Which Service did Best!

[ISS Hockey]

I don't get why everyone says that. It usually takes twice as long, if you ask me. Defencemen and goalies are only 23 by then, just starting their NHL careers for the most part.

You can also look at Mikko Koivu, who only recently started to justify being picked where he was.

I said five years for those who think you can truly evaluate a draft after two years. I should have said at least five years.

We agree. Obviously, the best way to assess a draft is after all the players have retired and you can compare who had the best careers. However, most people are not willing to wait that long. I think that after five years, you can get a pretty good read on a prospect to see if he's going to make an impact at the NHL level -- if he already hasn't started to make an impact.

 

[ISS Hockey]

Do we have the ISS and CSS rankings from the late 90s?

THose would be fun to look at.

Alas, no. ISS published its first report in October 2002. Our first draft ranking for the super-deep 2003 draft was published in June 2003. We took a look back and provided our rankings for that draft in our NHL Draft Guide this year.

 

[ISS Hockey]

I actually did the math


HF Staff got .0666% correct in the first round (2/30)
TSN got .0333% correct in the first round (1/30)
Redline got .1333% correct in the first round (4/30)
ESPN got .1000% correct in the first round (3/30)

Here's the ISS ranking of the first round with mock draft prediction in parentheses. After the player's name, I list where the player was taken. You folks be the judge, but please keep in mind, our ranking is our opinion of a player, not a prediction of how high he'll be drafted. Our mock draft does that.

ISS Rank, Mock Draft prediction, Player name, spot selected

1. (1) Pat Kane, 1
2. (3) James vanRiemsdyk, 2
3. (2) Kyle Turris, 3
4. (4) Alexei Cherepanov, 17
5. (8) Jakub Voracek, 7
6. (5) Karl Alzner, 5
7. (6) Sam Gagner, 6
8. (12) Maxim Mayorov, 94
9. (7) Keaton Ellerby, 10
10. (14) Mikael Backlund, 24
11. (15) Angelo Esposito, 20
12. (13) Colton Gillies, 16
13. (11) Logan Couture, 9
14. (10) Nick Petrecki, 28
15. (21) David Perron, 26
16. (17) Zach Hamill, 8
17. (22) Thomas Hickey, 4
18. (24) Lars Eller, 13
19. (20) Ryan McDonagh, 12
20. (16) John Blum, 23
21. (9) Brett MacLean, 32
22. (27) Jim O’Brien, 29
23. (--) Pat White, 25
24. (--) Logan MacMillan, 19
25. (28) Oscar Moller, 52
26. (25) Michal Repik, 40
27. (23) Kevin Shattenkirk, 14
28. (18) Alex Plante, 15
29. (26) Tommy Cross, 35
30. (30) Brandon Sutter, 11

Based on the criteria that was used by the above poster, you have to have it exactly right to make it count. Our rankings matched three of the picks (the top three); in our mock draft (which we don't spend nearly as much time on as our rankings) we predicted three of the first round exactly right.

Really, I think to get a more accurate assessment of a draft prediction, you should not measure how many picks are exactly right. As Jaded Fan suggested, you should measure how far off you are from the actual selection, then divide the sum of those misses by 30 (if you're evaluating a first-round prediction). I don't say this because we would do better -- I don't know because I didn't take the time to see how we or the the various services did -- I just think it would be a better way to assess the prediction.

But, as Bob MacKenzie said, if you want to evaluate our rankings, do it 10 years from now after these players have played in the NHL and compared what kind of careers they have. We're not really in the business of predicting where players will go, we're in the business of forming an opinion of where a player should go and selling that opinion. Some teams buy it, some teams don't and the teams that do, certainly don't treat us as gospel. They all have their own scouts and we're a second opinion.

 

[ISS Hockey]

I must say, as someone who normally doesn't have much faith in Redline's assessments, their success at predicting the falls of Cherepanov, Sweatt and Owuya impressed me.

This is not a comment on our colleagues at Red Line, but we, too, predicted "the fall" of Bill Sweatt.

All year, many on this board gave us a fair bit of heat because we did not have Sweatt ranked in the first round. In our final ranking, we had him pegged #32 and he was picked #38. I'm not sure where Mr. Woodlief had him ranked, but I think I read somewhere on this board that his final ranking pegged Sweatt at #61.

So, I'm not sure where the notion of a "fall" comes into play. I think some people overrated him because of his skating, which is excellent. Our concern, and we were not alone, was that he didn't have the hands to be a top-line finisher. We compared him to Mike Fisher in our Draft Guide, I've also heard comparisons to Todd Marchant. If he turns out to be this good, Chicago will be very happy with getting him at #38.

We do not see this as a vindication of our opinion. He could turn out to be better and for Sweatt's sake, I hope we're wrong. We don't wish ill for any prospect. But time will tell if we were right or wrong on Sweatt, not the spot he was drafted.

 

[blackpilot]

Redline was on the mark with Ian Cole. Woodlief even predicted correctly the team that took him, the St. Louis Blues. RL kept saying this kid was the real deal. People thought Hickey was a surprise but at least he was ranked in the top 30 plus by most. ISS, and Hockey News didn't even have Cole in their top 100.

 

[ISS Hockey]

Redline was on the mark with Ian Cole. Woodlief even predicted correctly the team that took him, the St. Louis Blues. RL kept saying this kid was the real deal. People thought Hickey was a surprise but at least he was ranked in the top 30 plus by most. ISS, and Hockey News didn't even have Cole in their top 100.

We had Ian Cole ranked #57.