Drafting for Wealth, Health, and Control
by Elsker on Aug 1, 2010 6:01 PM EDT
Email
Print
One of my "go to" hockey links, sometimes open for days at a time on a browser tab, is the Carolina Hurricanes Draft History from The Internet Hockey Database, a great resource for those of you who may not yet have discovered it.
Not only is a Canes draft history handy for making sure I'm getting details correct, but let's step back and take a look at it from an historical perspective while we have it open. For we've not always had the draft competency we seem to be exhibiting now.
In fact, to review:
1997: First rounder Nick Tselios skates only 2 games total in the NHL. Shane Willis (4th round) has a third-line career that was really never the same after being leveled by an infamous Scott Stevens hit. Brad Defauw skates nine games in a lost season ('03-'04). Pretty much a lost draft year.
1998: Yet another first round bust, Jeff Hereema (Staal's cousin from Thunder Bay) plays 4 games total in the NHL. But, JR strikes gold in the later rounds, gleaning Erik Cole (3rd round), Josef Vasicek (4th round), Tommy Westlund (5th round), and Jaroslav Svoboda (8th round). Role players all, but at least we now had some under contracts we could control for a while.(more on this below).
1999: Another bleak draft year, with the only "success" being first-rounder David Tanabe, with many feeling there was shared negligence in the org's handling of this prospect, rushing him into battles that were over his head, versus flaws revealed within the prospect hmself. JR salvaged something out of this pick by bundling it with our first-round bust from 2001, Igor Knyazev, and plucking Danny Markov from Phoenix. JR then turned around, after entertaining us for a few months with instant fan favorite Danny's antics, by acquiring Plymouth legacy Justin Williams with all his contributions to the Cup-winning team, who is now embodied in the second re-incarnation of Erik Cole. Only other draft pick of notice is Damian Surma (6th round), who broke his arm during his first NHL goal celebration in one of only 2 NHL games played.
2000: Pretty much a bust year at the top, with no first round pick (ill-fated Sandis Ozolinch experiment), and Plymouth Whaler second-rounder Tomas Kurka managing only 17 NHL games. Ryan Bayda has a successful Mr. Utility career from the third round and the org trades up in the fourth round to take 25-year-old Niclas Wallin from the Swedish Elite league.
2001: Huge bust year. Swing and a miss on Russian first-rounder Igor Knyazev (15th overall). Although used along with Tanabe in the 2003 Markov trade, he logged no NHL games at all. Second-rounder Mike Zigomanis churns out an up-and-down NHL/AHL career as a good utility player...mostly AHL for us.
2002: Finally some first-round success, as Cam Ward (25th overall) is secured. But, that's all we got as no other pick made the grade (from what few we had that weren't traded away beefing up for the 2002 Cup run).
2003: Finishing dead last, losing the lottery, and picking second overall, we scored the current franchise anchor, Eric Staal. But other than Danny Richmond in the second, traded to Chicago for Anton Babchuk (21st overall in 2001), that was all the 2004 draft gleaned.
2004: Finally a decent draft year as JR trades up in front of the RBC host crowd to select Andrew Ladd fourth overall. However, Ladd was later traded at the deadline during the '07-'08 season for Tuomo Ruutu (9th overall in 2001...which note was a huge bust year for us). However, this year was the first of a few recent deep drafts for us as it also brought Justin Peters (2nd round), Casey Borer (3rd round), and Brett Carson (4th round). Home arena advantage, I guess. :-D
2005: After relative success in 2004, bleakness returned in 2005 as first rounder (3rd overall), Jack Johnson...well, you know that story well. And the draft pick moves among us today in the form of Tim Gleason, a 2001 first round (23rd overall) pick himself and $2.5M for the player of your choice in salary (Oleg Tverdovsky). But, that was it for 2005
2006: Doug Weight's services during the successful Cup run cost us our first rounder, but Jamie McBain (2nd round) appears to be the real deal. However, other than a questionable Harrison Reed (3rd round) and a game Nick Dodge (6th round), that's it for 2006.
2007: Brandon Sutter (11th overall) already evident as a for real NHL'er, so good start to this draft. No second-rounder as it went as part of the Mark Recchi 2006 deadline acquisition. Drayson Bowman (3rd round) sure looks promising, but already the crystal ball begins to grow hazy.
