likelihood of draft success

[flyingnote38]

This statement in Pensburg's criticism of their recent drafts -- "We’ve been discussing Rounds 2-7 of the Entry Draft in this post. Statistically, only about 12% of players selected in those rounds go on to play 200 games or more in the NHL, so the odds aren’t good" -- got me thinking. Lumping rounds 2-7 together doesn't make much sense, but there should be a way of calculating probability of a successful pick by round.

Using games played isn't a great measuring stick but it is easily available at Hockeydb and avoids having to make subjective decisions on players.

I started with 2007 and worked back to 1999 looking at 500, 200, 100 and any games played breaking it down by 1st half of round 1, 2nd half of round 1, 1st half of round 2, 2nd half of round 2, then by round for the rest of the draft. For goalies I used half as many games as skaters.

I quickly realized that 500 was too high a bar for drafts more recent than 2003, but felt that 200 was too low a bar for drafts earlier than that. So I went with two data sets.

The composite of 1999 to 2003 (5 drafts) standard being 500 games played (250 for goalies)
first half of round 1........40players.......75 draftees....... 53%
second half of round 1......... 24 players........ 73 draftees........ 33%
first half of round 2........ 11 players........ 75 draftees........ 14.7%
second half of round 2........ 19 players........ 97 draftees........ 19.6%
round 3...................... 13 players........ 157 draftees........ 8.3%
round 4...................... 8 players........ 168 draftees........ 4.8%
round 5...................... 6 players ........ 167 draftees........ 3.6%
round 6...................... 6 players ........ 153 draftees ........ 3.9%
round 7...................... 12 players ......... 156 draftees........ 7.7%

for 200 games the percentages are 71%, 63%, 30.7%, 26.8%, 17.2%, 9.5%, 9.6%, 11% and 10.3%.


The composite of 2004-2006 (3 years) 200 games played or 100 games for goalie

first half of round 1........ 32 players........ 45 draftees...... 71%
second half of round 1........ 23 players........ 45 draftees...... 51%
first half of round 2........ 12 players........ 45 draftees...... 27%
second half of round 2........ 13 players........ 54 draftees...... 24%
round 3..................... 16 players....... 93 draftees...... 17%
round 4.............. ....... 14 players....... 95 draftees...... 15%
round 5, 6, 7................ 25 players...... 275 draftees...... 9%

First minor point, by and large, the 200 game thresholds were pretty similar in both groups. So this represents at a bare minimum a guy who is depth/journeyman caliber.
Ok to get in the later rounds but not a guy you want in the top half of the first.

So focusing on the earlier data set and the 500 threshold (this represents at a minimum a player who dressed for most games or a goalie who played in about half the games over a 7 year span)

a few obvious trends.
1)the draft position in round two is not a big factor and round 2 can be considered as a whole rather than two parts.
2)the likelihood of success nearly halves each step down the table until around round 4 when it becomes basically tossing darts at a board for the rest of the picks. In the top half of round one
the player will hit 500 games roughing 1/2 the time, for the second half 1/3, round two 1/5, round three 1/11 and from 4 on 1/25.

Starting with 1 pick per round and a late round draft position, on average a team should land about 4 500 games players in 5 drafts.
Dealing three of your first round picks in that time frame knocks it down to 3. So not the end of the world and somewhat intuitive as each of these picks hits about 33% of the time, so you were likely to land one player with those three picks.

What about trading later round picks for players? Looking at round 4 for instance, you only have a 5% chance of getting a 500 gp and just a 15% shot at a 200 gp. Dealing a 4th for a player
who will be in your lineup for even two seasons looks to be a solid move based on these percentages.

what about trading up in the draft? does it make sense to trade a 3rd and 2 4ths for 2nd? Kind of? the likelihood of getting a 500 gp is about the same, but the likelihood of a 200 gp is nearly halved. Trading up after round 3 doesn't seem to make sense. In fact trading down from 4 on out if you get extra picks is the right move.

What about a late round first and a second for the first half of the first? No but a late round 1st and a 3rd for a top half 1st looks like an ok move.

[flyingnote38]

28 players who remained Blues property at the end of the season made appearances for the Blues this season. Adding in the departed Halak and the soon to arrive Allen gives us 30.

Just over two thirds of those 30 players were drafted in the first or second rounds: 14 in the first, 7 in the second.

The rest: 1 4th, 2 5th, 1 6th, 4 9th and 1 undrafted (Aucoin)

By odd coincidence 3 of the 9th rounders were drafted in the same round (in 2003): Halak 271st overall, Elliot 291st and Porter 282nd. Too bad we didn't add a
4th player from that round, Matt Moulson, at the deadline.

The Hockey News invented a concept of age of "debut NHL season" in an article about a decade ago to discuss relative roster strengths based on average age of debut.
The debut NHL season was defined as the first season that the player was on the NHL roster for at least half of the season. Their general idea being the younger the player
at debut, the better the player. And by extension, the lower the average age of debut for a team, the better the team.

I tweaked this to the number of seasons post draft to debut instead of age and using dressing for at least half the games in a season to define debut. Looking at those 30 Blues,
this is how the seasons after draft the player "debuted" is distributed.

0 - Bouwmeester (drafted in 2002 and played in all 82 games of the 2002-3 season)
1 - Paajarvi
2 - Schwartz, Tarasenko, Pietrangelo, Roy, Sobotka, Berglund, Morrow
3 - Steen, Oshie, Backes, Shattenkirk, Jackman, Lapierre, Leopold, Ott
4 - Polak
5 - Colaiacovo, Halak, Elliot
6 - Cole, Reaves, Miller
7 - Porter
15 - Aucoin (undrafted but 1997 appears to have been his draft year and he debuted with 41 games for the Isles in 2012-3 season)

Not there yet - Allen 5, Jaskin 2, Rattie 2, Cracknell 9 and counting

This looks in general to support our premise that the quicker the player becomes a regular in the NHL, the better that player is.

A few things stand out.

Didn't expect to see Paajarvi there did ya?

Seemingly goaltending doesn't fit the same frame work, but it is a small sample size and all three of Halak, Elliot and Miller were later round picks.

Of the players debuting at 3 or fewer seasons, 12 were first round picks and 4 were seconds. Only Sobotka of that group was drafted lower(4th)