When the Leafs get a couple of days off, bloggers have a little bit of extra time to take a wider look at things. I’ve spent a lot of time this year watching CHL games, pouring over AHL stats and looking at the player development side of hockey. Unsurprisingly, that has led to a lot of conversations about the draft itself and it was one of these conversations that spurred me to look into some draft outcomes.
Over at Blue Chip Prospects, I decided to have a look at whether teams are more successful at drafting forwards or defensemen in various rounds of the draft. I took ten years worth of draft data and put each player taken in the first three rounds of those drafts into one of four categories: All-Star, Impact Player, Replaceable Player, and Bust.
The idea behind the post was to try and find out whether a team is more likely to find an impact forward or an impact defenseman in each of these three rounds, but some of the peripheral information that came out of the spreadsheet was interesting as well and probably has some important implications with how we should value pick assets. For example, I found that about 84% of all players taken in the third round never end up making a meaningful contribution at the NHL-level. Moreover, only about 5% of players taken in the third round end up consistently skating in the top-6 forward group or as a top-4 defenseman. That certainly provides some interesting perspective for a lot of the HF Board proposals we’re subjected to on a regular basis.
The post itself has all kinds of information, pretty graphs, and clever observations so please take the time to check it out.
Wednesday Morning Links…
- Speaking of draft assets, Hope In The Big Smoke thinks MacArthur’s days in Toronto may be numbered.
- The Leafs Nation has a piece on Joe Colborne (the Leafs‘ biggest prospect tease) and his recent hot streak.
- Over at PPP, Steve Burtch drops some Bayesian math on you when looking at whether or not Reimer might be the real deal
- Damien Cox wonders if the Leafs have finally learned to develop young talent. If by “developed” he means “not trade away” then I guess.
- The Star’s Bob Mitchell also looks (prematurely, in my estimation) at what goalies are on the market in the wake of Reimer’s injury.
- For the self-flagelists among us, Mirtle wrote a piece a couple days ago about how Reimer is the reason we don’t suck.
- Michael Langlois over at Vintage Leaf Memories does what he does best, comparing Mark Fraser to some old-time Maple Leafs