With the Stanley Cup finally awarded, it’s draft season here at The Athletic. One of the things that I find fascinating about the draft is the idea of putting a value on draft picks. There are two distinct value questions, both of which are equally important. First, you have the question of how valuable a pick is in terms of what you’re likely to get from it. Most of the work that’s been done on valuing draft picks has been focused on that question. It’s important to understand that issue because if you don’t know what a pick is likely to get you, you can’t evaluate the second half of the equation, which is whether or not the price associated with a pick is fair.



I’m going to focus on the second question here – we’ll get to the first question at some point between now and the draft. Basically, this question boils down to an analysis of the prices that teams pay when trading picks in the draft. Eric Tulsky did an analysis of...