NHL Draft Hits And Misses - Columbus Blue Jackets

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 Columbus Blue Jackets, and their track record since the year 2000.

FIRST ROUND SUCCESS:

The Blue Jackets have selected 15 players in the first round, with 10 of them making some impact in the NHL, for a success rate of 67%.

SECOND ROUND SUCCESS:

In the second round, 4 of the 14 players they selected have gone on to play a significant amount of time, resulting in a 29% success rate.

HOME-DRAFTED TALENT:

The Blue Jackets had 10 Columbus-drafted players play games with them this past season.

SUCCESSES – The Blue Jackets haven’t been good and it has resulted in early draft picks almost every year. They have turned those into Rick Nash, Ryan Murray, Ryan Johnasen, Derick Brassard and Jakub Voracek.

FAILURES – They also drafted Nikita Filatov and Alexandre Picard very high in the draft.

STEALS – The Blue Jackets nabbed a young Marc Methot with the 168th pick in the 2003 draft. Derek Dorsett was the Blue Jackets’ 189th pick in 2006. Their biggest steal might have been Grant Clitsome, draft 271st in 2004