2008: Back-to-back Zac/Zach's, Zach Boychuk (14th overall) and Zac Dalpe (2nd round) both look like they could make it in the NHL, probably with us (see Ladd example for alternative career paths). And, JR has since acquired the second-rounder he woke up thinking he would pick, Jared Staal. Insufficient data points on Michal Jordan (4th round) and Mike Murphy (6th round) to pass judgement at this time, but they're worthy of listing and not on the scrap pile yet. Pretty good draft.
2009: Still under review, but it starts off with a real puzzler, Philippe Paradis (27th overall), who already has been changed out for Jiri Tlusty (13th overall in 2006, the year we had no first-rounder). Brian Dumoulin (2nd round) is growing even taller and heavier at Boston College, winning individual accolades and team championships left and right, and seems promising. Lindstrom (3rd round), Kennedy (5th round), and Kivisto (7th round) are all out there somewhere.
2010: Now, compare this year, fresh as it is, to those above, where JR walks away from the table after two days of hard work with three (3) first-round assets in the form of Jeff Skinner (7th overall in 2010), Riley Nash (21st overall in 2007), and Bobby Sanguinetti (21st overall in 2006). Regardless as to how things work out with Faulk (2nd), Alt (2nd), Biega (3rd), Levi (3rd), Shugg (4th), Stahl (6th), and Andersen (7th), that's a pretty good draft year, already.
So, the point of all of this is to show just how few NHL assets the org has walked away with in past draft years, compared with our apparent increasing odds of success in more recent years.
And, the result of all those poor draft years in which no, or few, NHL assets emerged, was what we saw on the ice at the beginning of last season. Not nearly enough kids in sight that were NHL-ready (an important qualifier) due to the stretch of lean draft years. Everyone that could make it had already been drug aboard, whether ready or not (the lockout giving Staal his all-important AHL year his sophomore pro season and allowing Cam Ward to dominate and grow even more confident).
Nearly the oldest team in the league and fairly expensive for talent level held, due to incremental raises over the years. When there's no new talent bubbling up though, this is what you do. You hold onto what you have a season or two too long or pick up free agents from the bargain bin.
But, thanks to successful draft years, that's about to all change. New blood and, this is important, under very affordable contracts for the next few seasons, anyway. Plenty of time to look them all over, make the hard choices that need to be made, and (here's the important part), hopefully have more talent coming up to replace those that we can no longer afford...or believe we may be holding even better in the form of a prospect.
Too many good players? Not a problem, as they are like liquid gold. They can be bundled for major pieces, if we think we're ready to go in a couple of seasons. Or, converted back into liquid currency as future draft picks, hopefully higher on the rung than where you will be picking, but welcome as additional swings at the plate, nonetheless.
So, here's to future and continued draft success. It makes the org rich in both talent and cash, the roster stays healthier with younger bodies and eager replacements, and contracts stay under our control via extensions or trades, instead of having to acquire what we can afford on the UFA market.
22 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
OJT
Although very good at what I do for a living 15 years ago, today I am even better. We all benefit from on-the-job training.
Hopefully, one of the benefits of having a stable management structure is that it will indeed learn from its mistakes. There have been tweaks to the scouting system but the single biggest development, in my opinion, is the addition of the “brain trust” at the player development level (Francis/Wesley/Barasso/Brind’Amour?).
The important thing is to pick an 18-year-old that has a chance at the NHL (short of late round selections for AHL purposes only). That way, even if they don’t work out for your org, they’re an asset that can be used to acquire a RFA player that will fit your org’s plans (see Ladd for Ruutu or Richmond for Babchuk).
At that game level, I do think we’re getting better.
Here we are now...entertain us.
Wow…fantastic job on the article, dude! Kudos. :)
"...they will not force us...they will stop degrading us...they will not control us...we will be victorious..."
Mah blog.
I would also like to suggest that in addition to better drafting, the Canes are doing a better job in developing their prospects. For a good while, they did not even have their own AHL affiliate [they shared one]. So, the fact that they now have Jeff Daniels working with our prospects in Charlotte and getting them not only acclimated to a professional season but also schooled in the Canes system so that when they are called up, it is easier for them to almost seamlessly slot into the lineup.
by Chuck Burns on Aug 2, 2010 2:24 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
In sort of a reverse take on that minor league team development angle, the successful draft picks were so far and few between in those earlier years that we couldn’t even manage to field an entire minor league team on our own, even if we had tried, without just hiring career AHL’ers that had no real hope of ever reaching the NHL.
