In which Brendan Shanahan listens to his Leaf gut

So, Don Cherry trashed Brendan Shanahan after the 2014 draft, saying:

“Brendan, I know you’re watching, President or whatever you are… You know how many Canadians the Leafs drafted this year? Zero… So who did they pick? They picked that little guy. We won’t say who. Then they sent him back to Sweden, to save his life…They pass on a guy, Nick Ritchie, 6-foot-3, 230 pounds, 100 minutes in penalties… What they need are big, tough wingers. They don’t need a little, wee forward… They’ve made the playoffs once in fourteen years and they draft U.S. college guys and a Swinn and a Fede… That’s why the Leafs are like they are & will be for a long time.”

Now, Don’s right. The Leafs have drafted poorly over the years.

Where Don’s wrong is in his advice.

Because it’s advice like Don’s that has wrecked the Leafs drafts for years.

Time to look at how Shanahan [and Hunter] have changed the Leafs drafting.

***

Imagine when Brendan Shanahan arrived in Toronto in 2014. The draft was coming in just ten weeks. Now, imagine that he took just five minutes, to look for himself at the Leafs’ draft strategy in recent years and its results. Here’s what he’d have seen.

The Leafs top two draft picks for each of the last few years:

Maple Leafs First Two Draft Selections - 2007 to 2013

Name Year Nationality Freddie Gauthier 2013 Canadian Carter Verhaeghe 2013 Canadian Morgan Rielly 2012 Canadian Matt Finn 2012 Canadian Tyler Biggs 2011 American Stuart Percy 2011 Canadian Brad Ross 2010 Canadian Greg McKegg 2010 Canadian Nazem Kadri 2009 Canadian Kenny Ryan 2009 American Luke Schenn 2008 Canadian Jimmy Hayes 2008 American Dale Mitchell 2007 Canadian Matt Frattin 2007 Canadian

Now, two things would jump right out at Shanahan from those results:

1st. That’s right, all you kids out there! Of their 14 top picks, the Leafs actually picked 11 Canadians, 3 Americans… and 0 Europeans. That’s right. No top picks used for Europeans at all. For seven years straight.

Which means the Leafs draft strategy for their top picks took 11 of 14 from Canada, and lots and lots of big-bodied and gritty kids – a perfect fit with Don’s views.

2nd. Only problem? The strategy was crap. I’m sure it looked nice on paper and all, and it’s the kind of strategy that sure sounds great when you shout it over the radio or down at the tavern. You know how it goes:

WE DON’T NEED ANY MORE TEENY TINY LEAFS!

hellz noooo. we hate little guys. also: they suck.

WE NEED SOME GREAT BIG TOUGH WINGERS INSTEAD.

hellz yeah. big. and tough too! ones that’ll fight!!

RIGHT! KNUCKLE-CHUCK! BUT GRITTY TOO.

grit – damn straight grit. old-time grit! gritty like a bear!!

GRITTY… BUT DIRTY TOO! DIRTY AS CAT LITTER!!

dude. you’re cut off.

See how great those conversations sound?

I know. Because I’ve had them. Heck, I have those conversations with myself. And at least twice a game, every game, I wish the Leafs had drafted twenty Colton Orrs, and I could send them all out onto the ice at once, to crush, pound and disembowel whatever Hab, Canuck, Bruin or FLiER!!1 player is particularly irritating to me at that moment.

The only problem with that draft strategy is that the Leafs keep on trying it, and it keeps on failing. Because, sure, it was great and all when Colton and Lazer Frazer McLaren chased all those little Habs around that one time. But the decade as a whole?

Pretty dismal.

But here’s a thing. What we think about how the Leafs drafted and what Brendan Shanahan thinks are two different thinks.

Because Brendan Shanahan’s perspective might well be a bit different. After all, he was a big player – just like Don and the Leafs always wanted. 6 foot 3, in fact. A winger, too. Ended up with over 100 NHL fights, and more than 2000 penalty minutes.

He’s even local. A Toronto boy.

