In the NHL, a good draft produces two solid NHLers. In Behind The Moves, former Sabres GM Darcy Regier shared his data regarding the draft and player output:
The NHL Amateur Draft produces, on average, 54 players [who play at least 80 NHL games in their career] a year ?1.8 per team?I think. So your challenge as a GM is how can you get that to three or four?
It is virtually impossible to routinely ?beat the draft,? so when you are drafting in the top five you have to take advantage of that opportunity and flip the tables. Drafting and developing is a long process, but it is the best way to turn your fortunes around and set your team up for future success, especially in a league where free agency is largely limited to secondary players now.
For the Leafs, the 2015 draft was all about playing the odds.
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[The] strategy was [...]: Trade down, add picks, and increase your odds in the crap shoot that is the NHL entry draft. The more kicks at the proverbial can, the better. The team went into the draft with eight picks, came out with nine, a young defenseman (I wrote about that here), and
eleven picks next year. The groundwork was originally laid at the trade deadline, as Toronto eventually turned Cody Franson and Mike Santorelli into Brendan Leipsic, Travis Dermott, Jeremy Bracco, and Martins Dzierkals.
Nobody in sports subscribes to the trade down method more effectively and more often than Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots. Data indicates (linked below) that the NFL draft is largely a guessing game, and that is in a league where you are largely drafting matured ? at least into their bodies? 22-24 year olds in hopes of them stepping right onto your roster. There isn?t even a development team/staff buffering them between college and the NFL out of the gates. So, if that league is a crap shoot, imagine the NHL, where you are drafting 18 year olds who you might not even hear from for 3-5 years in terms of seriously contending for a spot on your NHL roster. This goes back to the earlier point from Darcy Regier, where you have a good draft if you?re picking two players who play over 80 games ? so maybe 2/7-9 picks hit, or 22-28 percent.