Moving Picks (9/24/2011)

There was much to digest early in the summer after a flurry of deals flew leading up to and during the annual Entry Draft. Some General Managers dropped out of the game, some became major players on the day, and many jockeyed for position as they tried to snap up the latest collection of teenagers on whom they are pinning their hopes. Draft picks were shuffled back and forth, and in the end over half of all the players chosen were selected with picks that had been moved in deals by our allegedly trade-crazy GMs. This begged two questions: Who were the movers and shakers of the draft, and how do the NsHL managers stack up against their NHL counterparts?

The 2011 NsHL Entry Draft was a strange one to be sure. The Nashville Predators had already moved all of their picks at the trade deadline – mostly for prospects. At the time this was a somewhat surprising move, but the buzz was that this would be a weak draft crop, so accumulating more seasoned players may not have been too shocking, though it was rather unconventional. As the draft approached players such as Jonathan Huberdeau continued to rocket up the charts, while there did not seem to be as many fallers. This meant that suddenly the draft looked better than anticipated and a lot deeper in the top two rounds, which led to multiple teams shopping their first rounders to try to add a couple of seconds. Teams had little success in this regard. Then Florida surprised many by dealing all of their picks in a monumental trade with Vancouver. Montreal then divested themselves of their three remaining picks, leaving 27 teams to participate in the actual draft day. While Montreal and Florida were trading picks, some teams were actually selling theirs! It made for a crazy run up to a draft weekend that saw multiple deals including five by Vancouver alone! In the end a whopping 132 (62.9%) of the selections were made with draft picks that had been acquired in deals – and this does not account for picks that had been traded more than once!

As mentioned, the incredibly active Vancouver Canucks engineered 5 deals over the weekend that resulted in their holding just one of their own picks among the 14 selections they made. A whopping 93% of all their picks had come from various trades.  Just one of Colorado’s 12 picks were their own, meaning that they were second with 92% of their picks coming from deals. At the other end of the spectrum Dallas, Detroit and Boston made all of their selections with their own draft picks, though Boston chose just 3 players and Detroit chose just 5. The Dallas Stars, who made a huge splash on draft day last season, were the most conservative team this season in terms of draft strategy. They were the only NsHL team to hold all seven of their picks. Only Chicago and Tampa Bay were the other teams that retained at least six of their original picks.

This is clearly a league in which teams love to gamble, and where moving futures in order to win is often the main priority. Many teams in the league also like to gamble on the future by moving assets at the deadline to add the chance to pick up the next generation’s superstar or at least a sleeper. The trend suggests that the moving of picks may be on the rise. While the numbers appear to be fairly flat from 2009 and 2010, the 2009 numbers are somewhat inflated by the fact that Ottawa and Chicago dealt all of their picks away at that draft, just as the 2011 numbers are inflated somewhat by the three teams that moved all of their picks. In the NsHL the most tradable picks appear to be third rounders. There is enough value there to entice a GM to get a sure shot in the top 90 prospects, while the GM sacrificing the pick is almost certain to get a player who can help their club or a solid prospect who is likely to be a useful player in the bottom half of the line-up.

In contrast to the NsHL the NHL is somewhat more conservative when it comes to dealing draft picks. Their willingness to part with second and third round draft picks does not trail the NsHL numbers by much, but they are much more resistant to dealing first rounders and later round picks. The NsHL managers tend to trade about 20% more of their draft picks than their NHL counterparts. While the total number of picks is far less than those in the NsHL, and interesting side note is that in 2009 there was 1 first round pick which went through 6 different teams, so the numbers can lie a little bit... but then again, a transaction line such as the following suggests that recycling picks is not uncommon in the NsHL either:

[2011-07-09 14:35] - From Los Angeles Kings to Vancouver Canucks : Y:2011-RND:3-FLA, Y:2011-RND:5-ANH.
[2011-07-09 14:35] - From Vancouver Canucks to Los Angeles Kings : Y:2011-RND:3-CAR.

In the past three years a total of 46 second round picks and a total of 46 third round picks have changed hands in the NHL. While these numbers are lower than the NsHL totals (62 and 64 respectively), they are the two rounds where the majority of the dealt picks move from.

When you compare the NsHL numbers to the NHL numbers you can only conclude that our league is more aggressive when it comes to trading. Perhaps this is due to financial constraints, and perhaps this is due to the more conservative business nature required to hold one’s job in the NHL. It also may simply boil down to the fact that the NsHL has some GMs who feel the constant urge to make a trade just for the rush of dealing. Both leagues already are over a third of the way to matching their previous years’ totals – it makes one wonder if the movement of picks will trend upward in what is shaping up to be a very exciting batch of prospects in 2012.