We were lucky to at least be able to dictate the coach in most of the shared relationships, but clearly your prospects don’t receive the kind of individual attention and defined role on the ice that can be given when the entire team is yours.
As for Coach Daniels, can you think of an instance when someone was called up from his team and didn’t just fit right into the roster, seemingly making no boneheaded positional mistakes or looking lost whatsoever? I can’t.
It’s an incredible advantage to be fielding a team that’s mostly homegrown prospects that are acclimated with one another.
We’re getting there.
Here we are now...entertain us.
Great Article
Elsker, great article/post. Daniels has been a fantastic help for the prospects’ development. I think Francis will get to do more with them as well. We may see Brind’Amour taking some road trips as well. Maybe Brind’Amour can help the young kids with faceoffs.
Success Rate
Is it somewhat astounding to anyone else that we have only managed to identify one single solitary NHA player in the draft in some years of those years (1997, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2005, and maybe 2006)?
Perhaps we were focusing on organizational needs too much and not just drafting Best Player Available (BPA). It’s important to identify a NHL player, at a minimum, so that years of controlled contracts open up.
The actual player for those contracts can then be determined by trade, if we have chosen unwisely.
The key is to at times make that trade before the rest of the league knows what you suspect about the prospect. Other times, it’s a straight exchange of needs with open information (“here, try my guy and I’ll try yours”), or an exchange of hassles (“I give up, let’s swap problem children”). :-D
Here we are now...entertain us.
by Elsker on Aug 2, 2010 3:53 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
Astounding failure rate, astounding reversal, great article
You would think with a dart board and the list from CSS you couldn’t avoid hitting more NHL players than the Canes did in that barren stretch.
They truly do seem to have reversed the situation. The latest evidence is today with Faulk and Dumoulin both making the cut at this stage for the US World Junior team. Dumoulin wasn’t drafted 22nd overall like Tinordi, who was cut. There’s a good chance people underestimated Dumoulin at draft time because of the low level of competition he was coming from. He’s showing sign after sign of being a first-round talent. That kind of thing isn’t so rare. What’s new is that the Canes are the team getting first-round talent in the second round.
Dumoulin isn’t the only example of the Canes managing to get players whose potential seems higher than their draft spot. Dalpe was supposed to be a first rounder and the Canes got him in the second. Some people say Faulk is a first-round talent and he came in the second.
We used to give up our 2nd rounders to get old guys if we thought we had a shot at the playoffs. Now sometimes our second rounders are getting us young first rounders like Nash and Sanguinetti, as you note. This really is quite a shift in outlook.
In my opinion, even if this is all driven by the need to hold down player costs, it makes the Canes much more interesting and fun to follow. There’s hope for the future. You can pull for the kids and hope they come through for the Canes and the Canes come through as a team sooner rather than later. It could happen this year. Odds are heavily against, but it could happen. And next year and the year after, there will be greater hope still.
That’s much more fun than watching the Canes try to cobble together a competitive team from the bargain bin. The players from the bargain bin are mostly headed downhill and don’t figure to be with the Canes long. Stopgaps don’t usually give the team a stronger or more appealing identity. As a fan, you don’t get attached. Give me a choice between rentals from the bargain bin and building consistently based on young talent and I’ll take the young talent every time.
Your point about using some prospects as currency is dead on, but it’s not my favorite way to look at things. I want lots of the kids to work and play well for the Canes for years to come. That way, fans could feel almost like proud parents as they see the young ’uns thrive.
The catch is, a good proportion of the kids have to come through. Given the chance, I think they will. And the reason is the amazing change in the Canes’ drafts.
Good point about the more recent trend of using second rounders to grab talent that might be first round material, versus using those picks as currency to land trade-deadline deals.
Dumoulin, in particular, was a find. Just think if his September 6th birthday was a September 15th one, instead.
If so, he would have been a 2010 draft candidate instead of the 2009 draft candidate he was. And, fresh off his national championship and individual accolades, with another inch of height and a bit more weight, he might well have been a first-rounder this year, for sure.
Here we are now...entertain us.
If we could manage to identify and acquire two, or maybe even three, solid NHL prospects every draft year, instead of the one-per-year pace we averaged from 1997-2003, the wholesale change we are experiencing would be sustainable.
Since the three finds in the 2004 draft (not counting Borer just yet), we’ve been averaging at least two a year.
