The introduction of the salary cap in the NHL has morphed the strategic methods a team can use to go about building a contender. Gone are the days when a team could simply throw money at a wall and hope something stuck and, if it didn’t, simply throw more until something did. In this NHL, competitive teams need to find a way to consistently blend established talents with young upcoming players in the hope of remaining a force to be reckon with while still being cap compliant.

Looking back at the last six Stanley Cup champions, one can see how important the draft has become in the overall makeup of a successful championship team.

The LA Kings are a championship team built through the draft and tweaked with strong trades. A total of 12 homegrown draft picks, mostly coming from the first two rounds of the draft, skated for their championship team in 2013/14, which equals to more than half their total team. Very little building was done through the unrestricted free agent market as a total of only 3 players were signed on to skate with the team.





This Chicago Blackhawks team is a great example of good overall drafting. Sure, the Hawks were extremely lucky to have Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane fall to them on the years they had top 5 picks, but the strength of this team truly lies in its overall scouting with 12 homegrown draft picks playing roles on their latest cup winning team. This after having its cupboard depleted following their last Cup win in 2009/10, in which they iced a roster that included more UFA and trade acquisitions than homegrown draft picks. The switch in strategy is due in large part to the cap costs of established talent acquired through outside markets. A team would be hard pressed to sustain a winning tradition if it doesn’t have a deep farm system to replenish talents that price themselves out of the team’s cap space.

The Boston Bruins are a good example of how difficult it is to sustain a winning tradition in a cap era when more than 3/4 of the team is acquired through the UFA or trade market. In their defence, it is difficult to keep the prospects cupboards filled when consistently picking from unfavourable draft positions. Younger and therefore cheaper talent needed to be found in the later rounds of the draft, but finding diamonds in those rounds is getting more and more difficult every year as technology has brought parity in access for scouting staffs around the league. With only 5 draft choices on their cup winning team, it puts a lot of pressure on the staff to consistently find trade partners to dance with in the hopes of replacing established and proven talents with younger and cheaper alternatives.

To say that the Penguins were lucky to have Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal fall to them on the years they had top 5 picks would be a gross understatement. Sure, this is a great way to go about building a cup winner, but one that is almost impossible to repeat as the chance of grabbing two players of the talent of Crosby and Malkin over two successive years is beyond lucky. Top 5 picks are great to have, but having them in the right year is of utmost importance. Picking in the top 5 in 1996, for example, would have yielded Chris Phillips, Andrei Zyuzin, J.P. Dumont, Alexandre Volchkov or Ric Jackman; not exactly generational talents to build a cup winning team around.

The key to building a strong and consistent contender lies in the draft. As players get older and begin to price themselves at higher and higher rates, teams need to look at the youth within their organization as they cannot afford to keep pressing their team payroll up against the cap as it leaves no way of accounting for incidentals and/or possible late season additions. One can accelerate the process by acquiring UFA or finding expensive pieces in trades, but in the end, the draft is where teams will find the equilibrium between talent and expenditure.