The silver lining to the end of the Red Wings’ playoff streak comes now. After three consecutive years of first round playoff exits, and with a roster desperately in need of new blood, missing the playoffs offered the Red Wings a chance to finally begin what the team needed the most: a rebuild.

That’s where this week’s NHL draft comes in. Armed with 11 picks in 2017, the Red Wings are poised to have many opportunities to snag quality prospects and bolster their organizational depth. Who knows? With a little luck, the team could pluck a future star to propel Detroit back to their winning ways.

But how should Red Wings brass proceed? With so many picks, and a number of key organizational needs, how should the Wings approach the draft?

Here, we’ll turn to the data to detail the two courses of action that are available to the Red Wings and settle on the best path for the team at the draft on June 23rd.

Let’s dig in.

The Basics

After a flurry of moves at the trade deadline – including the selling-off of defenseman Brendan Smith and forwards Thomas Vanek, Steve Ott, and Tomas Jurco – the Red Wings are flush with 11 picks at the draft.

* larger image can be found here, courtesy of Capfriendly.com

The slew of picks includes the ninth overall selection, three picks in round three, and two picks in round five.

In order to quantify the overall value of players that we should expect the Red Wings to draft, we need a system of draft pick valuation. Michael Schuckers, professor of statistics at St. Lawrence University, has done tremendous work in analyzing what a draft pick is really “worth.” His studies have examined the statistics (i.e. time-on-ice, goals, assists, etc.) that players drafted at various pick slots have historically amassed. You can read more about this work here.

The tl;dr version is that the first few selections are very valuable and the drop-off in expected draft pick values is steep:

The first pick is worth 1000 “points,” where 1000 is an arbitrary number meant as a benchmark. The second pick is worth only ~900, the third is worth ~800 points, and so on. Near the end of the first round, the expected value of a pick levels off. The 25th pick, near the end of round one, has almost the same value as the 32nd pick, which is the start of round two.

So, how do the Red Wings’ picks stack up?

The first takeaway here is that the Red Wings have a lot of picks. Research shows that, on average, approximately one in four draft picks go on to make the NHL and play 100 games or more. A team that has only its own seven draft picks should expect to draft one or two future NHL regulars each draft. Based on this, the Red Wings should expect to find two 100-gamers this draft and perhaps a third.

Second, although the Red Wings don’t have one of the top few choices, the extra mid- and late-round choices cobble together to make for a strong overall expected value. This slew of picks comes at the right time, as the Red Wings’ 2017-18 roster remains one of the league’s oldest, on average.

This graph plots each team’s average roster age heading into the 2017-18 season (as those rosters stand today) against the overall expected value each team is expected to accumulate at the draft.

The Red Wings are one of the NHL’s oldest squads, ranking fifth oldest in the league behind only the Senators, Sharks, Penguins and Kings (note: the Vegas Golden Knights inclusion is pre-expansion draft with only Russian-import Vadim Shipachyov and draft choices).

The good news in Detroit is that the team owns the fifth highest expected pick value, trailing behind only the owners of the top three draft choices and the Arizona Coyotes. With an aging roster in need of an influx of youth, the Red Wings’ tremendous expected pick value and the sheer quantity of picks offer the opportunity to infuse youth into the organization.

The Red Wings have a lot of picks, excellent overall expected pick value, and an obvious need to graduate some younger players to the NHL roster while filling in the organization’s prospect pipeline.

So, what should the team do at the draft to maximize these picks?

There are three options:

Option A – Capitalize on quantity

As already touched on, teams tend to find eventually NHL regulars (that is, players that eventually play 100 NHL games or more) with about one in every four choices. These players usually come from the highly valuable early first round picks.

In recent history, some teams have been a little better (and some, a little worse) than this average.

*to view the larger, interactive view of this chart, please click here.

A few teams jump off the chart.

Between 2000 and 2013, the Vancouver Canucks have really struggled at the draft, managing to find eventual NHL regulars with about 18 percent of their draft picks, well below the league average of ~26 percent. The Columbus Blue Jackets and Buffalo Sabres have done the best job of identifying eventual NHLers, hitting on about one-third of their draft choices.

The Red Wings, for their part have been an average drafting club.

So, a very reasonable option for the team is also a simple option – use the picks, count on average drafting, and add three future NHL regulars to the organizational prospect pipeline.

Option B – Look to trade up

An increasingly popular draft strategy in recent years is the trade down, where a team flips its slightly higher draft pick with another team’s lower pick, acquiring an additional choice later in the draft in exchange for dropping down. The Toronto Maple Leafs showed off this strategy well a couple of years ago, turning their 24th overall choice into three middle round draft choices.

This strategy usually makes sense because draft pick values from one pick to the next are not significantly different by the end of the first round and on.

However, the Red Wings have an unusually high number of picks this year. In fact, after the first round, only the Carolina Hurricanes and the New Jersey Devils have as much expected value in picks.

In a draft generally considered to be without a generational talent, weak overall, and without depth, the Red Wings are interestingly well-positioned to capitalize if other teams feel apathetic about the middle of the first round. With a second round choice and a quartet of fourth round choices to dangle, the Red Wings might consider zigging while other teams are zagging out of the muddy middle in round one.

If the Red Wings were to find a trade partner to get into the teens or early-20s in the draft, here’s who they may be choosing from:

*large, interactive view here.

The above ranks were compiled by aggregating a variety of the most popular draft ranking services. You can read that original piece by Jeremy Davis here.

The colored bars represent the typical first round tiers based, again, on Schuckers’ expected values. Nolan Patrick and Nico Hischier, represent the top tier, Gabe Vilardi and Casey Mittelstadt form tier two, etc. For Red Wings fans, this compilation mock draft has the team selecting Canadian defenseman Cale Makar, though Cody Glass, Michael Rasmussen, Klim Kostin and other notables are expected to be available in this tier as well.

The darkest red bar shows the fifth value tier in round one, from pick 16-30 or so. This is the area where, due to uncertainty about the prospect quality in this draft, teams may be willing to consider moving out of their spot to secure a couple of selections a little lower in the draft. If so, the Wings are in a position to capitalize.

The Red Wings, flush with many later round picks, should look to pounce if this situation develops. Players with some name value like Callan Foote, Kailer Yamamoto, Nick Suzuki, Nic Hague, and Maxime Comtois may still be available here.

Again, the idea of trading into this portion of the draft is counter to general best practices. With expected pick values leveling off by late round one, it is usually wisest for teams to slide down and acquire extra picks, increasing the team’s chances of finding an eventual NHLer. But, because the Red Wings are so uniquely positioned with 11 picks, the team can afford to zig while the others zag.

Some concluding thoughts…

With an aging roster taking its first taste of a playoffs-free off-season, it’s time for the Red Wings to make a rebuilding push. With 11 picks at the draft, the team has options. They could play the odds, draft a slew of prospects, and count on unearthing a few eventual roster pieces.

But the better option is to trade up while others are sliding down. This draft has been repeatedly slammed for lacking top-end talent and depth. While that may be true, solid NHLers emerge from every draft, not always from the players predicted to have the most future impact in pre-draft mock-ups.

The Red Wings are uniquely positioned to do a little of both. They can remain flexible and willing to pounce if a mid- or late-first round selection becomes available, dealing from their position of strength (pick quantity) to add a little extra pick quality. It’s this sort of high-risk, high-reward behavior that might help propel the Red Wings as they look to infuse youth throughout the organization.