It has been much too long in between posts from me on here, but finding time is hard to come by, especially as a teacher, but also with so many obligations with family this time of year. But some of this time I have spent just being a hockey fan. This past week I took a short trip to Detroit for the first time just so I could see a game at Joe Louis Arena before it closes. The next couple of days I will spend some time watching the outdoor games and continuing to watch the World Juniors, and then Monday night I’ll be heading up to Newark for the Devils vs. Bruins game. Its a wonderful time of year for hockey, but its always a wonderful time for hockey.

On a side note, if you can get to the Joe before it closes, do it. This place is awesome and is the last arena of an older generation still in the NHL.

Anyway, getting back to what I was talking about a couple of posts ago. In looking at how each team was utilizing its AHL clubs I was also taking note of where these players played before the AHL whether it be juniors, college hockey, or European leagues. Again, the idea of all of this is to get a little more insight of each club’s team-building strategy. We have already looked at which teams develop their players in the AHL the most and which teams retain and develop their draft picks the most, but now the idea is to look at where they are scouting their players from the most.

Most players in the NHL played major junior hockey in Canada, so let’s take a look at that first. The top 5 NHL teams that had the most junior hockey graduates are listed below. Remember, though, that this was data collected at the beginning of the season and there will be some differences now, but I don’t think the numbers would be changed too drastically.

This may seem somewhat surprising to see. Over half of the players in the NHL have played juniors, and arguably the best players come from juniors as well, however these 5 teams have not had much recent success. Arizona, Calgary, and Ottawa have had many missed playoff appearances within the last 5 years, and when and if any of these teams were in the playoffs, they didn’t get too far. Sure, Philadelphia was in the Finals in 2010, but that was practically a lifetime ago for the organization as they have changed to a new GM, gone through 2 coaches, and have only Claude Giroux left from that team, which was his rookie year. Looking at the bottom 5 teams in this category may be equally as surprising.

Here we see practically the opposite. These teams have consistently been in the playoffs, with the exception of Carolina, and have many more playoff rounds won than the top 5. This is at least intriguing to me when you consider that the top prospects year-in and year-out are coming out of the Canadian junior leagues. I would at least suspect that most teams are scouting the junior leagues more heavily than anywhere else, but maybe that shouldn’t be the case as much as we would believe.

So where are the rest of these players coming from? Over a quarter of the rest of the NHLers are coming from College Hockey programs in the United States. In fact, roughly 80% of the Americans in the NHL are coming from College Hockey programs. Since 3 teams were tied for 4th, below we see the top 6 NHL teams with College Hockey graduates on their rosters (at the start of the season).

Since 2011, these teams represent 4 of 6 Stanley Cup victories and 2 more finalists. I think that says enough about the success of these teams in recent years. Before looking at this data more closely, these were the kinds of results I suspected from the teams with more junior players. But college hockey is improving skill-wise every year and teams are certainly taking notice. For clubs like Boston and Detroit it does seem to make more sense for them to scout a little heavier in college than other teams because geographically it is convenient. Both of these teams have many college programs near them which obviously means more games and teams to be able to scout. Both of these teams have also proven to be very successful in recent history. So what about the bottom of the list? Here we see the bottom 5 clubs for College Hockey grads.

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that 3 of these teams we already saw having the most junior players since there’s only so many other spots to fill for them. But now in pop Florida and Columbus. One team which is currently out of a playing spot, and one team that is in the midst of a 14 game win streak and making a lot more people take them seriously this year. Again thinking geographically, it isn’t very convenient for Arizona and Florida to scout colleges close by to them, since there are virtually no College Hockey programs locally, but then again there isn’t any junior teams close by either. In recent history basically all of these teams have been in and out of the playoffs year by year and have not achieved that much success the years they have made it.

Lastly that leaves us with playoffs coming the North America from European leagues. These players represent less than a quarter of total NHL players. Here we see the top 7 teams with European leaguers as 4 teams were tied with 8.

If we keep judging teams success by playoff appearances and Stanley Cups, as I feel we should, then here is where we see a little bit more mixed results compared to our other findings. We see a couple Cups in Chicago, consistent playoff-bound teams in Washington, some in-and-out playoff teams in Vancouver, Dallas, and Nashville, and some consistent playoff misses in Carolina and Toronto. And for the bottom of the list, here are the 5 teams with the least amount of Europeans.

These results also seem pretty mixed. The Kings and Sharks have certainly had their successes, but Ottawa, Arizona, and Buffalo have made a limited amount of playoff appearances in recent history.

So what does all of this really mean? Well for one, to draw any true conclusions we should really take a deeper look into every aspect. One thing we have to keep in mind this is simply a snapshot for the 2016-17 season, and the rosters at the beginning of the season as well. To gain some real conclusions we should look at every team on a year-by-year basis and see if rosters from year to year have the same type of consistencies. I plan on looking at some of these types like this in some future posts. For now, though, we can make some types of hypotheses. For one, it appears that teams shouldn’t try to build with the majority of their prospects from Canadian juniors. Instead, it looks like a well balanced mix of junior players, college grads, and a few Europeans seems to have had the most successes in recent years. It also seems that some teams should probably spend some more time focusing their scouting into college programs. As for Europeans, I don’t think we can make too much of hypothesis based on the mixed results we are seeing from teams with both a large and small amount of European players on their rosters.