[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Ashasx

Anaheim: Anderson (87th overall)
Arizona: Smith (161st overall)
Boston: Rask (21st overall)
Buffalo: Johnson (125th overall)
Calgary: Hiller (undrafted)
Carolina: Ward (25th overall)
Chicago: Crawford (52nd overall)
Colorado: Varlamov (23rd overall)
Columbus: Bobrovsky (undrafted)
Dallas: Lehtonen (2nd overall)
Detroit: Howard (64th overall)
Edmonton: Ben Scrivens (undrafted)
Florida: Luongo (4th overall)
Los Angeles: Quick (72nd overall)
Minnesota: Dubnyk (14th overall)
Montreal: Price (4th overall)
Nashville: Rinne (258th overall)
New Jersey: Schneider (26th overall)
New York Islanders: Halak (271st overall)
New York Rangers: Lundqvist (205th overall)
Ottawa: Anderson (73rd overall)
Philadelphia: Mason (69th overall)
Pittsburgh: Fleury (1st overall)
San Jose: Niemi (undrafted)
St. Louis: Elliot (291st overall)
Tampa Bay: Bishop (85th overall)
Toronto: Bernier (11th overall)
Vancouver: Miller (138th overall)
Washington: Holtby (93rd overall)
Winnipeg: Hutchinson (77th overall)



How does this go against what I said? 63% of starting goaltenders were selected 61st overall and beyond, or were undrafted completely. Of the 10 teams that have starting goaltenders that were drafted in the 1st round, only 3 of them were selected by their current team. You simply will not get those results with skaters.

Obviously I don't have the time, but if you were to do this with skaters, it would be a steadily declining slope from the 1st round downward.

Hence the relationship is not nearly as strong for goaltenders.

This is all well and good, but it actually tells us nothing because it doesn't consider how many goalies were selected in the various rounds. For example, if only 10 goalies were ever selected in the 1st round, then there would be a 100% success rate (which wold be pretty good). Conversely, if the same number of goalies were selected in each round, then this wouldn't look very good for drafting early (which appears to be your point and your assumption).

I ran some numbers form 1997 through 2006. I stopped in 2006 since the goalies drafted since then haven't had enough time to have played a representative number of games. For example, Bernier was drafted in 2006 and has not yet played 200 games, so it seemed unfair to continue with more recent years.

Round / number of selections / % that have played 100 games / % that have played at least 1 game / % that have never played a game:

...1 / 28 / 42.8% / 96.4% / 3.6%
...2 / 28 / 35.7% / 71.4% / 28.6%
...3 / 34 / 20.6% / 50.0% / 50.0%
4-5 / 53 / 7.8% / 31.2% / 68.8%
6-9 / 118/ 14.2% / 35.6% / 64.4%

This pretty clearly shows that if you draft a goalie in the 1st or 2nd round, you are far more likely to get an NHLer than a goalies drafted in the later rounds. Just like with players.

With each subsequent round, it becomes less likely that the goalie will play 100 games (200 games as well), less likely to play at least 1 games, and more likely to be a total bust. JUST LIKE WITH PLAYERS.