In fact, of every Toronto born and bred player who ever played in the NHL, where in the all-time Top 10 Goal Scorers do you think Brendan Shanahan ranks?

Well, I’m not gonna make you wait to read it down at the bottom or anything like that, cause I always hated having to wait for stupid answers to stupid quiz questions, but I have to disguise the answer, somehow, sojustletmesaythatshanahanranksfirstalltime.

But if anyone would be well-placed to judge the results of the Leafs [and Don’s] draft strategy, then Brendan Shanahan would be a pretty fair judge, right?

Ok. But what do you think he thought of those Leafs draft results?

He would see: Morgan Rielly [great pick], Kadri [damn good pick] and Hayes [late-bloomer, pretty good pick.] And Gauthier and Percy still with an NHL shot.

But Luke Schenn at #5? And trading two high picks to get Tyler Biggs? Wow, that’s bad. And picking Brad Ross and Kenny Ryan? Great screaming handmaidens of Hell, what was that about?

That’s not good.

And he’d also see that the Leafs two best picks — Rielly and Kadri — actually went against any strategy of picking big-bodied, truculent kids.

Rielly in particular. He’s a great pick. But not because he’s big for a defenceman, or a hitter. In fact, he’s not a fighter — at all. From Bantam up through Junior and into the NHL, Rielly never had a season with more than 21 penalty minutes.

In his first two full NHL seasons, Morgan Rielly rang up the fewest penalty minutes of any NHL defenceman, ever [who played over 130 games.]

And this season? Zero penalty minutes so far.

Shanahan would also have noticed that the Leafs best picks — and Morgan Rielly was a brilliant pick — came when they broke with that whole “Big Tough Guy” strategy.

So it’s no surprise that even without much time to think about it, Shanahan decided to come up with a new draft strategy for the Leafs.

Fortunately, Shanahan had his own deep, and very successful, well of experience to draw upon. Including personal success like scoring 1300+ NHL points. Team success like winning three Cups, and playing alongside an incredible number of Hall of Famers, Norris and Hart and Smythe and Selke and Vezina winners.

Even more important, however, is that Brendan Shanahan got to watch Scotty Bowman and Kenny Holland, up close, for 10 years.

**

So – with even just a few minutes research in hand – imagine how Shanahan must have seen things going into the 2014 draft.

He has the #8 pick.

He knows exactly what he wants for the Leafs – high-end skill kids.

And he knows the Leafs old scouting system and draft management team has gone skunky.

So who does that leave to direct the 2014 draft?

Because, remember, Mark Hunter wasn’t there for the 2014 draft. Nor was Kyle Dubas.

Which means when you look back at the 2014 Leaf draft, you’re looking at… Brendan Shanahan.

Any judgment calls were based on Shanahan’s own personal sense of where the Leafs needed to go.

Shanny’s Leaf gut, as it were.

Which he then used… to pick the Swedish kid, William Nylander.

Boom.

And for his 2nd pick, Shanny took the Russian Defenceman, Rinat Valiev. Ahead of six other Canadian defencemen picked in that round alone. Think about that. He even let Thommie Bergman pick a big winger late, Pierre Engvall, from Sweden.

But that whole big brawling thing? Gone.

In fact, no Canadians.

Which – to me, in poker terms – is an interesting tell. When Shanny was operating on short-notice, and firing mostly from his Leaf gut, he picked more Europeans than the Leafs under Burke ever had.

There is no “must automatically pick a big Canadian kid” rule in play anymore.

That’s why Don freaked out.

Now, Shanahan is never gonna come right out and have a fight with him, because Don buys mud by the barrel and flings it like a three-handed monkey on a bad drunk.

At least, I hope it’s mud.

Shanahan is just going to do things his own way, drawing upon his own experience.

But instead of all of us being stuck in the kind of “Hype & Gripe” argument that Don and some of the more vocal hockey talk media love [like Ritchie versus Nylander]… why don’t we do something more relevant? Like take a look at the strategies used by the one drafting system Shanny knows really well? The one that is also very likely the NHL’s best these past 25 years.

Let’s go to Motown.

