Pretty interesting article I read today from Corey Pronman on the impact of late birthdays on drafted players.
Some of the conclusions are "first-year eligible late brithday prospects are being overvalued at the draft relative to their younger less expirienced counterparts."
The gap is less prevalent at the very top of the draft.
Late birthday first round picks Auston Matthews (to be fair he would have gone really high last year), Matthew Tkachuk, Julien Gauthier, Charile McAvoy, Luke Kunin, and Rasmus Asplund.
For those of you confused by the concept "I believe" the challenge in a nut shell is kids on the list above (late birthdays) played all of their life against guys that went in the draft the year before. You can be a kid that is on my sons team 2008 and if you are born in Sept15-Dec31 you get drafted a full season late. Example "A": Jack Eichel would have grown up his entire life playing against Dylan Larkin because they are both 1996 born however because of the NHL's quirky rule they split them up only for draft purposes. Larkin was born July 30th 1996 and Eichel was born October 28th 1996 but because of the odd rule Larkin was draft eligible in 2014 and Eichel got another full year of development and didn't go into the draft until 2015?
So any draft eligible kid born after September 15th up until December 31st (like Tkachuk) get a full additional season over the kids they played their entire life with. In Eichel's case I don't think it matters but on balance these kids are basically draft +1 players. As a December baby Kyle Connor received this advantage. To be clear he would have played his entire life as a 96 against Dylan Larkin but they were drafted a year apart.
