A few short years ago the NHL Entry Draft was an event you read about in the paper the next day and that was it.
You have never heard of any of the players, you certainly didn’t get to watch it on television, and there was hardly a lead up to the event to wrap your head around.
Today is completely different.
Completely.
Today you have draft preview shows, you have your local radio station sending two correspondents to the draft two days before the event, you get mock drafts on television, in the newspaper, and on several different web sites around the planet.
A smorg of information spread so thin and so far that the word “expert” becomes a relic of the past with the average “mockster” doing all their scouting with their mouse. All of it.
To combat this bedlam of mockery, we will try to bring civility through quantity, quality through sample size, by grabbing as many mock drafts as we can get our hands on and providing a nice sampled average to help blur out the extremes.
Mock Draft Summary
Our study includes eight different mock drafts including, TSN, The Hockey News, Hockeysfuture, mynhldraft.com, espn, nhldraftsite.com, nhl.draftnation.com and hockey.com. You gaze at one or two and it’s difficult to even suppose a draft order, but perhaps witheight sources the truth shall be revealed.
Ok, we are clearly pushing it.
The following is the averaged out draft results based on the eight studies, eliminating players that didn’t appear on at least four of the eight (50%). In all 46 different players were named at least once in the top 30 of the eight mock drafts.
The first name represents the players in order by average draft position, the second name (third column) shows the player showing up the most for that team in the eight drafts. For example, the Flames get tagged with a Russian (not going to happen) in Kirill Petrov by average, but the player named most often to the Flames in the eight Mock Drafts is that of Greg Nemisz.
No real surprises at the top with the top ten being somewhat consistent across all eight mock drafts. Cory Hodson seems the most likely to move up while, the rest of the group have a great deal of continuity in all the lists.
Based on averages, the five players most expected to be on the board with the Flames making their way to the podium are; Luca Sbisa, Kirill Petrov, Thomas McCollum, Jordan Eberle and Mattias Tedenby. Will the Flames pick one of those five? You can scratch Petrov based on his country of origin, don’t plan on McCollum as he’s a goaltender, but Eberle and Tedenby are reasonable picks for the club.
What Consensus?
The most interesting players to watch are the players that seem to appear all over the map when it comes to their draft position on the eight mock selections. A player like Steve Stamkos is number one on all eight, and others like Drew Doughty, Zach Bogosian, Alex Pietrangelo and Nikita Filatov are in the mix in the top five across the board. But what of the other players that seem to go anywhere from top ten to not at all in the first round?
Looking only at players that land on at least half of the lists, the aforementioned Jordan Eberle is the king of movement with a startling 16 spots between his highest selection point (13th Hockey News, and 29th TSN). Interestingly, Mattias Tedenby is number two in this category with 15 spots between his best (11th Hockeysfuture) and his worst showing (26th TSN). The top five for movers is rounded out by Michael del Zotto (gap of 14 spots), John Carlson (gap of 14 spots) and Luca Sbisa (13 spots). del Zotto is the only player in the averaged top 15 withsuch a wide birth of evaluation as to his draft position.
Are these players a risk given the lack of cohesion in their selection or should the maverick picks be canceled out? Time will clearly tell.
Of players not named in TSN’s ranking of the top 30, Kirill Petrov and Zac Daple figured the most prominently in the rest of the lists, Petrov ranking 17th and Daple 29th overall. Petrov appeared on 63% of the mock drafts, while Daple made the grade 75% of the time.
Predictions
Finally, and with the math out of the way, it’s time for yours truly to toss out my somewhat useless Calgary Flames draft predictions.
My random shots in the dark include …
- Sutter will turn 7 picks into eight (two third rounders) by trading down from the 17 spot.
- Sutter will draft a forward
- Sutter will draft a forward from Canada
- Sutter will draft a forward from Western Canada
- Sutter will draft Joe Colborne
- Sutter will trade Alex Tanguay this weekend for picks and prospects
- and failing that he’ll unload Adrian Aucoin to make salary space to alter the mix come July 1st.
Good bet I’m right on at least one of ’em!
