draft a guy like Dahlen but I'm really happy to get him at 42. If he was a bit bigger he was a 1rt rounder without a doubt.

Burgess was a little out of nowhere. He's had good numbers for sure but he plays in the NAHL and is an overager. We tend to draft overagers and do quite well though, so I'll reserve my judgement. Other overagers like Hoffman, Dzingel, Wideman and recently Wolanin turned out pretty well (although they weren't playing in the NAHL). I'm just surprised we picked him over guys like Gregor, Stallard and Koivula that I really liked.

Would've also really like Aapeli Rasanen.

Lajoie is an alright pick, could be useful player down the road.

I'm not familiar with Nurmi, so I won't comment on him...

Some good picks towards the end too like Ronning, Sokolov a good gamble, Tyler Soy and Sompi.

I think we did real good with Dahlen, the rest is meh to average but of course that's MY opinion. This draft was top heavy, the rest was pretty weak compared to previous drafts. I don't think this one will go down as a good draft from 20 on.

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

Not sure of the pedigree since I don't know the site, but The Draft Analyst strongly disagrees with The Score's sentiment: A-

http://www.thedraftanalyst.com/nhl-draft-2016/report-cards/

...ick. I have no idea who that author is, but that writing style makes me want to punch him in the mouth.


Overall, I'm with Boud. I feel lukewarm on this draft. Brown and Dahlen both look like they could turn into something. Lajoie might have potential down the road. The rest I'm not even bothering with. Not liking the idea of picking overagers from an inferior league, either. Doesn't feel like 2016 had much int he way of depth.

 

[SanderSen]

Over the last few years the Sens have been awash in solid "3rd round" type players and prospects. There is no organizational need to fill out the ranks with more of these type of players. The need is to try to get, even at a modest cost, a player with a legit shot at being a top tier, 1st line, prospect and for the Sens a centre is even more important.

The articles originating out of Toronto are from folks who do not follow the Sens or know the organizational priorities. If you want to argue the Sens "lost" the draft argue that Brown is not a legit top end prospect, not the 3rd rounder.

 

[Ice-Tray]

3rd line NHLers return NHL assets.

 

[Boud]

Over the last few years the Sens have been awash in solid "3rd round" type players and prospects. There is no organizational need to fill out the ranks with more of these type of players. The need is to try to get, even at a modest cost, a player with a legit shot at being a top tier, 1st line, prospect and for the Sens a centre is even more important.

The articles originating out of Toronto are from folks who do not follow the Sens or know the organizational priorities. If you want to argue the Sens "lost" the draft argue that Brown is not a legit top end prospect, not the 3rd rounder.

Fortunately, this is not how the hockey world works.

I don't think you are very familiar with the draft, especially not the players selected in later rounds based on your comment. OBVIOUSLY, a player drafted in the first round will have legitimate talent, especially a player drafted in the top 15. There isn't one player in that range this year that doesn't have a legitimate shot at being a top tier player, all of them do, and that's why they are selected this early in the draft. This stuff goes without saying to be quite honest. Based on your logic, every team in the top 15 would've ''won'' the draft and that simply isn't the case because the goal of every single team in the draft should be to maximize their assets rather than saying ''you know what, we got Brown in the 1rst round and he has talent, who cares about the rest''.

Where would we be without Stone and Hoffman? 5th and 6th rounders. The goal is to get good players every round, not only in the first rounds and this is where the Sens made some less than ideal picks this year. Of course we won't know how these players will ultimately develop, but right out of the gate, you can always assess a draft and have a good general idea of how well a team drafted.

If the Sens wanted to go for guys who have a legit shot of being top tier players, and YES, there are some of these guys in later rounds whether they are more inconsistent, or the fact that they are smaller, they wouldn't have went and drafted guys like Nurmi and Burgess in particular. The best example here is a guy like Dmitry Sokolov, extremely talented, was scheduled as a 1rst rounder at the beginning of the year and was selected in the 7th round. Every year we see players like this in every late round fall who have at the very least some indications that they could become great players down the road. Last year we can also think about a guy like Timashov... The spot where a player is drafted isn't necessarily indicative of how talented he is, or how high the ceiling of that player is (when you get out of the first round). Besides, like the last poster stated, even 3rd line and 4rth line players turn into assets. Do not forget that we are a cap team, getting a guy like Nick Paul for example who was a 4rth rounder to play on our roster will save us some money versus signing a guy via free agency that will provide the same value on the ice at higher salary.

