NHL Draft History Stats (2004-2024)

[FLPensFan]

So, I've completed the first part of my spreadsheet on NHL Draft. I've gone from the 2000 draft (started here because other than VGK and SEA, all other teams were in the league here) to last year's draft in 2024.

If you have questions like who had the most picks in X round, who got the most games played or points by X round, who drafted the most players from X team, etc, you can ask on this post and I'll try to post the results.

I'm currently working on a formula to try and measure draft pick success, taking into account where a player was picked, how many NHL games they played, and how much production they had at the NHL level. Eventually, my plan is to move this out of a local Excel copy and onto Google Sheets where it can be shared more broadly.

For today's post, I wanted to take a look at some basic stats from the first round of the draft from 2000-2024. Most of these stats that I am posting are out of 30 teams, as VGK and SEA have very few drafts under their belt to date. With that, the interesting stats of the first round:

--The Penguins have the least amount of draft picks during this time period, with only 17 first round picks. ARZ/UTA has the most with 34, twice as many as the Penguins.

--Out of 737 total first round picks during this time period, 99 players have never played in an NHL game (13.4%). If I exclude the last 3 draft years (24, 23, 22), that number drops to 39 players (5.3%). Out of their 17 drafts, the Penguins had only 2 players never to play an NHL game...Brayden Yager (too soon) and Angelo Esposito.

--Of the Penguins 17 first round picks, 5 have played over 1000 games, 4 have played between 400 to 750 games, and 4 have played between 100 to 250 games. 2 players have over 1000 points and 5 players have between 189 to 259 points.

--Of the Penguins 17 1st round picks, 5 are centers, 4 are RWs, 7 are defensemen, and 1 goalie. These are their positions at the time of being drafted.

--The league average during this timeframe for Games Played by these first round picks is 384.45 games. The team with the highest Games Played average...is the Penguins at 524.76 Games Played average. 2nd place is Carolina at 495.15, and 3rd place is Washington with 487.72 Games Played average. The worst team in this stat is Dallas at 281.43 Games Played average over their 23 first round picks.

--The league average during this timeframe for Points by these first round selections is 199.14. The team with the highest Points total per first round pick is...the Penguins at 292.76 points per first round pick. The worst team is again Dallas at 95.78. Washington is 2nd behind Pittsburgh at 275.24 points per first round pick. Washington is first overall in total points by first round picks with 7982 total points. The Penguins are 18th with 4977 total points.

That's all for now. Tomorrow, I'll try to post some similar stats on the 2nd round.

[BigMcK]

First thought after reading this, yah, you kinda are good at pulling together stats. Great job.

To clarify the results, of the 17 Penguins picks, any one of the 17 players may never have actually played for the Penguins, safe to say? In other words, the player was drafted by Pittsburgh, then was traded to another team where they established league tenure and points? Which would make sense to keep the dynasty alive during the Cup years, trade youth for the good of the dynasty.

[FLPensFan]

First thought after reading this, yah, you kinda are good at pulling together stats. Great job.

Thanks. I try.

To clarify the results, of the 17 Penguins picks, any one of the 17 players may never have actually played for the Penguins, safe to say? In other words, the player was drafted by Pittsburgh, then was traded to another team where they established league tenure and points? Which would make sense to keep the dynasty alive during the Cup years, trade youth for the good of the dynasty.

Yeah, that is a safe assumption. There's nothing showing in basic data that is going to break down if that player actually played for the drafting team or not.

Of the Penguins 17 1st round picks, the only one that never played a game for Pittsburgh was Joe Morrow. He played 57 games for WBS before he was traded with a 5th for Brendan Morrow and a 3rd. BTW, that 3rd became Jake Guentzel.

Then you have guys like Orpik, Armstrong, Whitney, Staal, Fleury, Maatta, Bennett, Despres and Pouliot who all started in Pittsburgh but went elsewhere.

[Puck-Lurker]

As a qualifier to these numbers, they include drafting Malkin at #2 and Crosby at #1 in '04 and '05. Those guys do push some of the statistics in a big way.