***

Wherein: The Leafs go 0 for 75

We’ve already seen how Detroit, after adopting the puck possession style, had to change how they drafted. They needed more high-skill, puck control players – and that meant more kids from Russia and Europe.

Their logic was simple. Historically, the puck possession style of play and the skills required to succeed at it were more intensively taught, practiced and performed in Russia and Europe. So Detroit expanded their scouting over there. And the results? Over these last 20 years?

Detroit drafted 77 Europeans versus 57 Canadians.

The reverse of a team like the Leafs.

Sure, Detroit will still happily select a top-end North American like Dylan Larkin when they’re available. But the Wings draft success has been built off of what everybody calls their tremendous “late round drafting.”

Which was really a way of saying that “Detroit used their late round picks to select highly-skilled, but undervalued, Europeans.”

Like… Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Nyquist, Filppula, Tatar, and Pulkkinen.

I’ve got no problem with the Leafs moving in that direction, and starting to target more high-skill kids from Europe. In fact, I think it’s great news. Why?

Well, because a whopping 40% of the NHL’s 100 top-scoring forwards of the last 20 years have come from Europe and Russia.

Here are the top ones, just for reference.

Look, the ugly fact is that the Leafs didn’t actually draft ANY of those Top 40%. When we got guys like Sundin, we had to trade real assets for them.

Okay, well.… wait. Let me ask you this question first: Do you actually want to see the full damage from the Leafs’ 40 year stumble through Europe?

What? You do? Oh. Of course you do! You’re a Leafs fan. So at this point, pain means nothing!

Silver Bullet Fact: Of the NHL’s 75 highest-scoring Forwards drafted out of Europe over the last 40 years, the Leafs have drafted precisely 0.

Top 75 European Players

EUROPEAN FORWARDS 1 "Ole Mullet Haid" Jagr - 1990 Pitt 1802 2 Teeeeeeemuuuu - 1988 Winn 1457 3 Jarri Kurri - 1980 Edm 1398 4 Mats Sundin - 1989 Que 1349 5 Peter Stastny Que 1239 6 Sergei Fedorov - 1989 Det 1179 7 That Rat-F*ck Alfredsson - 1994 Snes 1157 8 Marian Hossa - 1997 Ott 1056 9 Alex Mogilny - 1988 Buff 1032 10 Alexei Kovalev - 1991 NYR 1029 11 Patrik Elias - 1994 NJ 1017 12 Sedin 1 - 1999 Van 915 13 Ovie - 2004 Wash 895 14 Peter Bondra - 1990 Wash 892 15 Peter Forsberg - 1991 Phil 885 16 Sedin 2 - 1999 Van 881 17 Pavel Datsyuk - 1998 Det 869 18 Markus Naslund - 1991 Pitt 869 19 Tomas Sandstrom - 1982 NYR 857 20 Slava Kozlov - 1990 Det 853 21 Sako Koivu - 1993 Mtl 832 22 Alex Steen's Old Man - 1979 Winn 817 23 Kovie - 2001 Atl 816 24 Milan Hejduk - 1994 Que 805 25 Henrik Zetterberg - 1999 Det 786 26 Alexei Yashin - 1992 Ott 781 27 Pavel Bure - 1989 Van 779 28 Pavol Demitra - 1993 Ott 768 29 Vinny Prospal - 1993 Phil 765 30 Marian Gaborik - 2000 Minn 751 31 Olli Jokinen - 1997 LA 750 32 Bobby Holik - 1989 Hart 747 33 Miroslav Satan - 1993 Edm 735 34 Alexei Zhamnov - 1990 Winn 719 35 Martin Straka - 1992 Pitt 717 36 Peter Nedved - 1990 Van 717 37 Ziggy Palffy - 1991 NYI 713 38 Robert Lang - 1990 LA 703 39 Evgeni Malkin - 2004 Pitt 702 40 Kent Nilsson - 1976 Atl 686 41 Willie Nylander's Pa - 1991 Hart 679 42 Jozef Stumpel - 1991 Bos 677 43 Ulf Dahlen - 1985 NYR 655 44 Igor Larionov - 1985 Van 644 45 Anton Stastny - 1979 Que 636 46 Papa Smurf Naslund - 1979 Mtl 634 47 Esa Tikkanen - 1983 Edm 630 48 Robert Reichel - 1989 Cgy 630 49 Martin Rucinsky - 1991 Edm 612 50 Anze Kopitar - 2005 LA 610 51 Thomas Vanek - 2003 Buff 608 52 Michal Pivonka - 1984 Wash 599 53 Dmitri Kristich - 1988 Wash 597 54 Thomas Gradin - 1976 Chi 593 55 Martin Havlat - 1999 Ott 593 56 Radek Dvorak - 1995 Fla 590 57 Patrik Sundstrom - 1980 Van 588 58 Dainius Zubrus - 1996 Phil 584 59 Petr Klima - 1983 Det 573 60 Nik Backstrom - 2006 Wash 572 61 Sergei Samsonov - 1997 Bos 571 62 Bengt-Ake Gustafsson - 1978 Wash 555 63 Martin Erat - 1999 Nash 545 64 Viktor Kozlov - 1993 SJ 537 65 Tomas Holmstrom - 1994 Det 530 66 Radim Vrbata - 1999 Colo 527 67 Ales Hemsky - 2001 Edm 526 68 Jere Lehtinen - 1992 Minn 514 69 Alexander Semin - 2002 Wash 513 70 Valeri Kamensky - 1988 Que 501 71 Mikko Koivu - 2001 Minn 500 72 Tomas Plekanec - 2001 Mon 499 73 Radek Bonk - 1994 Ott 497 74 Marco Sturm - 1996 SJ 487 75 Michal Handzus - 1995 STL 483 76 Nik Antropov - 1998 Tor 465

