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A Production of The Society for Canadian Hockey Research

There is little cost to keep a prospect in the NsHL so there’s little surprise that teams hang on to even the most unlikely of prospects. Realistically only a handful of the players on the best stocked prospect lists will ever turn out to be impact players, and a few more will be solid NsHLers. The rest may be solid AsHLers for a few years, but many are busts. Many GMs in the NsHL continue to hold out hope that the draft picks they invested in will at least help them to stock their minor league rosters. But there are some players on the prospects that certainly should be removed, and some who are also strong candidates for removal as they remain active in some pretty obscure or low-level leagues around the world. There are a few clubs who should be commended for keeping their lists up to date, but those clubs are few and far between.

Several teams have done an excellent job of keeping their prospect lists clean by releasing players who will have no value, activating fringe players at the optimal time, or through some very shrewd drafting and trading. All of the prospects on the lists for the Buffalo Sabres, Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Florida Panthers, Los Angeles Kings and Nashville Predators were playing major junior, NCAA, a major European league, junior A, or in the AHL, ECHL, or NHL at the end of last season. Players drafted in 2009 or 2010 who were still playing in other leagues such as high school leagues or lower European junior leagues were exempted from this list as they are relatively new prospects.

Several teams continue to list players who have not played in any league recognized at eliteprospects.com or on hockeydb in over a year. There are a total of 54 players on protected lists who are no longer active players. The New York Islanders list 8 of these players while the San Jose Sharks and Colorado Avalanche cling to 6 such players. There are a few notables on this list. Edmonton, the Islanders, Philadelphia and St. Louis have players who have not been active since the 2004-05 season. You would think that somebody in those organizations would have noticed this inactivity. More notable are Colorado’s David Svargrowsky who appears on three sites according to Google. All of these sites are sim leagues. Anton Kadevkin of New Jersey gets a few more hits but he, too, appears to be a sim league phantom. The Dallas Stars have continued to hang on to Kevin Koopman since he retired from the WHL at the end of the 2009 season, but they can be forgiven as he returned to school to become a doctor. Somebody should tell them that they don’t need to hold his rights to hire him as team physician in a few years.

Here are the players who are out of hockey:

At $1500 per season these guys have only cost their respective teams a combined $81,000, but hey, if you saw $81,000 laying in the street wouldn’t you bend over to pick it up? Instead they sit like that expired can of baked beans in the cupboard – you know you’ll never use it, but you keep it. It’s taking up space. So let it go. Just let them go.

The following players were playing in very low levels of hockey and remain at a similar or lower level this year. They may be active, but they are not too likely to pull off an Alex Burrows style rise to prominence from ball hockey to the NHL. He at least went to the ECHL along the way. These guys aren’t even good enough to catch on in the E right now. I know a few players have gone from Canadian University hockey to pro careers, but it is such a rare occurrence that they really do belong on this list.

Admittedly, one or two of these players could work their way back to a higher level of hockey, but the odds are incredibly long. Perhaps not long enough to prevent GMs from keeping them on their prospects lists. And Stephen McClelland`s triumphant to pro hockey 4 years after leaving the NCAA makes a case for keeping the players on the first list, but is it really worth it? Keeping these 40 players on NsHL protected lists is something like padding your resume by listing that job that you never actually showed up for, or like your college papers when you listed 43 resources to impress your prof, but really only relied on three.

The hoarders have been uncovered. It will be interesting to watch the transaction wire over the next weeks to see who is willing to make a clean break, release these players, and start with a clean slate. I assure you that there are many players on your prospect lists that have not been exposed so far that will work their way down the way some of these players have. It’s not a reflection on your drafting or you personally, it’s just the way things happen when drafting hockey players at such a young age. Some simply don’t make it. The question is whether you hoard them or let them go. I advise you to let them go.

- Aristotle Newton for Sachermetrics, Buythenumber$ and ESN