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Bill Meltzer: Draft Data -- Risk/Reward of Picking Defensemen in 1st Round |
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Bill Meltzer is the Philadelphia Flyers and Dallas Stars blogger for HockeyBuzz, and does considerable behind-the-scenes work as our site's editorial captain. He is substituting today for Eklund.
Bill's work has been extensively featured on NHL.com, IIHF.com, Flyers.NHL.com and a host of other Web sites and print publications. Along with Thomas Tynander, he is the co-author of Pelle Lindbergh: Behind the White Mask.
Throughout the NHL, there has been an ever-increasing tendency in recent years for teams to lock up most of their starting defensemen in long-term, multi-million dollar contracts before the players can hit the open market as unrestricted free agents (UFAs).
Taken out of the context of what's going on league-wide, many of these deals seem to be overpayments in terms of cap hits and/or length of contract. However, when you realize that there's been a leaguewide hoarding of defensemen, it makes a little more sense.
With the expected large-scale escalation of the NHL salary cap ceiling in the next couple of seasons, this trend is not going to end any time soon. The six-year, $25.5 million Jonathan Ericsson contract extension in Detroit is just a sign of the times.
It does, however, make one wonder how much a player like Dion Phaneuf will command if and when his current team strikes a contract extension agreement to preempt his unrestricted free agency. Phaneuf may have some weaknesses in his game but his strengths are of All-Star caliber, and his corresponding open market price will be sky high. My feeling in his case is that the Toronto side is going to have blink first if he's going to be signed before the end of season (and, by the way, I do think it will ultimately get done).
Nowadays, there is often a dearth of quality blueliners available on the UFA market. Those who are available at the top of the UFA class are often players in their late 30s, frequently injured players or ones who have had past success but have struggled in the last few seasons. While there are sometimes bargains to be had, the overpayments of the better UFA defensemen often exceed the (inflated) cost of preemptively signing a comparable in-house player to a contract extensive.
In a similar context, it is often difficult these days for teams to trade for significant blueline help. It is very much a seller's market, with the exception of problem contract, injured or soon-to-be-UFAs that the seller does not want to bring back.
The salary cap is one limiting issue, especially this season with the lowered ceiling and so many teams dipping into their long-term injured reserve (LTIR) allowance with zero bankable cap space.
Another major limiting factor is old fashioned supply and demand. Defensemen go down with injuries at an alarming rate (which is why many clubs have taken to carrying eight defensemen on the NHL roster). Most teams want to improve their blueline depth among top-four options in their rotation of pairings; in other words, players they can regularly call upon to provide 18 or more minutes of ice time per game.
With demand high and a low supply of viable top-four talents available for trade, the potential sellers are in position to jack up their trade return demands. That's especially true for players who are not impending UFAs at the end of the season. Rental prices on soon-to-be-UFAs are usually a bit lower, depending on the caliber of player and the number of serious suitors.
For all these reasons, it has become more and more important for NHL teams to draft and develop their own talent from within. The annual "draft the best available player or draft by positional need?" debate is going to rage for many years to come.
Generally speaking, defensemen make for riskier first-round Draft picks than forwards. While there are certainly exceptions, NHL defensemen typically take longer to fully develop than forwards. In many cases, it could take as much as five or six years after a defenseman's draft year to have a reasonably complete picture of how much he's going to develop.
Meanwhile, I think it can be fairly said that a true franchise defenseman is the most coveted commodity -- and the hardest to obtain -- in the NHL today.
That creates a conundrum for NHL teams on Draft day.
How much risk should they tolerate with their first round pick, especially if they are picking at or near the top? Are they better off going for a potential first-line forward with a lower downside and, presumably, a faster development cycle to become a mature NHL player? Or should they take a leap of faith and commitment to patience in the effort to nurtur a star junior league or European defenseman along the arduous path to become a bonafide top pairing NHL blueliner? This road often includes backward steps -- sometimes for entire seasons -- before a true breakthrough is attained.
This painstaking decision dramatically played itself out at the 2013 NHL Draft. The Colorado Avalanche announced ahead of time that they were going to bypass defenseman Seth Jones and go with forward Nathan MacKinnon. While this was only mildly surprising, many were shocked when forwards Aleksander Barkov (Florida) and Jonathan Drouin (Tampa Bay) also went off the board before the Nashville Predators -- who have the luxury of developing Jones behind Shea Weber on the depth chart -- selected Jones.
In other words, risk management won out this year. General managers and scouting directors around the NHL are under immense pressure not to screw up with their first-round Draft selections, and that means there's a heavy push to see the pick pay dividends a little sooner.
