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Carolina Draft Trends

Hurricanes have drafted just one Russian in 15 years

By Bob Wage

Recently, Sarah, from the Stanley Cup of Chowder created a nifty interactive program which can easily show the country and organization of NHL draftees for every team and every year, (back to 1963). Simply select the team you wish to track and the year, and check out the results.

To access the program directly, click here.

Of course if you have been paying attention to Carolina's draft picks over the years, you know they have selected many players from the Plymouth Whalers, the junior team owned by Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos. The graphic above verifies this as you can see the Hurricanes have drafted more than double the players from Plymouth, than any other juniors team.

On the chart below, I took the data generated for each team's total picks and put it on a speadsheet which shows the number and the percentage of draft picks for each team, coming from Canada, United States, Europe, and Russia. (For this exercise I separated Russia from the rest of Europe).

The final column shows the percentage of non North American players drafted by each team.

Some highlights:

The Hurricanes have drafted the fewest Russians of any team in the NHL, just one since they moved to Carolina. (The infamous choice was 2001 first round pick, Igor Knyazev, who never played a single game in the NHL. After one disappointing year in Lowell, Carolina traded him.)

The Canes have drafted a higher percentage of Americans than any team in the league.

Nashville has drafted a higher percentage of Europeans than anyone in the league, 36% as well as the highest percentage of non North Americans, 45%. Next is Dallas at 41%.

Tampa Bay has drafted more Russians than anyone else, 16%. The next closest percentage is Dallas at 10%.

What does all this information mean? I am not sure, but it is interesting to look at. Will the Hurricanes break tradition and draft a Russian or two this year?

Total Canada % US % Euro % Russian % Total
Picks Non NA
Anaheim 160 66 41% 37 23% 43 27% 14 9% 36%
Boston 412 251 61% 92 22% 52 13% 17 4% 17%
Buffalo 417 269 65% 81 19% 52 12% 15 4% 16%
Calgary 339 168 50% 76 22% 70 21% 25 7% 28%
Carolina 119 57 48% 36 30% 25 21% 1 1% 22%
Chicago 458 289 63% 98 21% 50 11% 21 5% 16%
Colorado 159 73 46% 47 29% 32 20% 7 4% 25%
Columbus 117 57 49% 22 19% 29 25% 9 8% 32%
Dallas 165 77 47% 21 13% 50 30% 17 10% 41%
Detroit 443 275 62% 70 16% 80 18% 18 4% 22%
Edmonton 327 197 60% 46 14% 66 20% 18 6% 26%
Florida 183 102 56% 35 19% 34 19% 12 7% 25%
Los Angeles 411 240 58% 85 21% 70 17% 16 4% 21%
Minnesota 96 45 47% 20 21% 28 29% 3 3% 32%
Montreal 546 345 63% 121 22% 63 12% 17 3% 15%
Nashville 135 45 33% 29 21% 49 36% 12 9% 45%
New Jersey 316 152 48% 89 28% 49 16% 26 8% 24%
NY Islanders 445 256 58% 96 22% 73 16% 20 4% 21%
NY Rangers 484 263 54% 119 25% 76 16% 26 5% 21%
Ottawa 182 70 38% 42 23% 54 30% 16 9% 38%
Philadelphia 435 257 59% 97 22% 59 14% 22 5% 19%
Phoenix 134 55 41% 37 28% 33 25% 9 7% 31%
Pittsburgh 422 267 63% 89 21% 51 12% 15 4% 16%
San Jose 191 70 37% 56 29% 54 28% 11 6% 34%
St. Louis 439 235 54% 116 26% 67 15% 21 5% 20%
Tampa Bay 198 96 48% 27 14% 43 22% 32 16% 38%
Toronto 445 276 62% 85 19% 67 15% 17 4% 19%
Vancouver 391 280 72% 46 12% 47 12% 18 5% 17%
Washington 409 258 63% 67 16% 59 14% 25 6% 21%
Winnipeg 12 10 83% 2 17% 0 0% 0 0% 0%