Srperate but another good point... ive looked at draft results and finding number 1 dmen in the top 15 picks is rather risky compared to finding top forwards.
If i ran a team... the dman in question would need to be a monster of a prospects before i gamble a high first on him
Too often these dmen drafted high turn out to be joni pikkanen, or mike komaserek, or ryan whitney, or even jay bouwmeister. I mean... quite decent players... but not your ideal franchise guy... and honestly not tons better than many on my origional list
Finding that elite number 1 dman is very very hard... but thats mostly because there arent many of them around.
You can't find legitimate franchise centerman outside the top 10 of the draft with any sort of frequency. The only four guys who have achieved that and are still high-level players are Bergeron, Giroux, Kopitar and Getzlaf. Two of those guys were drafted almost 15 years ago, in arguably the deepest draft in hockey history and the other 2 over a decade ago (with Kopitar missing the top 10 by 1 pick). Barzal might be the exception for this generation, possibly William Karlsson also (although that 23% shooting percentage repeatability is questionable). Wingers are similar to D, where elite ones can often be found outside the top 10 (Benn, Gaudreau, Kucherov, etc). Looking at an arbitrary list of the NHL's top 20 centers from NHL.com entering the 2017-18 season, it broke down like this. In brackets is where they were drafted.
1: McDavid (1st 2015)
2: Crosby (1st 2005)
3: Malkin (2nd 2004)
4: Matthews (1st 2016)
5: Backstrom (4th 2006)
6: Tavares (1st 2009)
7: Stamkos (1st 2008)
8: Seguin (2nd 2010)
9: Getzlaf (19th 2003)
10: Scheifele (7th 2011)
11: Bergeron (45th 2003)
12: Toews (3rd 2006)
13: Kopitar (11th 2005)
14: Eichel (2nd 2015)
15: Draisaitl (3rd 2014)
16: Johansen (4th 2010)
17: Barkov (2nd 2013)
18: Carter (11th 2003)
19: Kuznetsov (26th 2010)
20: Monahan (6th 2013)
Now, that list is far from perfect, and there are more guys drafted outside the top 10 than I thought (mostly at the tail end though) and only one guy drafted over 30th overall. Obviously, this list isn't perfect, Nathan MacKinnon a number 1 overall pick would now clearly be in the top 20. But, it gives us a somewhat unbiased look at who the top 20 centers were entering the year. In comparrison, here is NHL.com's top 20 defenders.
1: Karlsson (15th 2008)
2: Burns (20th 2003)
3: Doughty (2nd 2008)
4: Hedman (2nd 2009)
5: Keith (54th 2002)
6: Subban (43rd 2007)
7: Josi (38th 2008)
8: Letang (62nd 2005)
9: Weber (49th 2003)
10: Suter (7th 2003)
11: Ekman-Larsson (6th 2009)
12: Byfuglien (245th 2003, would be undrafted now)
13: Werenski (8th 2015)
14: Pietrangelo (4th 2008)
15: Shattenkirk (14th 2007)
16: Hamilton (9th 2011)
17: McDonagh (12th 2007)
18: Giordano (Undrafted when the draft had 291 picks)
19: Ellis (11th 2009)
20: Cam Fowler (12th 2010)
Again, far from a perfect list, but a decent enough one that you can use it as a proxy for franchise defenders (for example, you can argue Lindholm should be there, but then I could say Slavin should be, etc).
When you compare the 2 lists you get some interesting things. One, the franchise centers list has a total 5 guys who were drafted outside the top 10. 2 of those players were drafted right at 11, and Kuznetsov was viewed as a top 10 prospect who slipt at the height of fears around Russian players staying. We have all of one player over a period that covers 13 drafts (2003-2016) drafted after pick number 20. 11 of the top 20 centers were drafted in the top 3, with a quarter of the list being 1st overall picks. Now, centers get drafted higher on average at the very top, but in general, a bunch of these guys were the first center off the boards in their respective classes (Seguin and Malkin were the first centers off the board in their class). Now, compare the two groups. 5 D on the list were drafted after 45 (where the lowest drafted franchise center was found), 1 guy was undrafted and another was drafted in a round that no longer exists. 7 were found later than the first round, and only 7 were drafted inside the top 10 of the draft.
This reminds me of what I've heard about right-handed prep-pitching prospects, but not quite as extreme, but they have similarities. The first is that teams are much better at identifying who the top centers in the draft are and how they project, whereas D still tends to be hit or miss. In baseball, this has led to the approach you should draft Bats or college arms very early in the draft while taking a shotgun approach outside the first on high-school pitching. Now, I'm not saying teams should ignore someone like Dahlin at the very top, but if you need both positions, gambling on the center is probably the best bet. One, because they seem like a better bet to hit their potential and secondly, your odds of finding a defender, later on, is much higher. I mean, when the only 3 example that were drafted outside the top 15 consist of a guy who slipped due to nationality, and two guys drafted 15 years ago, it is quite telling (although, I fully expect Barzal to be on any updated list, but I'd also expect MacKinnon to push out someone like Carter, which skews it to the very top of the draft even more.
