| QUOTE (Dr. Generosity @ Jun 4 2009, 08:52 AM) |
| As many of you already know, the Islanders have a late first round pick (#26) and two early second round picks, and it's been speculated that some or all of those picks might be dealt to move up in the first round. TSN's Scott Cullen wrote an intriguing article earlier this year that attempts to assess the value of various draft picks, both by round and by position in each round. Admittedly, this is not a scientific study, but it suggests that moving up from #26 even marginally, say to #20 or so, may have a significant impact on the likelihood of getting a bona fide NHL player. The full article is here, but here's the most pertinent part: * * * What is a draft pick worth, anyway? To get a general idea, I decided to go through ten drafts, from 1995 through 2004 (leaving time for the 2004 picks to establish their NHL career) and assigned a numerical value to each of the players selected, using the following guidelines, with some examples: 10 - Generational (Alexander Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin ) 9 - Elite Player (Ilya Kovalchuk, Dany Heatley ) 8 - First Line, Top Pair D (Thomas Vanek, Dion Phaneuf ) 7 - Top Six Forward, Top Four D (Daymond Langkow, Chris Phillips ) 6 - Top Nine Forward, Top Six D (Daniel Cleary, David Legwand ) 5 - NHL Regular (Michael Rupp, Boyd Devereaux ) 4 - Fringe NHLer (Kris Beech, Krystofer Kolanos ) 3 - Very Good Minor Leaguer (Pavel Brendl, Jeff Heerema ) 2 - Minor Leaguer, maybe gets a shot in NHL (Chris Hajt, Daniel Tkaczuk ) 1 - No NHL games (Matt Zultek, Luca Cereda ) Here, then, is the rough breakdown of what a team can expect to get from a draft pick. No. 1 - 5 Average Rating: 6.84 Best: Alexander Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Joe Thornton, Vincent Lecavalier, Dany Heatley, Ilya Kovalchuk. Worst: Alexandre Volchkov, Pavel Brendl. At Least 100 NHL Games (or very likely): 96% No. 6 - 10 Average Rating: 5.02 Best: Shane Doan, Dion Phaneuf, Mikko Koivu, Milan Michalek, Mike Komisarek. Worst: Terry Ryan, Al Montoya, Petr Taticek, Daniel Tkaczuk. At Least 100 NHL Games (or very likely): 74% No. 11 - 15 Average Rating: 4.58 Best: Marian Hossa, Jarome Iginla, Jeff Carter, Dustin Brown, Alexander Semin, Ales Hemsky, Alex Tanguay. Worst: Matt Zultek, Michael Henrich, Scot Kelman, Artem Kryukkov, Jesse Niinimaki, Hugh Jessiman, A.J. Thelen, Teemu Riihijarvi. At Least 100 NHL Games (or very likely): 54% No. 16 - 20 Average Rating: 4.44 Best: Zach Parise, Ryan Getzlaf, Brent Burns, Alexander Frolov, Robyn Regehr, Petr Sykora. Worst: Jens Karlsson, Jakub Koreis, Brad Church. At Least 100 NHL Games (or very likely): 62% No. 21 - 25 Average Rating: 4.96 Best: Mike Richards, Simon Gagne, Daniel Briere, Brad Boyes. Worst: Luca Cereda, Jeff Brown, Craig Hillier, Mikhail Kuleshov, Nikos Tselios. At Least 100 NHL Games (or very likely): 72% No. 26-30 Average Rating: 3.82 Best: Mike Green, Martin Havlat, Scott Gomez, Corey Perry, Niklas Kronwall. Worst: Andy Rogers, Martin Vagner, Mike Morris, Jonas Johansson, Ari Ahonen, Kevin Grimes. At Least 100 NHL Games (or very likely): 44% No. 31-35 Average Rating: 2.66 Best: Derek Roy, David Bolland, Loui Eriksson, Matt Cullen, Nick Schultz. At Least 100 NHL Games (or very likely): 26% No. 36-40 Average Rating: 2.72 Best: Jarret Stoll (2002), Fedor Tyutin. At Least 100 NHL Games (or very likely): 32% * * * Look at that drop off after #25 -- what used to be the early second round of the NHL draft before the league expanded in the nineties. That's interesting. I'd like to see us keep one of the second round picks, but I can certainly see parting with nos. 26 and 31 to land somewhere in the teens. PS I have to laugh at seeing Dan Tzachuk listed as one of the worst picks at #6. There were a lot of Islanders fans screaming that we should pick him at #5 since we had so many defenseman. Of course, we picked Eric Brewer. Good example of the classic "pick the best player available" strategy. Hopefully we'll do the same with all of our picks. |