My last post looked at how the AHL’s growth as the prime developmental league for the NHL. However, in that analysis we are strictly looking at AHL graduates as one big group within a larger group of NHL players. This got me thinking more about how each NHL team individually utilizes its AHL club. So at the beginning of the NHL season I went through each team’s roster looking up each players career statistics and each team they’ve played for. To make this search a little more thorough, I kept track of how many players from each team have played in the AHL, how many have played with the AHL affiliate of their current NHL team, how many players were either drafted by or signed their first pro contract with their current NHL team, and whether each player spent their amateur career in juniors, college, or European clubs. The whole idea of this analysis is to try and unravel a little bit about each club’s team-building strategy and eventually expanding this to look at which teams have sustained the most success with their strategies.

2016-17 AHL to NHL Team Statistics

Team Number of Players on Roster Number of AHL Alumni Number played with AHL affiliate Number drafted by current team Number played Juniors Number played College Number played in European Leagues Anaheim Ducks 23 17 7 11 13 7 5 Arizona Coyotes 24 18 9 12 21 3 3 Boston Bruins 23 23 14 11 10 11 5 Buffalo Sabres 23 17 9 10 12 8 3 Calgary Flames 22 16 6 10 16 4 4 Carolina Hurricanes 23 19 8 10 8 8 9 Chicago Blackhawks 22 15 11 15 8 7 8 Colorado Avalanche 22 17 5 7 14 5 4 Columbus Blue Jackets 21 15 11 12 14 3 4 Dallas Stars 24 21 11 11 11 6 8 Detroit Red Wings 22 21 16 17 7 10 5 Edmonton Oilers 23 20 11 11 13 5 6 Florida Panthers 20 14 5 6 14 2 4 Los Angeles Kings 24 22 18 17 14 9 1 Minnesota Wild 22 22 13 10 10 9 4 Montreal Canadiens 22 18 9 12 11 7 4 Nashville Predators 24 23 17 13 10 5 10 New Jersey Devils 22 18 7 11 11 8 4 New York Islanders 23 20 9 12 17 3 4 New York Rangers 24 18 10 11 8 9 7 Ottawa Senators 22 20 15 14 16 5 1 Philadelphia Flyers 22 16 9 11 15 3 4 Pittsburgh Penguins 24 22 10 10 9 13 4 St. Louis Blues 24 18 11 13 12 6 7 San Jose Sharks 21 17 11 10 12 6 3 Tampa Bay Lightning 20 18 12 14 9 6 6 Toronto Maple Leafs 23 21 10 8 10 6 9 Vancouver Canucks 24 22 13 11 11 7 8 Washington Capitals 21 15 10 14 7 7 8 Winnipeg Jets 23 16 10 13 14 6 5

First, I will address some known problems with my data. First off, this data was taken within the first 10 games of the season. Because of this, there are some players included who may have been sent back to their junior teams who have never had a chance to play in the AHL. Secondly, not everyone plays in the AHL for the same reasons. While the vast majority of players are there to develop their skills as youngsters, some players are sent down for conditioning assignments when coming back from an injury. There are also cases like Sam Gagner, who never played in the minors until the Flyers sent him down last season for 9 games in more of a salary cap issue. Overall, though, I think we can get an idea of a team’s AHL usage despite these issues.

Overall, I am not as interested about how many players on a team have spent time in the AHL as I am about how many played for their current NHL team’s affiliate. This tells us how many players are actually homegrown talent, and which players were let go in some way by other teams. The top 5 teams in this category are below:

Nearly every player on each of these team’s rosters have played in the AHL, but more impressively these teams have a ton of homegrown talent. These teams also account for 4 Stanley Cups and 3 other Finals appearances over the past 10 seasons. I think it should seem pretty obvious that to sustain success over a long period of time, teams need to build their own team and utilizing your AHL affiliate is one of your primary means of doing this. These teams have been a perfect example of this, and while the Predators haven’t quite gotten there, they are certainly a very competitive team year in and year out. And what about the other end of this spectrum?

Over the past 10 seasons these teams have only combined for 1 Stanley Cup and 1 other Finals appearance. There are also many more years missing the playoffs in these teams over this period of time compared to the top 5 we just saw. And let’s pick on the Florida Panthers a little bit, because they would be dead last if Roberto Luongo didn’t play 3 games with the Louisville Panthers, who aren’t even around anymore, during the 2000-01 season. He’s basically had an entire career between his times in Florida, but technically he still falls in this category.

This would cause you to think that these teams relied more heavily on free agency to put their teams together, and in this age of the salary cap you just can’t build through free agency anymore. Yes, it is important to fill the holes and weaknesses that your team has and lacks, but building a team too much through free agency means you are going to overpay for most players, and therefore have less money to fill out the rest of your roster. By building a team through the draft and developing your own players, a team can take more of an advantage of lower salary entry level contracts in a player’s early years. But speaking of the draft, there are some players that teams acquire which simply skip that AHL step. These are mostly the league’s superstars who didn’t need that time to develop and were already among the best in the world when they were just 18, but also some players who spent their pre-NHL career in European leagues already playing with pros. Below are the top 6 teams (as 3 were tied at 14) who have the most players that they drafted, or signed their first pro contract with.

Notice that 3 of these teams were also included in the top 5 of playing with their current AHL affiliate, but in pop the Chicago Blackhawks, Washington Capitals, and Tampa Bay Lighting who have all been very successful in recent years. And again, comparing this with the bottom 9 (as 6 teams were tied at 10):

Now here we see both the Penguins and Sharks in this list, which represent last year’s Stanley Cup Final, but much of this list contains more missed playoff appearances than anything. Several of these teams are currently going through rebuilding processes, such as Toronto, Buffalo, and Carolina, and appear to be heading in the right direction developmental wise. But all of this shows that you to maintain success you need to constantly and continually find, keep, and develop your own prospects. The teams that have done this the best have achieved the most success from what we see in Chicago and Los Angeles. But this topic still requires further research to see who else is in this high class. I will continue looking into this topic as its something that has interested me over the years.