While the 2020 NHL Entry Draft — originally planned for this past weekend in Montreal — is postponed until an unknown date, the process of selecting the league’s future is always on our minds at New England Hockey Journal.
Over the next two weeks, we will take a look back at the New England players selected since the 2010 draft. We’ll analyze what went right, what went wrong, and who the overachievers were. Further, we’ll dive into analytics to try to determine what stats can tell us about a prospect's future success or lack thereof.
We start off with a look at the overvalued traits when scouting prospective NHL players.
Over the last 10 NHL drafts, 87 prospects from New England have been selected.
Twenty-one of those prospects have gone on to play at least one game in the NHL, while 10 are no longer playing hockey. Some are in between getting to the sport’s highest level and being a complete bust, and others are still developing in college hockey.
Over the next few weeks, I will be breaking down and analyzing various trends and other aspects of the draft since 2010 as it pertains to New England prospects. First, I wanted to look at what the most overvalued trait is when drafting players out of this region.
Size is a great thing for almost any aspiring athlete. However, size alone doesn’t guarantee a hockey prospect will blossom into a NHL player. Since the 2010 draft, scouts have gone wrong the most when overlooking other areas of deficiencies in hopes of a big kid turning the corner.
When looking at the biggest busts of the past decade, almost all of them were kids 6-feet-2 and bigger who simply didn’t pan out.
Don’t get me wrong — size is a great thing. All but four of the 21 New England draft picks to make the NHL since 2010 are 6 feet or taller. However, other necessary traits have been overlooked when scouting and drafting some of the other big prospects who have not made it to the NHL.
There’s a phrase I’ve heard quite a few times over the years saying, “You can’t teach size.” That is certainly true, but there are other intangibles that are rarely taught.
The first, and most glaring one, is compete level. Many big prospects who haven’t panned out lacked that willingness to go into the dirty areas and use their size to their advantage. One thing I’ve noticed while scouting and evaluating prospects over the past several years is that compete level rarely changes. I’ve seen prospects get faster and more skilled. I’ve noticed prospects adapting and evolving to fit their strengths. I’ve rarely, if ever, seen a kid who had limited compete suddenly improve in that area.
The other area where a lot of big prospects fall short is in the hockey sense department. While learning to play the game the right way or becoming more aware of what’s going on on the ice can improve, often times it does not. It’s one of those things where most players have that instinct or they do not. Even some extremely bright kids who have gone on to play hockey at Ivy League schools lack that intelligence on the ice.
Finally — and this has changed some as the sport has evolved into a faster-paced game with less clutching and grabbing — skating is a major reason some big prospects haven’t panned out since the 2010 draft. Some players can improve skating and become quicker, especially those coveted first few steps. For me, skating is a necessity, but if a player has compete and hockey sense, I can see taking a gamble on a prospect who might need to work on his feet.
Want further proof that size is overvalued? Of the six players since the 2010 draft to make the NHL after being selected in the fifth round or later, three are under 6 feet. Since 2010, the five worst New England picks inside the top 100 picks are all players who were 6-foot-2 or taller.
My biggest takeaway from my analysis of the past 10 years’ drafts is that size is a great thing, but scouts need to value compete and hockey sense more than some do.
New England's NHL draft picks since 2010
(listed by draft year and order of selection, with size at time of entry draft)
