Todd Button....

[dustygoon]

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?

[Dan403]

And that's on Button?

Seems like its on the various GMs.

[Paulie Walnuts]

None of the GM's have done a good job giving our scouts enough ammo at the draft. Especially Sutter and Treliving who handed out picks like candy.

So when you pick less and in later rounds that is what you get.

[Boblobla]

I would weight it differently, maybe add a multiplier for the round. If you find someone in the 5th round their games played should have a 5x multiplier. That would be better imo.

[DomeFoam]

I think context is important if you are using games played as metric. If you consider that Darryl held back many young guys in lieu of vets (Valimaki, Ruzicka), Fox hosed us, Kylington took a year off, and Pelts has battled multiple injuries in his young career, we likely would've had higher games played per pick.

There are at least 1 to 2 players from each draft that have become legit players. Definitely room for improvement especially in the later rounds but I would say our scouting has been decent to good.

[Matty81]

Tough to compare with other teams with a metric like that that doesn't consider draft position. Two of those seasons the flames traded away most of their picks of value

He's had some very bad years, 2013 and 2014 were so bad at a time where adding depth might have been the difference between winning a playoff round and being a contender, but 15 and 16 were then pretty solid

17-19 I'd give him an incomplete as the pick stock was so low. 2020 seems decent and 2021 was another terrible looking one.

The picks seem to be pretty up and down. Also hard to say how much of that is him vs exec getting involved. Seem to remember Weisbrod basically overriding him during his tenure

[Macho0978]

Lack of picks is 1 but GM's that fill rosters with vets blocks players from getting a chance.

Zary and Pospsil could have been buried in the AHL under Treliving.

Zary looks like a top 6 player and his numbers in the AHL didn't give you reason to think that would happen at age 22.

[Buff]

Didn't we pick Jankowski so high because Weisbroad convinced Feaster that it will be a surprise homerun? Not all picks can completely be on Button.

It his hard to evaluate scouting staff because we don't know which players the scouts identified and for which of those players the GMs decided to listen to the scouts.

[Fan69]

Originally Posted by dustygoon

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?

No disrespect intended but i see a bit of a fundamental flaw. For our last two draft unless we had been picking top five its not reasonable to expect many picks to have played many games?

I think with the recency bias out it would look a little clearer unless im missing something?

[YyjFlames]

Originally Posted by Macho0978

Lack of picks is 1 but GM's that fill rosters with vets blocks players from getting a chance.

Zary and Pospsil could have been buried in the AHL under Treliving.

Zary looks like a top 6 player and his numbers in the AHL didn't give you reason to think that would happen at age 22.

I agree that younger players need opportunity and Sutter didn't really give any chances.

But interesting using Zary, as a part of me thinks he's looked this good because he had a couple extra years in the minors to learn his game. Guys like Baertschi were rushed and had too much pressure on them right away. Lots of young kids are probably better served with more time in the minors (even if I as a fan don't like it!).

[BeltlineFan]

What happens if you add 2016? I bet it looks a lot better for the Flames.

Sometimes you hit on your picks and sometimes you don't.

[iggyloob12]

If it was all on Tod Button you might have a point, but the GM has huge influence on what the team values and asks its scouts to prioritize. See: Sutter, Darryl, and his fondness of big western boys with low skill. Or Feaster, Jay, for putting so much trust in Weisbrod. Tre didn't give the scouts much to work with.

[Phil Russell]

I would probably throw away top 10 picks and look at median games played rather than mean bcs mean will get skewed high and hard by a few outliers. eg. 1000 game players.

[Coach]

I thought the recent scouting has been pretty good going back to late finds in Brodie, Gaudreau, Andersson, solid near top 10 selections in Monahan, Bennett and Tkachuk. I think the pro scouting was bad for a while picking out Brouwer and Neal types vs the trading up of Ferland and a non-signing Fox to good years of Lindholm and Hanifin. Seems to be on a good trend with adds like Sharangovich.

The use, development and retention of these players was on coaching and GMing and we added Darryl too late and flubbed the contracts of our stars. The Flames with the core mention above had a chance to be a great team for at least a few years but it got blown apart.

