NHL Draft Hits and Misses

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 Dallas Stars, and their track record since the year 2000.

FIRST ROUND SUCCESS:

The Stars have selected 12 players in the first round, with 4 of them making some impact in the NHL, for a success rate of 33.3%.

SECOND ROUND SUCCESS:

In the second round, 7 of the 22 players they selected have gone on to play a significant amount of time, resulting in a 32% success rate.

HOME-DRAFTED TALENT:

The Stars had 8 Dallas-drafted players play games with them this past season.

SUCCESSES – The Stars had a lull in the mid-2000’s, but early on Steve Ott and Matt Niskanen were good first round picks, with Loui Eriksson being a nice pickup in the second round. Recently they seem to have built a solid future, with Jack Campbell, Jamie Oleksiak and Valeri Nichushkin promising prospects but with the exception of Nichushkin not NHLers quite yet.

FAILURES – Scott Glennie was an 8th overall pick in 2009, and is approaching bust status with just 1 NHL game played. Ivan Vishnevskiy (2006) and Martin Vagner (2002) were late first round picks that didn’t pan out. Vishnevskiy played just 5 NHL games and Vagner (a former Hull Olympiques winger) never played a game.

STEALS –Jussi Jokinen was the 192nd pick in 2001, and didn’t make his presence known in the NHL until after the 2005-06 lockout. He came in as primarily a shootout specialist, but has developed into a reliable player in a supporting role in Carolina and now Pittsburgh. Jamie Benn would have to be considered a steal at 129 in 2007, and has become a top flight NHLer.