In my last article, I ranked each team by draft performance using every draft from 1990–2012. The teams were evaluated both on quantity (number of players reaching 160 GP per expected) and quality (average per-82 game point shares of players reaching 160 GP per expected). The major finding is that the quality metric is much more important than the quantity metric.

Before I look into what the good teams are doing differently, it might help to represent each team’s drafting history graphically, given that /r/hockey seemed to be much more interested in how their favourite team did, versus analyzing draft strategy in general.

The following is a series of plots where each player with over 160 GP is plotted by horizontally by overall pick and vertically by per 82-game point shares. The points are coloured and sized by GP. Large and red means a lot of games played, small and blue means not many. The grey curve is the expected per-82 game point shares of a player drafted at that position. Above the line are above-average successful picks.

EDIT: Another version of exactly the same thing using more recent data can be found here. TOR and CGY fans will prefer that one.

Pretty good, but not great. 2003 was a huge boost.

Includes WIN/PHX

Includes HFD

CGY ranks last in draft quality. Their recent drafting has been much better.

Includes QUE. Lots of late round value here.

Includes MNS. DAL was good during this time period.

DET was obscenely good over this time period, which is why they only had one pick better than 10th overall. They still managed to find excellent value in the later rounds.

EDM’s chart would look a lot better with McDavid, but there’s still way too little value generated here for the quality of picks they’ve had.

Second last in quality.

NJD was also very good during this time period.

NSH is really good at drafting defence.

Really bad first overall picks, but still good.

Crosby, Malkin, and Jagr do the heavy lifting for PIT’s quality rating.

STL is quantity over quality.

Toronto would be way better if this was recent data, but it’s not.

Includes ATL. Sorry Jets fans.

Excellent first round drafting. WSH ranks the highest by far in terms of quality.

This isn’t supposed to be overly analytical, but it is interesting to see the differences between where teams are finding value. Washington does very well in the first round, but not so much later. DAL and PHI are great in the late first round/early second round. DET, LAK, and NJD are good in the late rounds. CGY, CBJ, EDM, and FLA are good nowhere.

Notes

These charts measure quality only, not quantity. All of the draft picks that failed to reach 160 GP are not included.

Here is the quality/quantity chart again, coloured by P% from 96–97 to 17–18: