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Breaking down the picks by round and position, it shows that despite only having 30 picks in the past 5 years, they had 6 picks in each of the 1st and 2nd rounds, which is typically where teams pick their best players.
1st - 3C, 1W, 2D (Chabot, White, Tkachuk, Brown, JBD)
2nd - 2C, 2W, 2D (Formenton, Chlapik, Tychonick)
3rd - 1D
4th - 5W, 1D (Wolanin, Batherson, Gruden)
5th - 1W, 2D (Jaros, Crookshank)
6th - 1W, 2G
7th - 3W, 1D, 1G (Daccord, Perron)
The positional trends have been relatively clear, in that they seem to target C/D in the early rounds, and W/G in later rounds. In terms of relative value, I'd suggest that's the right general approach... especially given their track record of pulling the likes of Stone, Hoffman, and Dzingel from the later rounds. It's a bit strange that they've been giving up 3rd round picks so frequently (they also don't have their own 3rd round pick for the coming 2019 draft, but do have Pittsburgh's from the Brassard trade).
In terms of prominent selections, it's worth noting that 6/16 players identified above came from the unusually strong 2015 draft year (Chabot, White, Chlapik, Wolanin, Jaros, Daccord)... which can't be replicated every year, but at least shows they pulled some quatliy depth picks outside of the 1st/2nd rounds. The other major issue from this sample is that they picked only 4-5 players in each of the 2014, 2016, and 2017 drafts. Compare that with them having 17 selections in the first 3 rounds alone for 2019, 2020, and 2021, and you can see why Dorion is excited about the potential those picks represent. It will be interesting to see if having some extra picks will affect their strategy in terms of mixing in high risk/reward picks. |
