Which NHL teams have drafted the best and worst since 2007? Ranking 31-17

June 09, 2024

NHL teams that draft proficiently have a massive leg up on their competition.

It’s impossible to build a Stanley Cup contender by paying every player market value or higher — you’d run out of salary-cap room. Contenders need bargain contracts and the best way to usually insert those into your lineup is by hitting on prospects that provide strong value on entry-level contracts and future RFA years that are cost-controllable, too.

The draft provides the opportunity to mine core players with zero acquisition cost besides the pick itself.

Here, using a thorough analysis of draft data (which we do every two years), we’ve tried to cut through the noise to provide a holistic picture of how every NHL team has performed at the amateur scouting level. We’ll be analyzing data from 2007-2018. The 2019 to 2023 drafts won’t be included in our main data set because it’s too early to fully judge those results. Yes, some of those players are already obvious difference-makers but it’s still going to take a bit longer to get a clear grasp on just how good everybody in those draft classes is. It wouldn’t be right to statistically judge those picks this early.

Part 1 looks at teams ranked No. 17-31. Part 2 will come out on Friday looking at the top 16 teams.

A few important notes before we dive in:

• A club with tons of lottery picks and extra top-two-round selections should be judged differently than a contender that drafts late. Because of that, we’ll be using a model to determine each team’s “expected wins added” based on the picks they had each year and the historical worth of those selections. For example, the Edmonton Oilers had by far the most top 10 and No. 1 picks, so they had the highest expected wins added. We’ll compare that with the actual “wins added” based on the drafted players’ NHL performance. A team that drafts well and exceeds the expected value of its draft capital will have a positive “value above expected” rating and vice versa.

• The model isn’t perfect so we’ve included other metrics in our charts such as what percentage of a team’s picks are on track to play 200-plus NHL games. It’s your choice what metrics you want to put most of your stock into — you don’t need to be overly fixated on the teams’ order through this article, which is sorted by the model’s value above expected rating.

• Players belong to their originally drafted team for the purpose of this exercise. Amateur scouting staffs don’t trade or sign draftees, they just need to target the right prospects.

• Seattle’s results won’t be included. Winnipeg’s draft data includes Atlanta’s 2007-2010 results.

How do you miss the playoffs 12 years running (and likely soon to be 13)? By botching almost every single draft during that timeframe. Just one, 2009, came in above average in value over expected.

The Sabres have come away with an NHL player 27 percent of the time, which ranks ninth, but that’s hardly much of an accomplishment given their draft capital. Buffalo is second in picks, third in top 10 picks and second in expected value — the Sabres should be getting a lot of NHLers! The problem is that they haven’t been particularly high-quality ones with the team landing 23rd in wins added at the draft. The 66-win difference below expectations is bleak.

The biggest issue is at the top of the draft. Having six top 10 picks is a blessing that the Sabres have squandered, as are the eight other first-round picks and 11 picks inside the top 50. The expected value there is 100 wins and the Sabres earned 57. Getting Rasmus Dahlin, Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart is respectable, but there’s a treasure trove of misses after that.

Rasmus Ristolainen, Alex Nylander and Casey Mittelstadt all disappointed for their draft slots. Then there are first picks used on Mikhail Grigorenko, Zack Kassian, Zemgus Girgensons, Mark Pysyk and Nikita Zadorov. NHLers? Absolutely. But if that’s a team’s haul of first-round picks over a decade span, it’s going to be tough to contend. Tyler Myers, Tyler Ennis and Joel Armia round out the list and while the trio met expectations, none were exactly steals.

And if a team is not hitting there, chances are they aren’t hitting anywhere. Buffalo has a long list of duds after the first round and the end result is the league’s worst drafting team from 2007-2018. A 12-year playoff drought makes perfect sense given that context.

Best pick

Brandon Hagel, 159th pick in 2016
Value: 9.6 wins
Expected Value: 0.5 wins

To add insult to injury, Buffalo’s best pick is one the team didn’t even retain. The Sabres failed to sign Hagel in 2018 and now he’s lighting it up with Tampa Bay, looking like a legitimate top-line player.

The Panthers missed the playoffs in 10 of 12 seasons between 2007-08 and 2018-19. One of the reasons behind this dire stretch can be chalked up to lackluster drafting.

Florida whiffed on quite a few first-rounders in this stretch: Keaton Ellerby (No. 10 in 2007), Erik Gudbranson (No. 3 in 2010), Grigori Denisenko (No. 15 in 2018) and Henrik Borgström (No. 23 in 2016). Lawson Crouse is a solid player but No. 11 in the loaded 2015 draft class feels rich and Aaron Ekblad has fallen well short of an average No. 1 pick’s level, even though he’s a really good player.

Bill Zito’s group has done an excellent job of making the right trades and signings to fill out a core that certainly needed more help.

