I am curious why Todd Button has been head of scouting for so long. He was head under Sutter, Feaster, Burke, Tre and now Conroy. He's had some great picks.
There are so many ways to gauge effectiveness of scouts. To do a quick and dirty analysis, I went back, picked a few middle of the road teams (in my opinion) and looked at drafting from 2017 to now. I could have picked any year, but wanted recency. I don't care about late blooming utility guys drafted 10 years ago. I think scouts need to identify talent that can get up the curve quickly and have an impact early in their careers before earning huge contracts.
My metric: TOTAL GAMES PLAYED BY ALL PICKS / NUMBER OF DRAFT PICKS = GAMES PLAYED PER PICK
I excluded top 5 picks because they should be no brainers. Obviously there should be some weighting for higher picks vs lower picks, but i don't have time.
It doesn't look great. Flames average 14 games played per draft pick we made since 2017. Dallas 23. LA 30. Wild second worst in this list at 17.
I know the analysis isn't perfect, but directionally am I wrong?