That’s right.

0 for 75.

The Leafs have literally never [by which I mean, “literally” and “never”] drafted a young, top-end European Forward scoring talent. Neither Russian, Swedish, Finnish, Czech or Slovakian.

Which is why any Leafs or media hockey talk type who actually argues that the Leafs are wasting too many top draft picks on high-scoring, little Europeans… is just batty.

And not “batty” in a good, Jose Bautista, home-run-trot kinda way.

More like “batty” in a Jose Canseco, ‘roid rage kinda way.

Which is why I think it’s such good news that Shanahan came in, and changed the Leafs strategy, from Year One, to draft more heavily from that European and Russian talent pool. Even better, to target high-end talent — not grinders, not bottom pairings, not bottom six.

Okay, maybe you just plain don’t want Europeans on the Leafs roster. But let’s be clear that there’s a cost to holding to this kind of strategy.

For instance, we’ve all heard how Don Cherry himself tried that hard core “No Europeans” strategy on his OHL Ice Dogs.

And only won 27 games out of 272.

That’s real world evidence, and it’s worth paying attention to, but some will say, “it’s just the OHL.” So how about we do a simple, practical, Toronto vs. Detroit draft comparison? Below are two rosters.

Each is made up of 25 years worth of draft picks:

The Blue one [naturally] on the right [naturally] follows Don and the Leafs’ strategy. It’s 100% made up of first round picks, each kid from Canada and the US. Each pick shown is an actual Leaf pick. So nothing made up or fictional here. The Orange list is Detroit’s. Only it has no first round picks; just second round or later. But all are from Europe and Russia, and, again, each pick was a real pick.

Now the Leaf roster, which is made up entirely of first round picks, should win this by a mile, right?

You tell me which drafting strategy you like.