Best pick

MacKenzie Weegar, 206th pick in 2013
Value: 10.7 wins
Expected Value: 0.1 wins

It’s rare to find a top-pair caliber defenseman in the seventh round, so at least the Panthers had that. He was a critical secondary piece in the Matthew Tkachuk blockbuster that’s worked out terrifically for Florida.

The Coyotes have been in a constant state of turmoil over the last decade or so and a poor track record at the draft is a big reason for it. In the brief instances in which they’ve shown relevancy, the Coyotes have proven they’ll support a winner — they just haven’t delivered. That starts at the draft.

The Coyotes have just one season that was above expectations: 2016. They drafted Clayton Keller and Jakob Chychrun in the first round, two slam dunk picks. That capped off a four-year run where the team met expectations, but the standard should be higher.

Arizona ranks third in top 10 picks, sixth in overall picks and fifth in expected value over the timeframe. That the Coyotes have come away with bottom-five value is magnificent incompetence. The team may be average in terms of securing NHLers, but its ability to hit on picks relative to their draft slot is only 13 percent.

Best pick

Conor Garland, 123rd pick in 2015
Value: 9.6 wins
Expected Value: 0.6 wins

In back-to-back years, the Coyotes found some diamonds in the rough around pick 120, picking Michael Bunting in 2014 and Garland in 2015 — two skilled, gritty middle-six wingers, with Garland grading out a shade better.

A New Era of Orange at the start of a rebuild needs to make draft success a top priority. The Flyers have had stretches of meeting expectations, but have mostly been mired in disappointment.

The three most recent seasons in the data set see the Flyers with their highest expected value, but they didn’t make due on it. While the Flyers did get some solid players out of those seasons (Carter Hart, Joel Farabee, Noah Cates, Morgan Frost), it’s not nearly in line with their draft capital. Jay O’Brien and German Rubtsov were big misses, but no miss stings more than Nolan Patrick at No. 2 in 2017. Miro Heiskanen, Cale Makar and Elias Pettersson being the next three picks is haunting.

Best pick

Travis Konecny, 24th pick in 2015
Value: 9.9 wins
Expected Value: 2.5 wins

The 2015 draft was absolutely loaded and it shows with Philadelphia’s selection of Konecny at No. 24. That’s a difficult spot in which to get a top-line talent, but Konecny has grown to be that guy in recent seasons.

27. Edmonton Oilers

Edmonton had a whopping 10 top 10 selections, which was four more than the second-highest team. That includes four No. 1 picks. The Oilers were hit-and-miss with their top picks and ranked near the bottom of the league at procuring NHL talent outside the first round.

Best pick

Connor McDavid, 1st pick in 2015
Value: 29.4 wins
Expected Value: 16.1 wins

McDavid’s a generational talent who’s crushing what you’d expect from an average No. 1 selection. He was the most obvious pick ever, though, so if you want to hand out some actual credit, grabbing Leon Draisaitl at No. 3 in 2014, when picks No. 4-7 were riddled with disappointments, was great work.

Vancouver had some of the worst results in this lookback period. Across six draft classes and 36 picks from 2007-2012, the Canucks found just one player (Ben Hutton) who’s projected to play more than 500 NHL games. Things definitely improved from 2013 onward with Bo Horvat, Thatcher Demko, Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes, but the Canucks benefited from six top 10 picks during that stretch and still flubbed two of them in Jake Virtanen and Olli Juolevi.

Since 2013, Hughes is the only NHL defenseman that the Canucks have drafted, developed and kept (Gustav Forsling was traded). That explains why the current blue line is still a question mark and why the Jim Benning-era Canucks made risky, regretful acquisitions like the Oliver Ekman-Larsson trade and Tyler Myers signing.

Best pick

Elias Pettersson, 5th pick in 2017
Value: 19.3 wins
Expected Value: 6.7 wins

This mostly comes down to what position you like best: Do you prefer the franchise center (Pettersson), the No. 1 defenseman (Hughes) or a top-quality starter (Demko) taken in the second round? Whoever you choose, this is the Big Three, along with J.T. Miller, that’s pulled Vancouver back into relevancy this season.

The Devils don’t land high, and no, adding the 2019 draft wouldn’t help either (Jack Hughes is an above-average No. 1 pick — but the Devils whiffed on their next 10 picks).

New Jersey doesn’t have a lot of above-average years, and even when it does, the club is only barely above expectations. It’s a lot more likely that the team misses hard and that’s easiest to see in 2014 and 2015. The Devils didn’t land a single NHLer in 2014 and in the most stacked draft of the data set took Pavel Zacha at No. 6 and Mackenzie Blackwood in the second round. The list of players taken immediately after those two is a rough look for New Jersey.

If not for Jesper Bratt in 2016, this could’ve looked really ugly.