[Savvy27]

There are some pretty ugly looking drafts, but injury troubles have been a factor too. Pospisil, Valimaki, Zary, Pelletier, and Poirier have all dealt with significant injuries since being drafted.

[Macho0978]

Originally Posted by YyjFlames

I agree that younger players need opportunity and Sutter didn't really give any chances.

But interesting using Zary, as a part of me thinks he's looked this good because he had a couple extra years in the minors to learn his game. Guys like Baertschi were rushed and had too much pressure on them right away. Lots of young kids are probably better served with more time in the minors (even if I as a fan don't like it!).

I used Zary as an example because this is year 1 of having a team that the GM is wanting to build a team that has young players being promoted to the NHL. Zary had 58 points in 72 games and then a good start to this year in the AHL. Gets the call real early and was trending towards a 50-point rookie year. 58 in the AHL does not translate to 50 in the NHL.

Zary was a 2020 pick, Coronato was 2021. These 2 both played this year and 1 played very well. It's a bit early to criticize picks in 2020 to 2023.

2017-2019

Flames drafted:

1st - 2
2nd - 0
3rd - 1
4th-7th - 11

Valimaki and Pelletier are the 1st, Pelletier's injuries have slowed him down and Valimaki didn't get a chance but has been ok since he moved.

3 years to have 1 2nd or 3rd is not on Button.

11 picks in the late rounds have produced:

Ruzicka, Pospisil and Wolf. If Wolf becomes a #1 goalie that hitting at 11% on the late picks for high end players and if Pospisil becomes a solid 3rd liner or better, you got 2 very good players out of 11. 22% is amazing IMO.

[activeStick]

I think someone from the Athletic did something similar a number of months ago, though it wasn't by Head Scout but just by team. Flames finished second best, I believe in drafting behind the Stars and I think they went back a little further than 2017 with their analysis.

[FlamesAddiction]

I would love to know more about how things work behind the scenes. I don't know exactly what Button does, how much power he has, and how that might change with different GMs. It's hard to imagine him having the longevity he does if he wasn't doing something right. To survive so many management changes is pretty impressive.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Boblobla

I would weight it differently, maybe add a multiplier for the round. If you find someone in the 5th round their games played should have a 5x multiplier. That would be better imo.

This makes more sense to me.

[YyjFlames]

Originally Posted by Macho0978

I used Zary as an example because this is year 1 of having a team that the GM is wanting to build a team that has young players being promoted to the NHL. Zary had 58 points in 72 games and then a good start to this year in the AHL. Gets the call real early and was trending towards a 50-point rookie year. 58 in the AHL does not translate to 50 in the NHL.

Zary was a 2020 pick, Coronato was 2021. These 2 both played this year and 1 played very well. It's a bit early to criticize picks in 2020 to 2023.

2017-2019

Flames drafted:

1st - 2
2nd - 0
3rd - 1
4th-7th - 11

Valimaki and Pelletier are the 1st, Pelletier's injuries have slowed him down and Valimaki didn't get a chance but has been ok since he moved.

3 years to have 1 2nd or 3rd is not on Button.

11 picks in the late rounds have produced:

Ruzicka, Pospisil and Wolf. If Wolf becomes a #1 goalie that hitting at 11% on the late picks for high end players and if Pospisil becomes a solid 3rd liner or better, you got 2 very good players out of 11. 22% is amazing IMO.

Yeah, I agree there wasn't a ton of opportunity under the previous coach (how Sutter handled Pelletier and even Phillips as small as he was was really poor) -- I just don't think that Zary's time in the minors hurt him and I don't think that, other than during the Sutter years and a year or two where management thought they were in a place to win, Treleving was against young players stepping in to play.

He just didn't have a lot of young players ready to take the step because he traded so many high picks. I also agree with your broader point that the scouting staff has been really fantastic with what they were given for picks.

As an aside on Valimaki, it wasn't a lack of opportunity, but the guy was injured so much during his development time and then he wasn't a top 6 d-man when he was healthy enough to get a shot. Was it wrong to send him down? Sure, him getting picked up by Arizona for free was a bad result, but him eating popcorn as a number 7 in the NHL just to protect his rights wouldn't have been good for the player or the team.