Is Calgary’s drafting out-performing expected pick value?

Drafting in the National Hockey League is in many ways a crap-shoot. Teams gawk at teenagers from afar for 12 months, chat them up here and there, and generally attempt to gather as much useful information as they possibly can. Then they choose players for seven rounds and cross their fingers that some of them turn out.

A couple years ago, TSN’s Scott Cullen conducted an examination of draft picks to determine the expected value of picks. More precisely, how likely was it that a selection would be successful? Given the expected values of the various draft picks, how well have the Flames done recently when compared to those expected values?

For the sake of comparison, we’ve collected the draft picks made by Jay Feaster (2011-13) and Brad Treliving (2014-16) as general managers in order of their overall pick placements. Besides the usual information, we’ve included the likelihood that a player selected at that spot would hit 100 NHL games (noted as %100), as well as their NHL and AHL regular season games played with the Flames organization. (AHL games are included because I’m sympathetic to the “at least they played pro in the organization somewhere” argument for late-round picks.)

Three picks have hit 100 games without any weird qualifying statements: Sean Monahan, Sam Bennett and Johnny Gaudreau. Two of those guys are Feaster picks. If you allow for the games played by assets acquired with the player selection, then that figure bumps up to five with Markus Granlund/Hunter Shinkaruk and Laurent Brossoit/Ladislav Smid also qualifying. That means that three of the five picks made in 2011 resulted in 100+ NHL games played.

Four more selections seem like fair bets to hit 100 NHL games in the near future. Matthew Tkachuk is a lock to hit it early next season. If Rasmus Andersson cracks the Flames roster and plays 33 games, the Sven Baertschi pick hits 100 games. (If you focus on Andersson’s pick alone, he’s more of a toss-up figure.) If Alex Chiasson remains with the club, the Patrick Sieloff pick will hit 100 games next season. Finally, if Brett Kulak remains with the Flames he also seems like a safe bet to crack the NHL roster full-time and approach 100 games over the next few seasons.

Four more players seem almost equally likely to make it or not right now. Mark Jankowski, Oliver Kylington and Jon Gillies have all dipped their toe into the NHL pond, but aren’t quite yet far enough along that you can pencil them into the Flames roster for awhile. Tyler Wotherspoon is in a different situation, as he’s older than Kulak (who has played as many games) and seemingly could be on his way out of the organization.

There are a lot of players that, based on their age and stature within the organization, don’t seem like strong bets to hit 100 NHL games. Those players are Emile Poirier, Morgan Klimchuk, Mason McDonald, Hunter Smith, Austin Carroll, Keegan Kanzig and Ryan Culkin.

Eight players have either left the organization or headed to Europe, and therefore likely will not hit 100 NHL games anytime soon. Those players are Eric Roy, Pavel Karnaukhov, Tim Harrison, Coda Gordon, Matthew DeBlouw, Rushan Rafikov, Riley Bruce and John Gilmour.

Finally, it’s too soon to tell how a bunch of the 2014 (Hickey and Ollas Mattsson) 2015 (Mangiapane) and 2016 picks (everybody but Tkachuk) will do.

Let’s ignore the “too soon to tell” group, for obvious reasons. That leaves 20 players to judge Feaster’s drafting and nine players to judge Treliving’s drafting.

From Feaster’s crop, four picks resulted in 100 NHL games (or more) while another three seem like solid bets. That’s a roughly 35% success rate, which seems pretty solid. Treliving’s converted one pick at 100 games so far, with another seeming like a solid bet. That’s a 22% success rate. That said, 11 of Treliving’s picks are “too soon to tell” and so that success rate could go up – maybe even by a lot.

Under Darryl Sutter’s regime, the Flames’ drafting was actively bad. It’s definitely improved over the past decade, to the point where they seem to hit on their first round picks with regularity. During the period we examined, they had six selections that had a 50% (or higher) chance of hitting 100 NHL games; four of ’em have hit that mark or are good bets, while a few of their later, lower-percentage picks hit that mark. They’re a far cry from the best in the league in terms of their ability to turn junior talent into pro talent, but they seem to be on their way.