NHL Draft Hits And Misses - San Jose Sharks

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 San Jose Sharks and their track record since the year 2000.

FIRST ROUND SUCCESS:

The Sharks have selected 12 players in the first round of the draft, with 7 of them making some impact in the NHL, for a success rate of 58%.

SECOND ROUND SUCCESS:

In the second round, 4 of the 11 players they selected have gone on to play a significant amount of time, resulting in a 36% success rate.

HOME-DRAFTED TALENT:

The Sharkss had 14 San Jose-drafted players play games with them this past season.

SUCCESSES – The Sharks haven’t had overwhelming success, but have nabbed the likes of Logan Couture, Milan Michalek, Devin Setoguchi, Tomas Hertl and Marcel Goc in the first round.

FAILURES – 2002 first round Mike Morris never saw the NHL, while Lukas Kaspar fizzled as did Ty Wishart, who were Sharks first rounders in 2004 and 2006 respectively.

STEALS – The Sharks have had some unreal success in the later rounds. Ryane Clowe (175th in 2001), Joe Pavelski (205th in 2003) were steals. Then in 2007, the Sharks nabbed 3 NHLers in the late rounds, with Nick Bonino (173rd), Justin Braun (201st) and Frazer MacLaren (203rd) and followed that up the next year by finding Tommy Wingels (177th) and Jason Demers (186th).