Best pick

Jesper Bratt, 162nd pick in 2016
Value: 11.4 wins
Expected Value: 0.4 wins

While he may not be The Best Player In The NHL, Bratt was an absolute steal at pick 162 — especially considering he made a nearly unheard-of jump right to the big leagues only a year after being drafted. Over the last three seasons, he’s emerged as one of the league’s best wingers.

The Blue Jackets faithful deserve a winning franchise given how electric their arena is when games matter. They don’t have much of that though, and it starts at the draft where things have been a little up-and-down.

In 2013, the team hired Jarmo Kekäläinen and his first draft was an immediate improvement, nabbing Oliver Bjorkstrand and Alex Wennberg. In the years that followed, they added Zach Werenski and Pierre-Luc Dubois to an already deep team, but it wasn’t quite enough to put them over the top. Other selections didn’t move the needle enough (and Andrew Peeke moved it in the wrong direction in 2016 as a sub-replacement-level defender).

Recent drafts look like they have the potential to be promising as the Blue Jackets have fallen into a much-needed rebuild. But the track record before that hasn’t been the best.

Best pick

Cam Atkinson, 157th pick in 2008
Value: 10.7 wins
Expected Value: 0.5 wins

Atkinson has always been a little undervalued and that started at the draft, having been selected 157th. That didn’t stop him from putting up nearly top-10 value for his draft year as a slick-scoring winger for Columbus.

From 2008-2011, the Senators were a strong drafting team. They got Mark Stone, Mike Hoffman and Ryan Dzingel late in the draft while also adding Erik Karlsson, Jakob Silfverberg and Mika Zibanejad early. It should’ve been the makings of a solid core that could do some damage, but organizational chaos put the team in a state of disarray instead.

The Senators lost many trades in a misguided attempt to win now and botched their next five drafts, too. It may have culminated in a fluky conference final run in 2017, but the franchise sank like a stone immediately after.

It’ll be interesting to see how the team’s recent drafts grade out in the future, but at the very least, the 2017 and 2018 drafts looked like a return to form. Brady Tkachuk and Drake Batherson were a solid start in those years and the 2020 draft looks like it has the potential to be one of the best hauls in recent memory.

Best pick

Mark Stone, 178th pick in 2010
Value: 15.2 wins
Expected Value: 0.3 wins

Speed isn’t everything. Stone has shown that enthusiastically throughout his career and though it took some time for him to finally reach The Show, he was an impact player from the get-go.

If you want the best illustration as to why the Yzerplan hasn’t quite panned out just yet, look no further than what didn’t happen in the four drafts before he showed up.

In 2013 and 2014, the Red Wings added Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha and Tyler Bertuzzi — all outside the top 10. That provided the makings of a promising future once it was time to rebuild and the Red Wings were set up pretty well with 41 expected wins during the next four drafts, the eighth most of any team.

The Red Wings ended up with one win. One win. One win!

The rest of the top 10 were expected to earn 47 wins on average. They earned 46, headlined by Toronto, Edmonton, Carolina, Colorado, Vancouver and New Jersey.

In Detroit’s defense, the Red Wings didn’t get a single top-five pick during that time. But that’s no excuse to practically whiff on 34 picks. The Red Wings got exactly two NHLers out of it all: Filip Hronek and Michael Rasmussen, with only the former providing more value than expected of his draft slot. Combined, the value from those two players barely outweighs some of the negative value from the four players all picked in the first two rounds (Filip Zadina, Dennis Cholowski, Gustav Lindstrom, Givani Smith). Ouch.

Steve Yzerman was dealt a losing hand and that’s worth noting when assessing the job he’s done since.

Best pick

Gustav Nyquist, 121st pick in 2008
Value: 10.2 wins
Expected Value: 0.6 wins

It’s not ideal for a team that just went through a rebuild that the Red Wings failed to hit a home run during a time of high expected value. You have to go all the way back to 2008 for the team’s best pick: Nyquist, who had some glimpses of stardom for those early 2010s Red Wings teams … when he was healthy.

The Blackhawks made the most picks of any team from 2007-2018 (their 101 were eight more than the second-place Sabres). That made up for the fact that they weren’t very efficient, landing NHLers with less than 20 percent of their selections.

Chicago had a strong run of picks in the back half of the first round between 2010 and 2014 with Kevin Hayes, Phillip Danault, Teuvo Teravainen, Ryan Hartman and Nick Schmaltz (Mark McNeill was the only bust), but the results weren’t pretty outside of that. The Hawks ranked 31st at landing mid-round talent and 22nd at drafting in the late rounds.

It’s worth noting that a big chunk of Chicago’s Cup-winning cores were drafted between 2003 and 2006, just prior to our lookback period.