[FLPensFan]

As a qualifier to these numbers, they include drafting Malkin at #2 and Crosby at #1 in '04 and '05. Those guys do push some of the statistics in a big way.

Sure, but all of the dominate teams of the last 20 years are going to have some of those guys.

[Puck-Lurker]

As a qualifier to these numbers, they include drafting Malkin at #2 and Crosby at #1 in '04 and '05. Those guys do push some of the statistics in a big way.

Sure, but all of the dominate teams of the last 20 years are going to have some of those guys.

Oh for sure, just wanted to throw that in there for reference

[100565]

Nice!

Can you easily do last 4-13 years of drafts?

[FLPensFan]

Adding this here from another thread for reference....

It would be hard to judge multiple GMs over a 10 year period because I'm sure GMs change over that time period. But we could do something very similar. First, if you want to look at a 10 year period, I would say look at 2011 to 2020. The 2021-2024 drafts still don't have a lot of players that have made the NHL yet. For example, in 2020, 79 players out of 208 have played at least 1 NHL game. From 2021-2024 drafts (4 years of drafting), only 98 players have played at least 1 game...out of 870 total picks.

So, let's look at some numbers from 2011 to 2020 drafts, 10 years of drafting. We can identify the best teams and then do some research as to who was the GMs during that period, and if we see something like we did with Rutherford to Francis, where Francis pulled a big part of the weight behind that success.

--From 2011 to 2020, 2069 players were drafted. Of those, 1015 players played at least 1 NHL game. 49.06%
--From 2011 to 2020, the top 5 teams with the most picks were DET(87), CHI(83), TOR(80), CAR(78) and ARZ(77)
--The bottom 5 teams in picks were PIT(55), WSH(57), BOS(59), CBJ(62), and NYI(65). (Vegas comes in at 34, but they don't have a full 10 years of drafting)
--The top 3 teams in draft pick hit rate (where a hit is playing at least 1 NHL game) are CBJ (66.13%), OTT (65.71%) and PHI (60.27%)
--That's pretty impressive for CBJ to be near the bottom in amount of picks, but also hit on the highest success rate. OTT is middle of the pack in # of picks, and PHI is bottom of the top 10.
--The worst 3 teams in terms of single game hit rate are DET (34.5%), MIN (40.9%), and TOR (42.5%).
--Pretty bad for DET and TOR. DET had the most picks over that period and had the least amount of success, based on 1 NHL game or more as success. TOR was 3rd in total picks and wasn't much better.
--PIT comes in at 45.5% success rate, which appears to be the top end of the bottom 3rd. There are 8 teams including the Penguins only separated by 1.5% or less.

OK, so now, let's move the scale a bit, and let's look at which teams drafted the most players to play at least 100 NHL games.
--Top 5 teams with players drafted to play 100 or more NHL games...BUF(26), CAR(25), CBJ(25), LAK(24), ANA(23), TB(23)
--The 5 worst teams with fewest to play 100 or more NHL games....COL(13), VAN(14), NYR(15), MIN(15), NYI(15)
--PIT is pretty close to the bottom at 17 total players to play 100 NHL games or more.
--CBJ is the king of drafting, with a low amount of picks, the highest rate to play at least 1 NHL game, and tied for 2nd highest to play 100 or more games.
--If we look at hit rate percentage, CBJ (40.3%), BUF(35.6%), ANA(35.4%), LAK(33.8%) and WSH(33.3%)
--PIT at 30.9% comes in as 9th best.
--The bottom 5 teams in hit rate % are COL(19.7%), VAN(20.6%), NYR(21.7%), CHI(21.7%), and NYI(23.1%)

So, your top drafters of the last 10 years are Columbus and LA seem to be the dominate top 2.
The bottom end is Detroit and Chicago.

For Columbus, 3 years in the beginning for Scott Howson, the other 7 years were Kekalanen as GM.
For LA, 6 years of Dean Lombardi as GM, the other 4 were Rob Blake.
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[BigMcK]

Glad that you steered this back to the proper thread.

After reviewing the numbers, a case could be made that a good draft record doesn't guarantee Stanley Cup results, just based on the Blue Jackets numbers. If a team isn't drafting 1 - 5, it seems best to trade the pick for a player that addresses future needs, or for a known commodity to bolster a current need.

