The 2018 NHL draft is over and 217 players have heard their names called. That can only mean one thing: It’s time for draft grades!



There’s a pool of people who love this. And there’s a pool of people who hate it. Let me discuss the latter group for a second. They will argue draft grades are a fool’s exercise. They argue that you can’t evaluate a draft until five-plus years after the fact. This is a reasonable argument. It’s wrong. But it’s reasonable.



Decisions are evaluated at the time of the decision using information available for that decision. Today is not about proclaiming who got the stars of tomorrow, but who, in my opinion, got the most talent and made the best bets for the future based on what we know today.



Grades are not relative to a team’s slot. Rather, they are based on total value acquired. I realize this will tend to weigh towards teams with high picks, but this I find is the most...