Drafting: Detroit vs Toronto

DETROIT TORONTO NICK LIDSTROM 53 MORGAN RIELLY 5 SERGEI FEDOROV 74 NAZEM KADRI 7 PAVEL DATSYUK 171 BRAD BOYES 24 HENRIK ZETTERBERG 210 GRANT MARSHALL 23 V'MIR KONSTANTINOV 221 SCOTT THORNTON 3 SLAVA KOZLOV 45 DRAKE BEREHOWSKY 10 TOMAS HOLMSTROM 257 CARLO COLAIACOVO 17 GUSTAV NYQUIST 121 STUART PERCY 25 TEEMU PULKKINEN 111 LUKE SCHENN 5 TOMAS TATAR 60 ROB PEARSON 12 VALTTERI FILPPULA 95 LANDON WILSON 19 TOMAS FLEISCHMANN 63 BRANDON CONVERY 8 JIRI HUDLER 58 JEFF WARE 15 JOHAN FRANZEN 97 STEVE BANCROFT 21 PETR MRAZEK 141 ERIC FICHAUD 16 TOMAS JURCO 35 TYLER BIGGS 22 MATTIAS JANMARK 79 FREDERIK GAUTHIER 21

That single chart spells out – in as brutal a manner as I can imagine – the central difference between us and Detroit over the last 25 years.

Detroit’s draft picks produced, while ours plopped.

And that is a hard fact.

There isn’t a hockey fan alive who wouldn’t prefer to coach, or watch, the team in the orange list. Seriously, even with Rielly and Kadri, I couldn’t watch that team in the right list.

Here’s another fact. When the Leafs actually did use their first round picks on Europeans, they’ve done way better. Kenny Jonsson. Alex Steen. Tuukka Rask. Nik Antropov. Jiri Tlusty [and Luca Cereda – lost to a heart ailment]. Okay, I was never a big fan of either Antropov or Tlusty, but just compare those results to our results in the list on the right above.

Our best draft in 20 years? 2006. The year the Leafs went heavily into Europe, and got Tlusty [meh], but also Komarov and Kulemin and Stalberg [and Reimer!].

So the Leafs haven’t even been able to read the evidence of their own draft results.

Now add Shanahan back in. For him, there’s nothing theoretical about those lists. He was there, as a player in the dressing room, to welcome and then play alongside Pavel Datsyuk and Zetterberg, Holmstrom, Kronwall, Franzen, Hudler, and the rest.

Which is why he set aside all the blah-blah-blah from Toronto’s hockey media, and changed our draft strategy even before he’d hired any new staff.

***

Wherein I want my MHL

Now, just before we jump to the 2015 draft and Mark Hunter’s arrival, there’s one more piece of Shanahan’s draft strategy to pry loose [beyond the fact that he wants and needs high-skill kids, and isn’t afraid to draft smaller anymore].

Shanahan’s strategy also takes advantage of the fact that a lot of NHL executives continue – even today – to undervalue European and Russian talent.

Sure, each team has their reasons. They prefer bang/crash hockey players, or they’re worried about the “Russian factor,” or they say they don’t have the money to scout there.

But if you’re Brendan Shanahan, you don’t give a rat’s why teams stay away. All you know is that as long as other teams continue to under scout, under draft or undervalue the high-skill European and Russian kids, that’s great news for you.

Because as long as other teams undervalue European and Russian high-skill kids, you can get better ones, with later picks, than you otherwise would.

Amplifying this is the fact that a top-end skill kid playing in North America likely gets scouted 10 times more than in Europe, and 100 times more than a Russian kid. Because our kids get scouted by NHL teams, independent scouting agencies, the media, bloggers, fans, you name it. And their every move is taped, YouTubed, gif’ed [hard “g”] or vined.

Compare that to all the Russian Junior [MHL] games you’ve seen recently.

None, right?

Of course, some parts of Europe are becoming better-scouted. For instance, more Swedes were drafted per capita than kids from Ontario last year.

But Russia isn’t well-scouted. The MHL isn’t. Russia has 14 times the population of Sweden, and still wins more World Championships, but has fewer kids picked.

That tilt away from Russia is why top-end talent Vladimir Tarasenko fell to #16, Evgeny Kuznetsov to #26, Nikita Kucherov to #58, and Artemi Panarin was available as a low-cost Free Agent.

So Brendan Shanahan will be spending more time looking for his kids where the other teams aren’t. In Europe, and in particular, Russia and the surrounding region.