In the meantime, the 2012 NHL Draft produced one of the most defense-heavy first-round classes, with a record-tying 13 teams opting for a blueline prospect in the 30-selection opening round. That was as much due to the fact that this Draft class was thin on projected high-ceiling forwards as it was the result of a seemingly deeper-than-average group of promising young defensemen.
Personally speaking, I have always been in favor of the take the best available player regardless of position strategy. I say that fully recognizing that developing defensemen internally grows in importance with each passing year.
First of all, there is no such thing as having too much depth or strength at a particular position within the system. This allows for the team to made trades to plug other holes in the lineup, if need be. Secondly, while some players step into the NHL immediately after the draft, there is more commonly a waiting period of a few years until a draftee is ready for the NHL. It often takes several years beyond that for the player to mature at the top level, by which time the composition of the roster will have significantly changed.
Last but not least, using a first-round pick to draft by positional need for teenaged defensemen and goalies is often ill-advised strategy. I will illustrate why with some research I did on current NHL defensemen and the spot in which they were originally drafted.
After the 2011-12 season, I compiled a list of the top 152 defensemen in the NHL this past season: the list includes Chris Pronger and the now-retired Nicklas Lidström, plus the mathematical equivalent of a top-5 starting defenseman corps for the 30 NHL teams (although not all teams have five players on the actual list).
A little more than one-third of the list is comprised of defensemen who were former first-round picks and their ranks include some of the top defensemen in the league. That's to be expected.
However, as you move down to the nearly two-thirds who were not first-round picks, you will find that just as many of the league’s All-Star and even Norris Trophy caliber defensemen in the NHL were selected after the first round in their draft years.
In fact, a few fairly prominent blueliners in the NHL -- such as Dan Girardi, Dan Boyle and Jason Garrison -- were originally rookie free agents who were never drafted at all.
Using a first-round selection to take a lower-ceiling but "safe" blueliner over a higher-ceiling forward is more often than not a recipe to look back at the draft round with regret in the years to come.
The two-pronged conclusion I drew from the exercise was:
1) A team IS more likely to identify a future regular NHL starting defenseman in the first round than any other round, but
2) With the unpredictability and volatility of a teenage defenseman's development cycle, the ranks of future star NHL defensemen are a cross-section of players selected in the early, middle and even late rounds (plus free agent rookies).
I plan to compile an updated list this summer. For now, here is the list of 152 defensemen I compiled from those who played in the NHL in 2011-12. Players are listed by their draft round, overall selection number and draft year. Undrafted defensemen are listed alphabetically by surname.
FIRST ROUND (54)
Roman Hamrlik – 1/1 1992
Chris Phillips – 1/1 1996
Erik Johnson – 1/1 2006
Chris Pronger – 1/2 1993
Drew Doughty – 1/2 2008
Victor Hedman- 1/2 2009
Brad Stuart – 1/3 1998
Jay Bouwmeester – 1/3 2002
Jack Johnson – 1/3 2005
Zach Bogosian – 1/3 2008
Erik Gudbranson – 1/3 2010
Bryan Allen – 1/4 1998
Rostislav Klesla – 1/4 2000
Joni Pitkanen – 1/4 2002
Alex Pietrangelo – 1/4 2008
Adam Larsson – 1/4 2011
Eric Brewer – 1/5 1997
Ryan Whitney – 1/5 2002
Karl Alzner – 1/5 2007
Luke Schenn – 1/5 2008
Oliver Ekman-Larsson – 1/6 2009
Ryan Suter – 1/7 2003
Braydon Coburn – 1/8 2003
Dion Phaneuf – 1/9 2003
Ladislav Smid – 1/9 2004
Brian Lee – 1/9 2005
Jared Cowen – 1/9 2009
Keaton Ellerby – 1/10 2007
Dan Hamhuis – 1/12 2001
Marc Staal – 1/12 2005
Ryan McDonagh – 1/12 2007
Tyler Myers – 1/12 2008
Cam Fowler – 1/12 2010
Sergei Gonchar— 1/14 1992
Brent Seabrook - 1/14 2003
Kevin Shattenkirk – 1/14 2007
Dmitry Kulikov – 1/14 2009
Erik Karlsson – 1/15 2008
Nick Leddy— 1/16 2009
Barret Jackman – 1/17 1999
Carlo Colaiacovo – 1/17 2001
Jake Gardiner – 1/17 2008
Brooks Orpik – 1/18 2000
Luca Sbisa – 1/19 2008
Brent Burns – 1/20 2003
Michael Del Zotto- 1/20 2008
Anton Volchenkov – 1/21 2000
Mark Stuart— 1/21 2003
Scott Hannan – 1/23 1997
Tim Gleason – 1/23 2001
Andrej Meszaros – 1/23 2004
John Carlson – 1/27 2008
Matt Niskanen – 1/28 2005
Niklas Kronwall – 1/29 2000
SECOND ROUND (22)
Slava Voynov – 2/32 2008
Marc-Edouard Vlasic – 2/35 2005
Kevin Klein – 2/37 2003
Justin Faulk – 2/37 2010
Roman Josi – 2/38 2008
Fedor Tyutin – 2/40 2001
Trevor Daley – 2/43 2002
P.K. Subban – 2/43 2007
Jordan Leopold – 2/44 1999
Matt Greene – 2/44 2002
Jeff Petry – 2/45 2006
Matt Carle – 2/47 2003
Henrik Tallinder – 2/49 1997
Shea Weber – 2/49 2003
Travis Hamonic – 2/53 2008
Duncan Keith – 2/54 2002
Adam McQuaid – 2/55 2005
Nicklas Grossmann – 2/56 2004
Johnny Boychuk – 2/61 2002
Alex Goligoski – 2/61 2004
Paul Martin – 2/62 2000
Jamie McBain – 2/63 2006
THIRD ROUND (11)
Nicklas Lidstrom – 3/53 1989
Zdeno Chara – 3/56 1996
Kris Letang – 3/62 2005
Sheldon Souray – 3/71 1994
Andrej Sekera – 3/71 2004
Francois Beauchemin – 3/75 1998
Ryan O’Byrne – 3/79 2003
Cody Franson – 3/79 2005
Jay Harrison – 3/82 2001
Aaron Johnson – 3/85 2001
Alex Edler – 3/91 2001
FOURTH ROUND (13)
Joe Corvo – 4/83 1997
Toni Lydman – 4/89 1996
Chris Butler – 4/96 2005
Michal Rozival – 4/105 1996
Keith Yandle – 4/105 2005
Christian Ehrhoff – 4/106 2001
Jan Hejda— 4/106 2003
Niklas Hjalmarsson – 4/108 2005
TJ Brodie – 4/114 2008
Lubomir Visnovsky- 4/118 2000
Corey Potter – 4/122 2003
Tom Gilbert – 4/129 2002
Kyle Quincey – 4/132 2003
FIFTH ROUND OR LATER (41)
Jaroslav Spacek – 5/117 1998
Rob Scuderi – 5/134 1998
Nikita Nikitin – 5/136 2004
Bryce Salvador – 6/138 1994
Philip Larsen – 5/149 2008
Kevin Bieksa – 5/151 2001
Brett Clark – 6/154 1996
Mark Fayne – 5/155 2005
Brian Campbell – 6/156 1997
James Wisniewski – 5/156 2002
Jared Spurgeon – 6/158 2008
John-Michael Liles – 5/159 2000
Andrew MacDonald – 6/160 2006
Stephane Robidas – 7/164 1995
Dennis Seidenberg – 6/172 2001
Roman Polak – 6/180 2004
Bruno Gervais – 6/182 2003
Marek Zidlicky – 6/176 2001
Pavel Kubina – 7/179 1996
Jason Demers – 7/186 2008
Ian White – 6/191 2002
Filip Kuba – 8/192 1995
Derek Engelland – 6/194 2000
Carl Gunnarsson – 7/194 2007
Willie Mitchell – 8/199 1996
Tomas Kaberle – 8/204 1996
Hal Gill – 8/207 1993
Andrew Ference – 8/208 1997
Anton Stralman – 7/216 2005
Johnny Oduya – 7/221 2001
Sami Salo – 9/239 1996
Tobias Enstrom - 8/239 2003
Douglas Murray – 8/241 1999
Milan Jurcina – 8/241 2001
Dennis Wideman- 8/241 2002
Dustin Byfuglien – 8/245 2003
Kimmo Timonen - 10/250 1993
Shane O’Brien— 8/250 2003
Mark Streit – 9/262 2004
Grant Clitsome – 9/271 2004
Jonathan Ericsson – 9/291 2002
UNDRAFTED (11)
Marc-Andre Bergeron
Francis Bouillon
Dan Boyle
Jason Garrison
Matt Gilroy
Mark Giordano
Dan Girardi
Josh Gorges
Andy Greene
Mike Weaver
Ryan Wilson
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