Flames 2013 Draft Scoring Analysis
10 years ago
– pic via flovalser
Now that the draft is over, let’s determine how the Flames did. There will be more through analysis on each player as we progress through the week and beyond – but for now, we can take a look at some scoring categories.
First, though, a small primer:
- PPP% – Power Play Points percentage. More even strength points is good for two reasons: PP time is highly variable (which means PP scoring is highly variable) and it’s a lot harder to score at even strength than it is on the PP, so these points have less overall value when projecting a player. Generally, I like to see a PPP% at 40% or lower in any player.
- TS% – Team Scoring percentage. The amount of offense the player contributes to in the games that he’s played in. 35% is a good starting point for high-end prospects.
- PA% – Primary Assist percentage. The amount of assists that are designated primary assists. A higher number here means the player is more involved in plays he’s setting up. Anecdotally, the last guy that touches the puck before the scorer generally has more to do with the goal than the 2nd last guy who touched the puck before the scorer. If this number is below 55% it gets worrying for me.
- NHLE – NHL Equivalency. See here for an explanation. For high-end prospects, an NHLE of about 40 is preferred.
Everyone is ranked by their NHLE.
Forwards
| GP | PPP% | TS% | PA% | PPG | NHLE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sean Monahan (OHL) | 58 | 48.7% | 40.6% | 68.1% | 1.34 | 33.1 |
| Emilé Poirier (QMJHL) | 65 | 20% | 32.4% | 55.3% | 1.08 | 26.5 |
| Morgan Klimchuk (WHL) | 72 | 50% | 39.4% | 62.3% | 1.05 | 26.0 |
| Tim Harrison (NEPSIHA) | 17 | N/A | 36.1%* | N/A | 1.76 | 10.1* |
Monahan’s splits, without context, could be somewhat worrying. With context, though, not so much. Being in on 40% of his team’s scoring is huge when he played as good of competition as he did. He also has a very high primary assist percentage, which means he’s the one creating the plays and doing the work. His high amount of PP points is likely attributable to the fact that the 67’s, being bad, didn’t score much (comparatively) at even strength. Thus, when taken in context with his TS% of 40, it’s not that bad. He was also a good ES point producer the year prior, so nothing to be worried about in my opinion. His NHLE is a bit low, but, once again, the team he played on was garbage and he played tough minutes.
Looking at Poirier’s numbers has me feeling a little better about this pick than I was beforehand. Really good EV/PP point split; when a guy scores 56 points at evens you know he’s doing something right. However, he had a tonne of secondary assists – not a huge deal, but you can understand why that, combined with his NHLE, made him a late first-rounder. I value the PP/EV split a lot, and he generated almost three shots per game.
Klimchuk is basically the exact opposite: good percentage of team scoring and primary assists, but really poor EV/PP point splits. A lot of that is attributable (like it is with Monahan) to his team not being able to outplay the opposition at even strength, and, as a result, the PP numbers are inflated. I’d be willing to bet Porier and Klimchuk also played pretty tough competition.
For Harrison, I had to guesstimate a little – his team scored 136 goals this season in 28 games (~4.86 per game) but Harrison only played 17. Thus, I took away the team’s GPG (times 11) from the 136, leaving us with 83 – which I then used to divide the 30 points Harrison had. For his NHLE, I used this article outlining the NHLE for Minnesota’s HS league, which I feel is pretty close to the NEPSIHA (Harrison’s league). Still, the results aren’t exactly encouraging – he’s a 6th rounder. I couldn’t find information that would’ve allowed me to calculate the two missing categories.
Defensemen
| GP | PPP% | TS% | PA% | PPG | NHLE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eric Roy (WHL) | 72 | 38.5% | 20.6% | 68.1% | 0.54 | 13.3 |
| Paul Gilmour (NCAA) | 38 | 38.5% | 12.4% | 66.6% | 0.34 | 11.5 |
| Rushan Rafikov (MHL) | 53 | 40% | 6.3% | 45.4% | 0.19 | 3.3 |
| Keegan Kanzig (WHL) | 70 | 0% | 3.2% | 0% | 0.1 | 2.5 |
I love the Eric Roy pick. I like the way the kid moves, he has gobs of offensive skill and it’s a lot easier to teach defense than it is to teach offense. Those splits are pretty nice, too. The only thing missing is a larger point total – but to that point, TJ Brodie’s NHLE in his draft year was 11 and he had many of the same concerns and skills Roy has as well. This was a great pick.
However, Kanzig was basically the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Nothing about the kid personally – but he’s a pylon and the offensive splits and stats confirm that. I just can’t understand why this pick was used on him here. At this point, it seems like the only thing going for him is his size, but that’s nada without skill. Aside: every point he had this season was a secondary assist at even strength.
Rafikov is in the same boat, but the pick is more excusable because it was in the 7th round. I don’t see anything there that would suggest he’s an NHLer in the future. I used this article to find an NHLE for the MHL.
Lastly, Gilmour has better stats than the previous two defensemen – but he’s also 20: this will be his sophomore season at Providence. I’d have to dig a little deeper to find some comparables but I’m not optimistic about his chances.
Conclusion
In the future, I see four of these guys developing to the point where they could be considered NHL players. Pretty obvious as to who. With the exception of the pick in round 3 with names I much preferred on the board, this was a pretty good draft. They got good players with 4 of their first 5 picks and I don’t think there were any players I’d specifically hoped the Flames would target after 136, so the last 3 picks are irrelevant in my eyes.
In fact, aside from not getting one of Cammaratta, Duclair, Yakimov, Slepyshev, Andrighetto, Bjorkstrand, Lipon, Houck, Muir or Subban with the 3rd rounder, the 1st rounders are the only picks I would have tinkered with. But the fact that decision making of that nature still exists in the front office is troubling for me.
So, yes, a good draft in concept – but the behaviours displayed by the Flames, once again, are somewhat worrisome. If you have any questions, put them in the comments and I’d be happy to answer them.
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