Of course, the Leafs will face other competitors besides Detroit when it comes to capturing that talent. Old team-mate Stevie Yzerman has been building Tampa Bay up on similar lines of speed, skill and Europeans. And he’s gotten plenty of them, on the cheap — Kucherov and Nesterov were late picks from Russian Jr., Ondrej Palat came at #208, and Sustr was an undrafted free agent.

The opportunities won’t come entirely for free to Shanahan, but every time the Leafs pick up another undervalued European player – through the draft, waivers, free agency or a trade – the rebuild accelerates.

This European drafting thing of Shanahan’s?

It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.

**

Okay. Fast-forward to this year’s draft.

With Shanahan having hired Mark Hunter and so many OHL guys to help out, we all figured that every pick was gonna be from within 90 miles of Toronto.

Well, hello everybody being wrong [me included].

Because this time with Mark Hunter fully on-board, Shanahan’s Leafs went out and basically filled their chariots with high-end young European talent, picking up four more, including two amazing young puck-handlers:

The surprise third Round Latvian pick Martins Dzierkals [out of precisely that less-scouted Russian Junior league, the MHL].

And Dmytro Timashov, who wasn’t spied this past year in the Q, but the previous year, 2014. When Shanahan and Thommie Bergman were watching his teammate, some guy named “Nylander.”

Both Dzierkals and Timashov are smaller players, but both look like strong late round picks. Certainly as good as Detroit made.

But in total, over the 2014 and 2015 drafts, Brendan Shanahan took seven Europeans, and just four Canadians.

European vs Canadian Picks

Europe Canada 2015 Martins Dzierkals Latvia 2015 Mitch Marner OHL 2015 Jesper Lindgren Sweden Travis Dermott OHL Dmytro Timashov Ukraine-Swe Andrew Nielsen W Nikita Korostelev Russia Stephen Desrocher OHL 2014 William Nylander Can-Swe 2014 None n/a 2014 Rinat Valiev Tatarstan Pierre Engvall Sweden

It’s not an accident, folks.

It’s part of the plan. The Shana-plan.

Now, DON’T get me wrong.

Shanahan’s top drafting territory is still Canada, and he’s aiming to get skilled Canadian kids any way he can.

But, as we saw, it’s damned tough sledding trying to find any truly high-end North American talent that 29 other teams haven’t already scouted to death.

Teams aren’t giving up first round picks for free anymore.

When you see a super-talented Canadian kid, they cost you a top round pick.

Nonetheless, when Shanahan can get an astonishing, world-class puck-handling talent like a Mitch Marner – from Ontario – he’s going to take it. Like he said:

“When there’s only one potato left on the plate, my fork’s already in it.”

The job of Mark Hunter and the other Canadian scouts is to scout Canada to such a depth, and with such penetration, that they can come up talent that 29 other teams are underrating, undervaluing. In Year One, with Dermott and Nielsen — who’ve looked great — they appear to have done really well.

But the days where a kid like a Schenn or a Biggs or a Gauthier had an automatic advantage, just because they were bigger, or from North America?

Those days are done. Done like dinner, as the Tiger used to say.

With Shanahan and Babcock’s focus on picking kids who’ll be talented at puck possession — and as long as Europe and Russia continue to be less well-scouted — you’d be smart to place a good-sized side bet on the Leafs drafting more Russians, Swedes and assorted other Europeans than they have been. A lot more.

Swinns and Fedes, Don. Swinns and Fedes.

Better get used to ‘em.

**

Oh yeah. A quick word to Don, Don Cherry.

It’s true that Nick Ritchie could end up being better than William Nylander. That could happen. It’s hard for anyone to say. But last year, skinny Willie Nylander somehow out-scored Nick Ritchie 10 to 1 at the WJC. Then, the poor little Swede mustered up enough courage to come over to the AHL, and did very well there, too. He even put on 20 pounds. Of muscle. Again this year, he’s running at least as well as Ritchie—and at a position more important than wing.

So how about a new, slightly more humble, fairer Coach’s Commentary this Fall. Like…

“WAY TO GO, WILLIE BOY!!! TWO THUMBS UP!!!”

Read the rest of the series here: