Many articles have been written regarding the draft record of Montreal Canadiens Head Scout Trevor Timmins. They usually point out that he hasn’t had a lot of pros make the NHL or that he has had many misses on his record. The problem with most of the work done is that it doesn’t compare Timmins work to league averages and doesn’t compensate for how many picks he has actually had.

Timmins can’t bring a huge amount of players to the NHL when he didn’t have a second rounder for three years straight or six of eight years because GMs keep trading picks away.

Timmins can’t give you a superstar center drafting from the 25th position either. They’re not available there. Let’s see what Timmins can do against his peers.

One of the great drawbacks of any study I have seen is all the first rounders are lumped together which is a horrible study as there are vast differences in success percentages inside the first round and second round.

Another popular pastime is to point out a first rounder taken at 25 overall that doesn’t make it as if this draft position is a lock. It’s not a lock. It’s not even close to a lock.

So to do this right, firstly one has to know across the board what success rate one should expect at any particular draft location. When that is known, then one can evaluate all of the head scouts against each other to check their draft record objectively.

The exhaustive study looked at the draft for 10 years dating far enough back so we could know whether those players did develop into NHLers or not.

The study needed to choose an across the board marker of whether a player found success or he failed. It has to be a yes or a no; a hit or a miss. It can’t be gauged by how many points one gets as that isn’t fair to defencemen. It isn’t possible to judge it against whether it was better than the pick before or after as that makes it purely an emotional exercise fraught with homerism or at least accusations of homerism which is essentially the same thing. Any appearance of homerism renders the study useless.

The only marker that one can choose that is fair is whether that player became an NHL regular. If he became a regular, then he was a hit. If he did not become a regular, then he was a miss. This is a marker without emotion. NHL career or AHL career or bartender at Hooter’s. Which one?

For example, Kyle Chipchurra may not be your favourite Habs pick of all time. He played 500 NHL games. That is a successful pick not just for the Habs head scout, but all head scouts. Consistency across the board is a must.

What’s important here to note when we look at the success or failure of the study is that it is irrelevant whether you liked Chipchurra. It’s relevant that he was an NHL regular. The work isn’t about one’s feelings about a player.

Every head scout will have many players that get a success tag on a pick that a fan won’t like as a player. The goal is across the board consistency, without emotion, that looks at one simple factor. Where did he play hockey after he was drafted until his hockey playing days were over. If the answer is the KHL or AHL or a beer league, that’s not a successful pick.

The work tries its best to not be subjective as in “oh that’s a no, I didn’t like that guy”. The work attempts to find a way to be as objective as possible as in “I have no opinion on any of these guys, but they were NHL regulars and had NHL careers so that’s a yes”.

So to the percentages of success at particular draft spots which is the only way to compare one head scouts work to the others. Here’s where the surprise to so many observers comes in. So many believe in some pie in the sky universal number for first rounders but it breaks hard downward. Here are the success rates in the first round and they are vastly different.

1 to 5 is 95% with the study finding Griffin Reinhart as a lone failure in the study years. 1 through 5 is a lock essentially.

6 to 10 already sees the drop off of success begin as it is 80%

11 to 20 is 65% and 21 to 30 is a 50% pick. The first half of the second round is 30% success and the second half is a 15% success rate.

By the third round to the end of the draft, the success rate is 10 percent to 5 percent. Sometimes there is only one player landing in an entire late round of a draft.

To insult that a head scout always fails on his third rounder is to not understand at all how many of these players actually make it as NHL regulars. It’s a very small amount.

So now knowing the overall success rates of NHL drafting, how is the Habs Trevor Timmins doing against his peers?

Timmins first draft was 2003. He has had only two top five selections. To miss here is to have a huge organizational crushing miss. You can not miss in this spot. The NHL success rate is 95%. Only real miss here is Griffin Reinhart. Nail Yakupov is a horrible pick but he’s playing in the NHL. Michael Del Colle could be a miss here but it’s too early to put in a final vote. Timmins didn’t miss here getting Carey Price and Alex Galchenyuk so he’s a 2 for 2 as expected.

Again in the next category, Timmins hasn’t had much opportunity. He is expected to hit at an 80% rate on picks 6 to 10. Through the study years, Timmins has picked only once. He took Andrei Kostitsyn at 10. This is a hit with a 398 game career though it can be argued that it wasn’t the best pick there. However, this can be argued with every head scout with every team, so the framework of objectivity for all head scouts has to be simply did he have an NHL career and the answer is yes. Mikael Sergachev was taken at the 9 spot and will make it 2 for 2, but for the purposes of the study, we must allow for development of the players, so the final year of the study is 2012. Timmins therefore is a 1 for 1 with the Kostitsyn pick.

Starting with the 11 pick to the 20 pick, the success rate of drafting goes down hard dropping already to a 65% percent success for players taken here. Here is Timmins history in the study: Kyle Chipchura 482 games career, David Fischer bust. Ryan McDonagh still going, Louis Leblanc 50 game bust, Nathan Beaulieu still going. Timmins is 3 for 5 and that is 60% as he is right at the league average in this category.

The rest of the first round is a 50% success rate. Here is Timmins record: Max Pacioretty, Jarred Tinordi bust. Timmins is right at the success rate expected with a 1 for 2.

The second round is the one that tells the tale of the organization: In an 8 year stretch, Timmins did not have a second round pick for 6 years. That’s an abomination in hockey terms. The first half of the second round has a 30% success rate and here is how Timmins did: Corey Urquhart bust, Guillaume Latendresse success, PK Subban success, Sebastian Collberg bust. Timmins has only 4 picks here in this zone and goes 2 for 4. He bats 50% in a zone where 30% is expected.

The second half of the second round has only a 15% percent hit rate. Here is how Timmins does: Ben Maxwell bust, Danny Kristo bust, Dalton Thrower bust. The tale here is that the success rate is much lower than hockey fans believe. You land one of every ten picks in this area. Timmins did not land in his three chances. However, what is most telling is with an overall success rate at around 20% in the second which is 1 hit every 5, Timmins goes 2 for 7. This is above league average by a good amount, so the disappointment for Habs fans obviously is that he had only 7 chances to get it right and not 14 or 17 or any number that let him do his job well. Stockpiling picks was not a thing in the Bob Gainey era.

The third round is a 10% success rate for the first half of the round and only 5% for the second half of the round. Here is how Timmins did when the expectation was 10% success: He hits with Max Lapierre, Ryan White among his 5 choices. Timmins goes 40% in an area where only 10% is expected. Second half of the third round where only 5% is expected for success in the NHL at the draft table Timmins hits with Ryan O’Byrne, Alexei Emelin in his three choices. When the expectation is 5%, Timmins hits at 66% percent. This is where a good scout shows his hard work and talent finding gems and Timmins blows his competition away.

The rest of the rounds, four until the end of the draft, one expects a 5% success rate. Here is how Timmins does as he lands late these players among his choices: Jaroslav Halak taken at 271 overall, Mikhael Grabovski with a 534 game career taken 150th, Mark Streit with a 786 game career taken 262nd. Matt D’Agostini with a short career but a career taken 190th, Sergei Kostitsyn taken 200th with a 353 game career, Brendan Gallagher with a career still going taken 147th, Charles Hudon just getting started now taken 122nd. In the study of a decade of drafting, Timmins lands an unbelievable seven players out of the 39 selections he made from the fourth round on. He is expected to land 2 players with these late selections and he lands 7. SEVEN!!!

Not a part of the study because development takes five years on a player, but these numbers look strong already since 2012. His second round work in 2013 looks exemplary with 2 of 3 landing in JDLR and Lehkonen with Fucale a slim possibility. His 2014 top pick with a 50% chance of success Nikita Scherbak looks like it will land. His 2015 pick, also at 26, Noah Juulsen with a 50% chance of landing also looks like a winner. His 2016 pick at 9 has already landed in Sergachev. Also in 2016, Will Bitten has a 10% chance of landing as a third rounder and it looks very promising. Also in 2016, his fourth round pick with a 5% chance of landing, has become the first defenceman in the history of the NHL taken outside of the first round to earn a regular spot on the blue line as a 19 year old in Victor Mete. In 2017, there are four already who are showing NHL promise in Ryan Poehling at 25, Josh Brook at 56, Cale Fleury at 87, and arguably the best goalie in college hockey today taken only last year at 199 the son of Keith Primeau, Cayden Primeau. The last four years are not in the study, but they are his best years yet. He’s not getting tired. He’s getting better.

The great downfall of the organization has been meddling in Timmins’ work and not allowing him to do what he does best. General Managers through his tenure have either traded away his picks (6 years of 8 he had no second rounder/he wanted John Carlson when the Alex Tanguay deal traded away his first rounder) or they have told him what to do (get a defenceman in the Jeff Fischer year/need a Francophone so Louis Leblanc) or didn’t let his picks find their stride by trading away youth for age (Ryan McDonagh for Scott Gomez).

The way to success in Montreal especially because of the difficulty of bringing UFA to the city because of higher taxes, the fishbowl, and the weather, is to draft. If you want that cup, let Timmins do what he does and just get out of his way.

Simple.