Visualizing the last 18 years of NHL Drafts (2003-2020)

DS7

Registered User
Oct 9, 2013
1,927
2,329
Vancouver, BC
Hi everyone,

With the NHL draft all done and dusted, now is a good time to reflect on how our teams have done historically at the draft!

This is a continuation of the first time I did this in 2017. Back then I looked at every draft from 2003 to 2017 and tried to determine how each team can measure their success and get some insights into their draft classes. This is data updated to reflect 2003 to 2020 drafts, while the points are updated to the end of the 2020-2021 season.

Tableau Link is here

Source: Hockey DB Drafts
How to Read the Data:

Top Left
- Represents the amount of NHL players your team has produced per round (red = elite / blue = regular) hovering over each pick can produce their name and career PPG and # of GP

Top Right - Your team's picks by position (D, C, RW, LW, G) and brief summary of your team's hit rate of players

Bottom Left - A visualization of your team's GMs during that time and the picks they've had in the draft and highlighted dots are the picks that turned into NHL players (by my arbitrary definition) you are welcome to change the min. NHL games played to higher than 56 games if you want to be more strict.

Bottom Right - The leagues your team prefers to draft from and where you found players from!

upload_2021-7-26_16-56-30.png

- This is an evaluation of purely drafting, not asset management. Players are marked as belonging to the team than originally drafted them. So for instance, in my team's case, Benning/Vancouver still gets the benefit of drafting Gustav Forsling even though he traded him away.

- Player production is regular season only, up to the end of the 2021 season.

- Recency Bias - Drafts that are more recent will have less elite/regular players due to the passage of time obviously.

- GM Tenures - I went through every team's GM history during this time and tried my best to keep track of GM tenures to accurately portray who was at the team's draft table at the time of the draft. (i.e Jeff Gorton is credited with the 2006 draft for Boston). I apologize if I have made any mistakes with your team, please feel free to let me know and i can correct it!

- Some arbitrary definitions here, I tweaked around with the numbers and found that this is perhaps the sweet spot. Some players may be represented that you feel should belong, and vice versa but this is my approximation. Any feedback is welcome.

Elite Player = Forwards who have scored career >0.5 PPG, Defensemen who have scored career >0.4 PPG, Goalies who have had 70+ starts (even backups can be considered 'elite' when looking at the pool of goalies who succeed

Roster/Regular Player = Forwards who have met a 56 game threshold (can be adjusted). There will be examples of players who met this threshold and are not regular NHL players, but i thought this was a good compromise considering the recency bias (and to capture some breakout players like Nils Hoglander for instance)


I've also included three other slides to analyze a few other aspects of the league.

Teams that have produced the most players via the draft (my Vancouver fan is dying)
upload_2021-7-26_16-56-42.png

Which Developmental Teams/Programs have had the most elite/regular NHL players drafted
upload_2021-7-26_16-56-51.png

Which GMs have drafted the most NHL regulars
upload_2021-7-26_16-57-1.png


As well as which teams have been the best at drafting players at the elite position since 2003
upload_2021-7-26_16-57-23.png
 

Bear of Bad News

Your Third or Fourth Favorite HFBoards Admin
Sep 27, 2005
13,515
26,997
need your definition of elite players

Quoting from the only other post in the thread:

"Elite Player =
Forwards who have scored career >0.5 PPG, Defensemen who have scored career >0.4 PPG, Goalies who have had 70+ starts (even backups can be considered 'elite' when looking at the pool of goalies who succeed"
 

ottawa

Avatar of the Year*
Nov 7, 2012
33,737
10,300
Orléans/Toronto
Quoting from the only other post in the thread:

"Elite Player =
Forwards who have scored career >0.5 PPG, Defensemen who have scored career >0.4 PPG, Goalies who have had 70+ starts (even backups can be considered 'elite' when looking at the pool of goalies who succeed"

Not really sure I agree with that definition of "elite"...is there a minimum game requirement?

Looking at the habs, I feel like we should be in the bottom 3 but idk enough about how other teams have performed in comparison, I just know we suck.
 

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