And 2010 seems ripe with possibilities.
Here we are now...entertain us.
Wonder how many second round picks the Canes traded away in the bad old days?
If you give up your second round pick most years, you’ll have a tough time consistently producing NHL players from your drafts.
One thing I noticed a while back in looking at draft position of people on the then-current Canes’ roster or on their list of prospects: There was a good number of 1st rounders and 3rd rounders. There was a pronounced dip in the number of second rounders. Now I’m wondering if that’s because the Canes so often traded second round choices?
I didn’t go back and look at past drafts to try see exactly how often the Canes gave up second round draft choices.
by curiouscanesfan on Aug 2, 2010 6:16 PM EDT up reply actions
Actually, it hasn’t happened too often, with mixed results. Here’s the first and second rounders that were traded to acquire targeted players:
1998: second round pick traded as part of a deal for Jim Dowd (although Dowd was then traded later that day to re-acquire another player, Jeff Brown)
2000: first round pick traded as part of the deal for Sandis Ozolinsh (JR’s first puck-moving defenseman experiment…just forgot to put him on a puck-moving team with a puck-moving coach :-D)
2002: second round pick traded as part of the deal for Sean Hill on the 2002 Cup run team
2006: first round pick traded as part of the deal for Doug Weight on the successful 2006 Cup team
2007: second round pick traded in 2006 as part of the deal for Mark Recchi on the 2006 Cup team
So, actually not as bad as it seemed at first glance.
Mostly the problem seems to just be bad second-round picks, if anything, especially in the earlier years.
Although 7 NHL’ers out of 12 second round selections made might not be bad odds, if we optimistically include our most recent second-rounders, Faulk (not Alt just yet), Dumoulin, and Dalpe, in that count.
Here we are now...entertain us.
Nonetheless, discounting those three most recent second rounders, it was mighty bleak from 1997 until 2003 in the second round, with only Mike Zigomanis (2001) getting a sniff of the NHL from the second round.
It wasn’t until Danny Richmond was drafted in 2003 that our second-round luck/skill improved. And even then, Danny himself didn’t stick at the NHL level, but we did manage to trade him for an asset that did (Anton Babchuk).
Since then, we’ve hit pretty well, when we’ve had a second round pick, with only Nate Hagemo’s (2005) unfortunate experience staining the record.
Here we are now...entertain us.
Building Teams Via Draft
I think the Hurricanes organization made a very considered and deliberate decision to build the franchise via the draft and trades for prospects. I happen to think Jim Rutherford was ahead of the curve and now teams like Chicago are having to dismantle due to salary cap issues. Even at a $58 or $59 million salary cap expenditure, a team can only afford so many players being paid as superstars. The more players are paid $5 million and more, the less space there is to field a team based on consistency throughout the lines. There is also no doubt in my mind that the draft selections have been better. I also think obtaining players like Nash and Sanguinetti is another way to maximize the ability of the Hurricanes to find potential impact players.
For that reason, if one assumes the trend will continue, Babchuk might well be considered among the players potentially who could be traded. On the other hand, once Jim Rutherford gets down to his core team, I doubt seriously he is considering trading them. As Dumoulin and Faulk develop, they too may offer Jim Rutherford the ability to make more trades on the defense side.
It is the gift that keeps on giving because the cycle of developing players and being able to turn some players into assets allows the team to keep gaining drafts and young prospects. Now if we can get the season ticket holder numbers up, we can then afford to keep the core players and young prospects – while avoiding a Blackhawks-like meltdown.
I really don’t fault the Blackhawks for what they did and what they are doing.
When you sense you’re close to getting your name on the Cup, you do go “all in”, loading up the roster and paying the piper later. They’ve actually not been hurt that badly in the post-Cup dismantling.
Plus, some of the contract damage was done under their former GM, not the current management group, so “ways out” might could be claimed on their behalf.
We did something similar in 2006, burning a couple of draft picks to pick up Doug Weight’s sweet passes and Mark Recchi’s sniping around the net area, making our top two lines even more lethal and causing all kinds of problems for defenders with our third line.
No pain, no gain…just gotta make sure you secure the gain.
Here we are now...entertain us.
