As we enter the home stretch driving toward the 2014 NHL Draft, we are going to hear a lot of chatter about the Best Player Available (BPA).
“Take the BPA!” you’ll hear from every quarter.
To which a chorus of rogue cheers always emerges: “Draft for Need!” — “We need to change the mix!” — “Draft for size!” — “We have too many like him already!” etc.
What this rather silly, circular exchange often reveals is that people really do not have a firm grip on what is actually implied by BPA.
What is the BPA
With the caveat that we are concerned only for the moment with the top of the top of the draft (the top 5 picks), what is meant by BPA?
First, with rare exception, the BPA is never a player of universal acclaim and fixed standing.
There are extremely few examples of players who can command the kind of iron-clad consensus required to be deemed the Best Player Available in toto, full stop, end of discussion, he just is, move on, try the meringue, sure it’s a weird soft looking but hard eating, flakey, highly eggy deal that you never quite took to, but this one is quite good.
Second, despite the implication of its nomenclature, the concept of the best player available is extraordinarily fungible.
There is no checklist, no set of attributes one can cross-reference, when it comes to deciding on who is the BPA. It is, to some degree, a floating signifier. It has no stable meaning or reference point. And, it is certain to be crammed full of the desires and biases of the persons claiming this or that player as the BPA.
For one person the player with the highest points per game may well be the BPA, for another the player with the greatest combination of size and speed. The permutations are endless.
Third, every team drafting in the top 5 drafts the BPA.
All 30 teams have their own scouting staffs. They have their own postulates, precepts, axioms, rules of thumb, etc. that guide and inform the compilation of their lists. No doubt some scouting staffs under the direction of management favor certain attributes (say, truculence) over others in deciding who the best players are. But, do not be deceived. That scouting staff genuinely believes that player to be the best player available under the guidance of their criteria.
So, What Do We Mean When We Say a Team Didn’t Draft the BPA?
We mean one of two things.
1. A team’s scouting staff, having compiled its list of the best players available, ignored its own ranking for one reason or another.
That is, a team may very well rank Player X higher than Player Y and yet for some apparently compelling reason drafted Player Y.
This would actually be a case of a team foregoing drafting the BPA in favor of “drafting for need,” or for some other reason. I suspect this rarely happens.
Here’s why: the team that values a particular “need” (say, truculence) highly is also likely to have incorporated that need into their overarching draft, development and NHL roster construction philosophy. It is highly probable that such a team would already have players who cohere to their core philosophy ranked very highly and those who don’t ranked lower. So, such a team would never have had another player pegged as the BPA.
Where this may actually take place, however, is where there is a difference of opinion between the scouting staff and management or ownership. Take the case (as rumored) of the Oilers 2012 draft with Yakupov. It is said that the scouting staff had compiled its list for draft day and deemed defenceman Ryan Murray (drafted 2nd OV by the Columbus Blue Jackets) the BPA. However, the scouting staff (for whatever reason) is said to have been over-ruled by either management or ownership and the Oilers took Nail Yakupov.
This rather narrow case (assuming it actually is what happened), would be one in which a team ignored its own list and did not take what it believed to be the BPA.
2. Fans, pundits, other teams, etc. with access to alternative lists, judge a team to have failed to take the BPA.
In this case, one is not suggesting a team took anyone other than whoever that team believed to be the BPA. One is saying, rather, on the basis of an alternative list, I believe the BPA was another player.
This is a key distinction that often gets missed in discussions about the BPA.
Teams always take who they believe to be the BPA (with the noted exception above). The fact that alternative beliefs concerning who the BPA is exist does not make this any less the case.
For you consideration
So, when you fervently insist that a team take the BPA, have some confidence that they will. They always do.
When you have a difference of opinion about who the BPA is, be sure to recognize that in almost every case everyone else does too.
The BPA is not a static, emblem of unanimity. It is moving target. It is as diverse as the folks deciding on who they prefer to dance with at the weekend barn social.
So, when hurling the imperative at someone (“always take the BPA!”), try to be clear about how you’ve come to decide this is the BPA for you and be sure to acknowledge the difference of opinion that exists on the matter.
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