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Franchise Player
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Austria, NOT Australia
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Signing our College Prospects
Probably deserves its own thread because the prospect camp thread has already derailed enough  the discussions there about Johnny and the "could he walk away like Knight?" fears seemed a bit premature to me, plus I couldn't think of a lot of college players that actually refused to sign. Thought it would be interesting to look at some of the drafts in the past.
Quote:
In an attempt to "estimate the risk" of a college player refusing to sign, I decided to take a look at college-bound players taken in the NHL drafts between 2005 and 2009. This seemed like a good time frame - 2005 marks the beginning of the previous CBA and drafts later than 2009 are irrelevant for this exercise due to the four years of NCAA eligibility. I also decided to limit this exercise to the first three rounds of the drafts - mainly for time reasons, but also due to the fact that the number of busts is a lot higher in the later rounds and high-end players with enough options to forfeit a contract are pretty rare once you hit triple-digits. Excluded from the exercise is Scott Winkler, a Stars 3rd rounder from 2009 who sadly passed away last month. Here are the results:
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
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118 players total
88 players signed an ELC with the team they were drafted by = 74,6 %
9 players were traded and signed an ELC with another NHL team = 7,6 %
3 players are still NCAA eligible/rights until August 15 = 2,5 %
2 players used the "Schultz loophole" = 1,7 %
16 players didn't sign with their original teams/"busts" = 13,6 %
As for these 118 players, we can see that 3 out of 4 college prospects signed with the team that drafted them. Please note that except for Bill Sweatt, none of the 16 players that didn't sign or weren't offered an ELC has since signed with an NHL team - most of them have retired, defected to Europe or settled for a journeyman career in the AHL and ECHL.
Even if there will always be a spark of uncertainty until our high-end college prospects actually sign, the numbers would suggest that there is not much to worry about. After slowly forgetting about Erixon, the Corban Knight situation, although beneficial for the Flames, was another reminder to the fans that those things are never certain until the are actually done, but at this point, it also seems premature to worry about such nightmares that are in either case at least a year away. Right now, with a rebuild in its early stages and an arena affected by the horrible floods, the Flames and their fans to have more pressing concerns.
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you can find whole thing in my blog. Feedback and discussions as always appreciated!
Last edited by devo22; 07-08-2013 at 07:04 PM.
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