Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
I wrote an article for the Forecaster about 20 years ago about players that slide in the draft vs players taken before they were expected; at that point there was a huge discrepancy in favour of taking a player early.
Was also interesting to see what teams tended to draft the sliding guy. Edmonton was either the biggest culprit or top three for drafting using the Hockey News.
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There's a couple surprising things I've heard over the years about how teams have been caught unprepared.
- The Caps apparently didn't have Forsberg on their list because they didn't believe he would drop to them at 11. When he did, they panicked and took him even though he wasn't on their list (which was the right call). But then that was a factor in why they traded him later for Martin Erat - because there wasn't a ton of internal support for the pick.
- There's also been stories of teams "running out of players" on their list because they only go into the draft with 75 names. They don't have an exhaustive list.
- You also hear examples of where teams throw out their list for some rounds, and let a specific guy make their pick. "OK Jim, you can make the pick here".
Which all kinda surprises me. I would assume the well staffed and analytically driven organizations would have an exhaustive list that you work through. If things happen in the draft that are counter to expectations such that a guy you thought you could get in the 4th may go higher, then I guess you can pivot. But if you have a proper list, where you have agreed on the stack rank - should that list not drive it all? I suppose if you find that you've only drafted D through the first 3 rounds or something you may want to not in the 4th.
But stuff like that makes me wonder how tight teams are. I suspect some teams are (Dallas) and they have an advantage as a result.