It is such a crapshoot drafting a teenager and then banking on them to actually make the roster and then to produce at the professional level. Brian Lawton always comes to mind as a 1st pick overall, with tons of praise heaped upon him, who failed to live up to the hype.

In essence, a 16th first round pick holds little draft impact?

[FLPensFan]

Glad that you steered this back to the proper thread.

After reviewing the numbers, a case could be made that a good draft record doesn't guarantee Stanley Cup results, just based on the Blue Jackets numbers. If a team isn't drafting 1 - 5, it seems best to trade the pick for a player that addresses future needs, or for a known commodity to bolster a current need.

It is such a crapshoot drafting a teenager and then banking on them to actually make the roster and then to produce at the professional level. Brian Lawton always comes to mind as a 1st pick overall, with tons of praise heaped upon him, who failed to live up to the hype.

In essence, a 16th first round pick holds little draft impact?

Over that same timespan, 2011-2020, the top 5 players drafted 15th to 31st overall, based on total points:

1 - Pastranak, 25th overall, 795 points
2 - JT Miller, 15th overall, 678 points
3 - Larkin, 15th overall, 556 points
4 - Kyle Connor, 17th, 554 points
5 - Hertl, 17th, 530 points

With all that success, the best player CBJ drafted in that 15-30 range was Sonny Milano, 16th overall, 137 points.
The 3 best players they drafted in the first round over that span were Pierre-Luc Dubois (386 points), Zach Werenski (361 points), and Alex Wenneberg (358p)

[BigMcK]

Which then opens another chapter on the draft.

CBJ scores high on drafting players for their roster, and those players aren't producers, but because they need to fill out a roster each season, they gain NHL tenure.

Such a crapshoot...

[Puck-Lurker]

I was bored and started looking at our 7th round picks since 2011; cutoff point being anyone drafted since Scott Wilson.

2013: Josephs
2014: Taylor
2015: Pavlychev
2017: Reilly
2020: Puustinen, Airola
2021: Laatsch, Tankov, McCleary
2022: Järventie, Kangas
2024: Harding, Swanson

13 picks, of which one played in the NHL and two more were given contracts by the org. Figure that one of these (maybe Puustinen, maybe one of the recent signings plays 100 or more games in the NHL. That would already be above the league average (~5.5%), though not by a great deal.

[100565]

Currently, the top 100 players with the most points this season and draft selection:

71 players: Round 1
10 players: Round 2
10 players: Round 3
1 players: Round 4
2 players: Round 5
4 players: Round 6
No Round 7
2 undrafted players

Regarding the 71 out of 100 point leaders drafted in first round:
27 players: picks 1-5
16 players: picks 6-10
13 players: picks 11-15
7 players: picks 16-20
4 players: picks 21-25
4 players: picks 25-30 (no one drafted with pick 31 or 32 in top 100)

Top 100 in points has only 11 D included.

High level talent is overwhelmingly found in the first round. The higher the pick in the first round, the more likely of great success.

In this year's draft, to me, it seems like picks 1-4 are most likely to be high level talent. picks 5-7 are somewhat likely, but less likely than picks 1-4.

[Puck-Lurker]

Oh for sure, 7th rounders that end up playing are fringe roleplayers, niche fits and plain unlikely by any reasoning. The drafting in that round has been good enough, relative to what it actually is, which is to say, not that much.


Latching on to your breakdown of point leaders; say the pick we land is 6-10, the pick we get from NYR is anywhere between 11 and 20.

27 players: picks 1-5 (27/5 = 5.4) -- we moved up in the draft to get top5.

16 players: picks 6-10 (16/5 = 3.2) -- kept our pick
20 players: picks 11-20 (20/10 = 2) -- kept NYR pick, which ended in 11-20 range and was given to PIT

Now, let's say, only one of those picks, our own and Rags pick has to hit on a player in the top 100 in the points race. We use both picks, instead of trading up for a top 5 pick.

3.2 + 2 = 5.2 and 5.2 ~ 5.4 // about even.

Some quick and dirty math but it checks out.