Blowing Up the Car Engine to Win the Race
It is hard to argue with the philosophy that the Stanley Cup is so difficult to win that even if one has to blow up the car engine at the finish line to win, the chances don’t come up that often. I think Jim Rutherford is going for a somewhat different approach, at least until and unless the team looks like it is ready to be a very serious Stanley Cup contender at the trade deadline (at some future point, not a prediction of such for 2010-2011). Jim Rutherford seems to be focused on building a core team that can stay together for five or six years.
I like the idea of having young, fast, skilled, determined, and physical players as the team identity. It will make things interesting and exciting, even if from time to time things go awry. In a way, the Caniacs are lucky to be able to watch the work in progress as the team matures into a consistent playoff team.
Oh, yeah. This is going to be an era in the history of the franchise, all right.
There’s a chance at a really tight locker room, especially if the right leadership steps up.
In a few years, all of those that remain, including those that have not yet joined the party, are going to know one another very, very well.
Here we are now...entertain us.
Chicago was for the most part built through the draft. Hossa and Campbell were hired guns, but Toews, Kane, Keith, etc were all drafted. Chicago’s cap woes are threefold:
1) They won the cup which meant guys had to get raises.
2) Tallon screwed up the qualifying offers last season. Barker, Brouwer, Eager, Fraser and Versteeg all had to be signed on the double quick to avoid losing them as UFAs. There’s no telling just how much this cost the Hawks, but it was probably in the neighborhood of $3 million in cap space.
3) They achieved success a bit too early. Now, once they messed up the qualifying offers they really had to win this season or they would run in to trouble. That said, from a cap perspective it would have been better to win next year. Chicago has $4 million less in cap space this year because Kane and Toews earned a number of bonuses in the final year of their entry level deals. Had they not been on entry level deals they would not have bonuses and the Hawks would not have that problem. Add to it that without a cup win there is no way Niemi is awarded anything more than 2.25 million in arbitration.
If you take off the $4million in bonuses from last season counting against this years cap, the $3 million in higher contracts given out because or the poor qualifying offer sheets, add in 2.25 for Niemi and subtract 1.3 for Turco the Hawks Cap number would fall from 56.34 it is today (Huet has been demoted) to 50.29. That would leave them about 9.1 million which would probably have meant keep Byff or Ladd or possibly both and signing Hjalmarson before he got an offer sheet (perhaps saving an addition 0.5$ million in cap space.
Is it possible to be addicted to hockey?
Watershed draft?
The more we hear from outside eyes, from sources as diverse as pro scout Max Giese to analyst Pierre McGuire, we do seem to have had a very good draft year in 2010.
Only twice before has JR found four NHL players in a draft.
In 1998, we drafted Cole (3rd), Vasicek (4th), Westlund (5th), and Svoboda (8th). But one could easily argue that Westlund (9-13-22 in 203 games) and Svoboda (8-14-22 in 91 games) were low-impact players for us, at best.
2004 comes close with Ladd (now Ruutu) and Peters (2nd) certainly NHL’ers and Carson (4th) staking a claim. If Casey Borer (3rd) could make the leap, that would be four NHL’ers from one draft.
But, 2010 is starting to look like it could produce that many NHL’ers…and more. Those three first-rounders that JR walked away with: Skinner, Sainguinetti, and Nash all have strong odds. Faulk is making a case for himself in world junior level competition to make it possibly four potential NHL’ers from this draft.
Now, add any one of Alt, Biega, or Levi to the mix, or find a place for 6’4" Andresen in goal down the road, whether for us or others, and you’ve got a record pace for the Hurricanes org identifying NHL-level talent.
That’s important, because even if we can’t find room for all that talent infusion, it helps us on the trade market where we might be able to now pry some coveted RFA talent out of another org, by dangling NHL-capable prospects, instead of having to go shopping on the UFA market and compete for that limited cross-section in a bidding atmosphere.
Here we are now...entertain us.
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
Related FanPosts on Canes Country
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recent FanPosts
In Association With
Latest Puck Daddy - NHL from Yahoo! Sports
- Puck Previews: Ducks’ road trip continues; Sens, Panthers in battle of most surprising teams
- Watch the weirdest goal of the year, courtesy of ECHL ref’s rulebook gaffe (VIDEO)
- Jeremy Roenick’s OK with Blackhawks trading Patrick Kane for goalie upgrade
- Puck Headlines: Rick Nash chatter; Jagr turns 40; Ovechkin too much of a rock star?
- NHL Trade Deadline Dream Scenarios: Whom do you want to go where?
Certain photos copyright © 2012 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
