Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
Not sure how you think NHL picks are more valuable.
Think of it from a statistical point of view:
1) roughly the same number of teams
2) roughly the same number of picks
3) in any given specialty, whether it be hockey, football, art, or playing the piano, there is exceptional, followed by great, followed by good, followed by average, etc. In each case, the quantity rises as the quality subsides. In other words, you are always going to get a parabolic return chart.
My first thought was to consider the differences between the NFL (or soccer) and hockey. But then I realized that those differences are irrelevant - this is a statistical distribution problem, not a NHL vs NFL problem.
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The NFL draft picks are just so different. The Players are 22 years old and the first round picks (and even 2nd round picks) are fully expected to be starters on the team as rookies. The first 10 picks are expected to be close to the best players at their positions in the League.
In the NHL only the top 5 or 6 have a chance to be playing in the NHL the next season, only 1 every 10 years or so will be of all-star quality.
After that even great talents are 3 years away from being full time NHL players (Baerstchi , Granlund, Brayden Schenn) A normal first round draft pick will be 2-3 years from even trying to break into the NHL.
The NHL draft age needs to be raised from 18 to at least 20.
For the 3 to 10 18 and 19 year olds that are exceptional talents that are NHL ready before they are 20 they could be drafted but they should have a standard one-way contract for 3-year at 5M / year that goes against a teams salary cap no matter where they play.
Right now with the Flames having the 6-th pick in a "deep" draft there is about a 10% chance the player will play in the NHL next year. A 5% chance that they play more than 10 games... and virtually no chance that they will be in the top 8 in scoring on the Flames.
Galchenyuk --- a great pick at 3rd overall last year is in 8th spot in Montreal scoring.
At age 18 Nino Niederreiter was a great pick at #5 overall and Brendan Gallagher was picked #147.
3 years later Gallagher would be top 10 in a 20 year old draft.
Nino has cashed NHL cheques for around $3M... Gallagher around $400K..... Next year Nino will get around 2.8M and Gallagher 800K
There are 9 first round picks from 2010 (including sure thing can't miss Phoenix pick for Jokinen - Gormley ) who haven't played 1 NHL game.
Max Rienhardt has 11 NHL games....... Even though as a 20 year old he is better than all but 15 players somehow I don't imagine that there would be anyone trading pick #15-30 for Max. Even though he statistically has a chance to be better than 1/3 of this years first round picks