NHL Draft Hits And Misses - Philadelphia Flyers

With this past weekend’s draft in mind, I have been and will continue to look at each team in the NHL, and see how they have performed at the NHL draft over the past 15 years. 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 Philadelphia Flyers, and their track record since the year 2000.

FIRST ROUND SUCCESS:

The Flyers have selected 12 players in the first round of the draft, with 10 of them making some impact in the NHL, for a success rate of 83%.

SECOND ROUND SUCCESS:

In the second round, 1 of the 6 players they selected have gone on to play a significant amount of time, resulting in a 17% success rate.

HOME-DRAFTED TALENT:

The Flyers had 6 Philadelphia-drafted players play games with them this past season.

SUCCESSES – The Flyers are responsible for drafting a large portion of the Los Angeles Kings’ 2-time Stanley Cup winning core. Justin Williams, Jeff Carter and Mike Richards were all first round picks of Philadelphia who ended up in LA. More recently, Claude Giroux and James Van Riemsdyk are gems, but the Flyers don’t tend to keep their players in the system.

FAILURES – The Flyers have been very good with thier first round picks, and every one they made before 2012 has gone on to play significant time and are still playing now. There is still plenty of time for Scott Laughton and Samuel Morin, the two most recent first rounders, to make an impact.

STEALS – Dennis Seidenberg and Zac Rinaldo were both 6th round picks in 2001 and 2008 respectively. That is about the extent of their late-round success stories.