After taking a look at the work of MLHS member “xxxnew” on ‘point production by round’ in the draft, a few of you expressed an interest in seeing a chart on total points by drafted players for each team. FWIW, I put together the data in a couple of hours this afternoon.
Here’s how the teams stack up based on the five drafts between 2005-2009.
Recent Stanley Cup winners Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles are all right near the top. While Pittsburgh has a sizeable edge in points per pick (we all know why that is), Colorado leads the way in total points despite only three first round picks (Betwen Duchene, Statsny, Stewart, O’Rielly and Shattenkirk, drafting offence hasn’t been a problem).
A few quick caveats:
– This is obviously looking strictly at point production. A games played measure would yield some different results. If Detroit seems too low to you, for instance, consider that they drafted a goalie (McCollum) and two defencemen (Kindl, Smith) with their three first round picks and selected 19th, 29th and 30th in those three drafts.
– The asterisk next to the Habs’ top 5 pick is there because their fifth overall pick in 2005 was used on a goaltender, Carey Price.
The Leafs‘ draft team comes off looking decent here for a few reasons:
– Points per pick puts the Leafs in 9th.
– The 2006 entry draft was big for the Leafs as far as these rankings go. This was the first year Director of Amateur Scouting Dave Morrison took over his current role. Their 7 draftees have generated 405 cumulative points so far, which is third most for that year. The Leafs trail only Boston and Washington in this draft, who both had top 5 picks which were used to select Kessel and Backstrom respectively. All 7 Leaf picks except Tyler Ruegsegger have played NHL games (other picks were Tlusty, Kulemin, Stalberg, Holzer, Komarov). Oh, and let’s not forget the Leafs also got James Reimer out of this draft, a great pick that wouldn’t show in the points besides a few assists.
– The Leafs are one of only 6 teams over these 5 drafts to use a first round pick on a goaltender (Tuukka Rask), which wouldn’t play favourably into their points total but was a very good selection nonetheless (insert obligatory JFJ curse). The other 5 teams to draft goaltenders in the first round between 2005-2009 were Montreal (Carey Price), Calgary (Leland Irving), Detroit (Thomas McCollum), Los Angeles (Jonathan Bernier), and the Tampa Bay Lightning (Riku Helenius).
– Of the Leafs’ 4 first round picks, one was used on a goaltender and their fifth overall was used on defensive defenceman Luke Schenn, so their standing looks pretty good considering. Gotta love that Brian Burke managed to flip Schenn for van Riemsdyk.
– There was only 4 first round draft picks available to the Leafs’ draft team to begin with, which is bottom ten in the league. If you remove the goalies, only Detroit had fewer first round picks.