Best pick

Alex DeBrincat, 39th pick in 2017
Value: 14.6 wins
Expected Value: 1.6 wins

DeBrincat had absurd numbers in his draft year with 51 goals and 101 points in 60 games. But he was tiny and lacked dynamic speed which made teams worry that his prolific scoring wouldn’t translate. Chicago happily rolled the dice and made a lot of other teams look foolish.

The Golden Knights only have two drafts in this data set, making this an obviously unfair comparison. But it’s worth taking a preliminary look at how those two drafts unfolded.

The good: Getting Nick Suzuki at No. 13 in their inaugural draft.

The bad: Suzuki is the team’s only draftee who comes in above his expected draft value. Woof.

Vegas did draft some NHLers during those two years, but among them, only Nicolas Hague is living up to his draft slot. Cody Glass is a disappointing pick at No. 6 and Erik Brannstrom hasn’t quite panned out as expected either.

It hasn’t been a great look so far, but lucky for Vegas, it hasn’t mattered yet. They have the Cup to prove it.

Best pick

Nick Suzuki, 13th pick in 2017
Value: 9.9 wins
Expected Value: 4.0 wins

The Golden Knights don’t have a lot of picks to choose from and their best didn’t suit up once for them. At 13th, Suzuki was a very strong pick in 2017 and has turned into an effective top-six center for Montreal.

19. Montreal Canadiens

Montreal’s results are propped up by a legendary 2007 draft haul that includes P.K. Subban, Max Pacioretty and Ryan McDonagh. But since then, the team has underperformed its expected haul in nine of 11 drafts.

The Canadiens’ biggest problem was its first-round picks from 2008-2018: Louis Leblanc, Jarred Tinordi, Nathan Beaulieu, Alex Galchenyuk, Nikita Scherbak, Noah Juulsen, Mikhail Sergachev, Ryan Poehling and Jesperi Kotkaniemi. Ouch. Sergachev is the only clear win out of that group.

Best pick

Brendan Gallagher, 147th pick in 2010
Value: 14.7 wins
Expected Value: 0.5 wins

Gallagher has slowed down in recent years, but during his peak, he was the ultimate heart-and-soul top-six winger. He squeezed everything possible out of his fifth-round billing and 5-foot-9 frame — and took a ton of punishment along the way — to become one of the 2010s’ best net-front scorers.

18. Winnipeg Jets

In 2015, “The Hockey News” had the Winnipeg Jets on the cover of their annual Future Watch with a scintillating headline: Meet your 2019 Stanley Cup champions.

That proclamation didn’t quite manifest, but the excitement for the Jets wasn’t unwarranted based on their draft haul in that era. In the five years after relocating, the Jets picked up 80 wins of talent at the draft, 34 more than expected. It’s where the team landed its current core and a majority of their best picks.

Connor Hellebuyck, Nikolaj Ehlers, Kyle Connor, Mark Scheifele, Andrew Copp, Adam Lowry, Mason Appleton, Jacob Trouba, Jack Roslovic, Josh Morrissey — that’s 10 needle-movers in a five-year span. That’s a really impressive haul considering the team didn’t have a single top-five pick during those years.

Aside from that, it’s been pretty grim. We can probably ignore the Atlanta years, but 2016-onward has been mostly disappointing. Patrik Laine not playing up to the standard of a typical No. 2 pick isn’t ideal. Neither was picking Logan Stanley at No. 18.

Those missed opportunities (among many others those years) might be why the Jets haven’t yet fulfilled their Stanley Cup destiny.

Best pick

Connor Hellebuyck, 130th pick in 2012
Value: 17.4 wins
Expected Value: 0.6 wins

Who else but the primary reason the Jets have been competitive over the last decade? Hellebuyck has been Winnipeg’s backbone since the moment he stepped into the league in 2015. The Jets go as he goes, and he’s done his part with the fourth most value of any goalie selected in this era.

How did Colorado win the Cup despite ranking last by hitting on only 15.5 percent of its picks? The Avalanche missed pretty much everywhere else but nailed five of their six top 10 selections. That netted them Nathan MacKinnon (No. 1, 2012), Cale Makar (No. 4, 2017), Mikko Rantanen (No. 10, 2015), Gabriel Landeskog (No. 2, 2011) and Matt Duchene (No. 3, 2009), who was eventually traded for a haul including Sam Girard and the pick that got them Bowen Byram.

Make no mistake, Colorado’s drafted poorly overall (likely worse than this ranking suggests), but when you stockpile lottery picks and don’t screw them up while boasting arguably the best pro scouting department in the NHL to surround your drafted stars, great things can still happen.

Best pick

Cale Makar, 4th pick in 2017
Value: 26.5 wins
Expected Value: 7.4 wins

Makar would likely go No. 1 in a redraft of the 2017 class. He’s probably the best defenseman on the planet.

(Photos of Connor Hellebuyck and Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson: Jonathan Kozub and Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images)

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