On Drafting CHL Players Late

A few weeks ago I had a good back and forth with a commenter here at The Union Blue regarding the Blue Jackets selection of Nick Moutrey in the 4th round of this year’s NHL draft. Now my contention was not that Nick Moutrey is not a good hockey player. I don’t contend to be intimately familiar with his game, as I have only seen him play via stream a couple of times over the last two years. Nor do I contend that Nick Moutrey will be a bust that won’t sniff the NHL. In fact, I think it’s quite the opposite. I really think he has a legit shot to be a player who sees ice time with the Blue Jackets. My contention is that Moutrey will likely see time in Columbus on the fourth line, or maybe the third line if he develops well. That isn’t a bad return on a 4th round pick. I just think it isn’t the ideal use of a 4th round pick.
So why isn’t a solid role player a good use of a mid-late round draft pick? Because depth players are available. Go take a look at the list of available UFA forwards still on the market. Guys who can fill out a bottom six are readily available. If none of them strike your fancy, find a team with a few too many forwards signed, and trade a mid-late round pick for one. The Red Wings currently have 14 forwards under contract, two RFA forwards, and want to bring Danny Cleary back; think they would give up Patrick Eaves or Drew Miller for a 4th rounder? At least you know for a fact that player can play a bottom six role on a playoff team.

So who should you take in the mid-late rounds of a draft? You should take a swing. Grab flawed players with top six potential if they can overcome their flaw. Grab a late bloomer. Find someone with huge numbers from an under the radar league. Don’t grab a 6’2″ player from the CHL who has already played two full years of junior hockey. That player will never be a top six player, and top six players are what you need to be successful in the draft. Drafting Jared Boll’s and Derek Dorsett’s in the mid to late rounds is fine, but to really win you need to find the occasional Henrik Zetterberg or Pavel Datsyuk.

So why can’t you find those players from the CHL? Well those three leagues (OHL, QMJHL, and WHL) are the most heavily scrutinized leagues in the world. There is probably at least one NHL scout at every single game. Certain games feature scouts from half the teams in the league. Someone like Nick Moutrey has had 147 chances to impress an NHL scout over the last two years. If any scouts thought the 6’2″, 207lb forward had a shot to be a top six forward, he wouldn’t have been available in the 4th round. You find the steals by grabbing a guy from Tier II Jr. A (in Canada) or from the lower European leagues. Those players might only get a handful of games in front of NHL scouts. A bad game with a few NHL scouts in attendance, and a guy might be written off. Now I’ve done a lot of talking here, and this has been my philosophy before I spent time researching this. Now that I’ve run through the data, I am even more certain this is the ideal route.

Onto the charts now. The first chart is a pretty simple breakdown of the total number of forwards drafted in the 4th to 7th rounds from either the CHL (OHL, QMJHL, WHL) and forwards drafted from anywhere else. I ran the totals going back 20 years, but dropped the last couple years, as there was no useful information there. The chart also includes the number of NHL forwards picked, and the number of top six forwards. NHL forwards were defined as players with 50 career games played for those draft in 2007-2012, or 100 career games played for players drafted in 1993-2006. Top 6 forwards are players with either one (2007-2012 draftees) or two (1993-2006 draftees) seasons of 60+ games played and at least 0.5 points per game (this is approximately the cut off for the 180 highest scoring forwards in the NHL each year).

So what does chart number one tell us? First off, the CHL has not produced a top 6 forward from rounds 4 through 7 in nine years. In that same time span, the rest of the world has produced six of them. In a more general sense, you are more likely to get an NHL player by drafting from the CHL, while also more likely to draft a top 6 forward by avoiding the CHL.

Of course these raw numbers don’t tell us that much. Those percentage figures look pretty darn close. This gets a lot more instructive when you actually look at the players drafted from each league. These next two charts show us exactly that. The first one contains all the 4th through 7th round CHL forward picks who became top 6 NHLers, while the second chart shows their non-CHL counterparts (along with their career games played, career points, and career points per game).

I could probably rest after those lists there and most of you would be convinced. The CHL list has really only one player I would describe as being a star (Savard), and a handful of guys I probably wouldn’t call top 6 players (Wellwood, Hunter, Kennedy, Belanger). The non-CHL list features arguably the five best players taken (Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Alfredsson, Hejduk, Benn), a few other legit top line players (Pavelski, Satan, Erat) and a whole host of very solid guys.

But a deeper look at those CHL shows why they were each available in the later rounds of the draft. Savard is small and was picked 91st overall, and the 91st pick is usually a 3rd rounder now. If he were drafted in a recent pick, he wouldn’t have even fit the criteria here. Same with Eric Daze, who went 90th overall back before the days of a 30 team NHL. Andrew Brunette was drafted as a 19 year old, a late bloomer who put up 260 points in the two seasons after his initial draft. Ryane Clowe is a late birthday guy (meaning he was 18 going on 19 in his draft year), and still had only played half a season in the QMJHL. He was a late bloomer who had only played 32 regular season games in the CHL when he was picked.

Next we have a whole slew of late bloomers, with Jan Hrdina, Ryan Callahan and Marek Svatos being picked after breaking out after being passed over in their first year of NHL draft eligibility. Matt Lombardi probably shouldn’t even count here. He was a 7th rounder by Edmonton, went unsigned, re-entered the draft and was a 3rd rounder. He’s another small guy, and another guy who broke out offensively after his first draft year. The final two guys I want to highlight individually are Scott Walker and Troy Brouwer, both of whom were picked after breaking out after going undrafted.

Pop quiz hotshot, what is generally the number one reason talented players get passed over? Size. Six of the players left unmentioned would be considered small (or at least on the smaller side) by NHL standards. This list includes Kris Versteeg, Darcy Tucker, Kyle Calder, Kyle Wellwood, Tyler Kennedy, and Eric Belanger. If you’ve been keeping track, we’ve now eliminated all but three players from the list. This leaves us with only Radim Vrbata, Brooks Laich,  and Trent Hunter as top six forwards over 6′ tall who were drafted in the 4th through 7th rounds. However, all three of them were CHL rookies in their draft year. Vrbata had 54 regular season games (plus 23 playoff games) in the QMJHL, Laich had 71 WHL regular season games (and 4 playoff games) under his belt, and Hunter had played 60 regular season (and 8 playoff games) in the WHL before his draft.

So that takes care of everyone. Since the 1993 draft there has been ZERO top six forwards drafted from the CHL who are over 6′ tall, played their pre-draft year in the CHL, and were chosen in their first year of eligibility. This makes sense. Two years in the CHL means every team has seen a player dozens of times. If that guy has the talent to be a top six guy and doesn’t have questions about his size, he goes in the first few rounds. If he’s still available in the 4th through 7th rounds, he’s destined for the third and fourth lines. So unless you are looking to fill out the bottom of your lineup four years from now, I’d be looking outside the CHL in the later rounds of the draft.