Our best pick this year was Dahlen IMO, whoever we picked at 11 would've been a good player whether it was Brown, or McLoed or Bean (both of which I prefer to Brown personally). That being said, I understand that the Sens went with the guy who has ''higher upside'' (this term is extremely general and based on things that aren't related to the success of a hockey player, per example: size) and I like the pick for that although upside is a general term again. Dahlen pick was great, Lajoie was average pick but the rest was questionable at best.

I have nothing against the Sens draft this year, I don't think they did very well, but the draft just wasn't strong either. We have the best scouting staff in the NHL arguably, and they made some picks in the past that looked fishy and turned out great but right out of the gate it's easy to understand why people aren't so high on our draft this year. Some other teams did extremely well compared to us in later rounds.

 

[Ice-Tray]

Fortunately, this is not how the hockey world works.

I don't think you are very familiar with the draft, especially not the players selected in later rounds based on your comment. OBVIOUSLY, a player drafted in the first round will have legitimate talent, especially a player drafted in the top 15. There isn't one player in that range this year that doesn't have a legitimate shot at being a top tier player, all of them do, and that's why they are selected this early in the draft. This stuff goes without saying to be quite honest. Based on your logic, every team in the top 15 would've ''won'' the draft and that simply isn't the case because the goal of every single team in the draft should be to maximize their assets rather than saying ''you know what, we got Brown in the 1rst round and he has talent, who cares about the rest''.

Where would we be without Stone and Hoffman? 5th and 6th rounders. The goal is to get good players every round, not only in the first rounds and this is where the Sens made some less than ideal picks this year. Of course we won't know how these players will ultimately develop, but right out of the gate, you can always assess a draft and have a good general idea of how well a team drafted.

If the Sens wanted to go for guys who have a legit shot of being top tier players, and YES, there are some of these guys in later rounds whether they are more inconsistent, or the fact that they are smaller, they wouldn't have went and drafted guys like Nurmi and Burgess in particular. The best example here is a guy like Dmitry Sokolov, extremely talented, was scheduled as a 1rst rounder at the beginning of the year and was selected in the 7th round. Every year we see players like this in every late round fall who have at the very least some indications that they could become great players down the road. Last year we can also think about a guy like Timashov... The spot where a player is drafted isn't necessarily indicative of how talented he is, or how high the ceiling of that player is (when you get out of the first round). Besides, like the last poster stated, even 3rd line and 4rth line players turn into assets. Do not forget that we are a cap team, getting a guy like Nick Paul for example who was a 4rth rounder to play on our roster will save us some money versus signing a guy via free agency that will provide the same value on the ice at higher salary.

Our best pick this year was Dahlen IMO, whoever we picked at 11 would've been a good player whether it was Brown, or McLoed or Bean (both of which I prefer to Brown personally). That being said, I understand that the Sens went with the guy who has ''higher upside'' (this term is extremely general and based on things that aren't related to the success of a hockey player, per example: size) and I like the pick for that although upside is a general term again. Dahlen pick was great, Lajoie was average pick but the rest was questionable at best.

I have nothing against the Sens draft this year, I don't think they did very well, but the draft just wasn't strong either. We have the best scouting staff in the NHL arguably, and they made some picks in the past that looked fishy and turned out great but right out of the gate it's easy to understand why people aren't so high on our draft this year. Some other teams did extremely well compared to us in later rounds.

I appreciate your post, and understand that you're not impressed at the outset, but you have to see the irony of this last line.

There is literally zero information to use to pass this judgement, and much available to hold judgement such as, like you mentioned, the past history of our scouting team.

Nobody has done extremely well in the later rounds at all at this point. In two years from now we can come back and revisit this and have at least a shred of evidence to back it up. There is literally NO winners in late round drafting a few days after the draft until you can apply some of that tasty hindsight.

I guess this is a gut feeling that you have, and I can respect that.