NHL Draft Hits And Misses - Colorado Avalanche

Over the next couple of weeks I will look at each team in the NHL, and see how they have performed at the NHL draft. There are basically 3 really important areas to determine the level of success at one of the most inexact sciences in the game – selecting 17 and 18 year old kids and projecting what they will be like over the next 10 or 15 years.

Those three areas are: 1) Success in the first round; 2) Success in the second round and 3) The number of drafted players playing on a team’s roster. I limit it to the first 2 rounds because that is where a majority of the impact players come from, and also where mistakes in judgement are magnified. Players that come after the second round for the most part are fortunate picks and if they work out it is a bonus. Henrik Zetterberg, for example, was a 7th round pick, and although you could claim Detroit was skilled in unearthing a prospect at that point in the draft, if they had known he was going to be as good as he turned out to be, they wouldn’t have waited that long. There is as much good luck as good management for a player like that, and that is factored in in the 3rd area of success.

Now we turn our attention to the Colorado Avalanche, and their track record since the year 2000.

FIRST ROUND SUCCESS:

The Avalanche have selected 10 players in the first round, with 6 of them making some impact in the NHL, for a success rate of 60%.

SECOND ROUND SUCCESS:

In the second round, 5 of the 23 players they selected have gone on to play a significant amount of time, resulting in a 22% success rate.

HOME-DRAFTED TALENT:

The Hawks had 11 Chicago-drafted players play games with them this past season.

SUCCESSES – Recently the Avs had a lot of success in early picks, with Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog and Matt Duchene all panning out as young players. .

FAILURES – The Avs drafted Jonas Johansson in the first round of the 2002 draft, but the winger played just 1 NHL game (for the Washington Capitals)

STEALS – The Avs nabbed David Jones with the 288th pick in 2003, Marek Svatos at 227 in 2001.