How many top 6 forwards have the ducks drafted in the last dozen years excluding top 3 picks? Terry is the only one by my count. How does that fit in with the league average?
I like you made the cutoff at 12 years when Madden has been here 16 years. Fourteen years ago (the 2011 draft), Rakell (Rd 1, 30th) and Wild Bill (Rd 2, 53) are top-6 forwards and still playing in the NHL. Sixteen years ago (the 2009 draft), there was Palmieri (Rd 1, 26th) and he's still playing in the NHL. Palmieri has 37 points this season and would rank as the Ducks' 2nd best scorer this year!
Anyhow, top-6 forwards drafted by the Ducks in the last 12 years excluding top-3 picks:
2014: Rd 7, RW Kase (Concussion derailed his play.)
2015: Rd 5, RW Terry
2019: Rd 1, 6th overall, C Zegras
--- Still to early to tell beyond 2019 (Remember, it took Terry in his D+7 season to breakout ---
Notice how you only address the forwards, but sidestepped defensemen and goalies. Maybe you should just direct your bad scouting criticism at forwards drafted outside the top-3 picks? Your standard is not a likely outcome when searching for "impact" forwards.
Top-3 and Top-10 picks under Murray & Madden.
Do you know how many top-3 picks Madden has had under Murray between 2009 and 2021, a 13-year span? One. That was C McTavish in the 2021 draft.
Do you know how many top-10 picks Madden has had under Murray between 2009 and 2021? Five. 2012, 6th OA in LD Lindholm, 2014; 10th OA in LW Ritchie; 2019, 9th OA in C Zegras; 2020, 6th OA in RD Drysdale; and 3rd OA in C McTavish. Three picks used on forwards, with two of them during the rebuild that started in 2019.
These bits of info is pertinent for the charts I'll be sharing below.
"What's an NHL Draft Pick Worth" by Michael Schuckers
This was a 10-year study between 1988-1997. The standard for this research was a prospect playing 200 games. Schuckers included positional breakdowns of reaching 200 games played (GP) along with the round they were drafted within. Only 35% of first round forwards play 200 games, or 65% failure rate. It gets worse after each passing round.
"NHL Draft Pick Probabilities" by Jokke Nevalainen
This was a 10-year study between 2000-2009. We see this chart at 100 Games Played (GP) is similar to Schuckers' chart at 200 GP (the chart above). Two different researches with similar conclusions.
Here is another chart by Nevalainen, but done in pick by pick breakdown. The blue line (log trend line) cleans up raw plots to see a trend. Notice the steep drop between pick 1 and pick 8. It becomes less steep between pick 9 and pick 15. And then again, it becomes less steep from pick 15 to pick 31. The failure rate is far more significant within the first round than any other round. Again, the Schuckers table reflects this as well.
Ducks drafted Forwards with at least 200 NHL games
2011
Rd 1, 30. RW Rakell = 777 NHL games
Rd 2, 53. C Karlsson (Wild Bill) = 723 NHL games
2014
Rd 1, 10. LW Ritchie = 481 NHL games
Rd 7, 205. RW Kase = 258 NHL games
2015
Rd 5, 148. RW Terry = 399 NHL games
2016
Rd 1, 24. LW Jones = 265 NHL games
Rd 1, 30. C Steel = 392 NHL games
2017
Rd 2, 50. LW Comtois = 211 NHL games
2018
Rd 1, 23. C Lundestrom = 309 NHL games
2019
Rd 1, 9. C Zegras = 243 NHL games
2021
Rd 1, 3. C McTavish = 201 NHL games
"Odds Not Great for the NHL Draft" by Paul Osborne
"The truth is that very few players taken in the NHL draft this weekend will ever play in the NHL. In order to get an accurate read of how many drafted players played at least 200 games in the NHL, a study by proicehockey.about.com looked at the drafts between 1990 and 1999.
Of the 2,600 hundred players drafted just 494 or 19% played in at least 200 contests. 63% of first round picks played but less than 25% of second round picks survived and only 12% of third rounder selections. Former NHL general manager Doug MacLean said his math over the last decade showed that only 15% of second round picks ever become impact players."
Conclusion
You have a vast misconception of how many players make an impact in the NHL, let alone forward impact. I gave you three sources that all used a 10-year span of research that reflect only a small percentage of drafted prospects play 100 or 200 NHL games.
Lost in all this is the fact the Ducks, under Madden, have found impact defensemen and goalies outside the top-3 picks to outside the first round. We have an overabundance of defensive talent youth at the NHL level that we are rotating between three out of the four youth D. Then there are other young d-men talents in RD Luneau in the AHL, LD Solberg in the SHL, LD Dionicio in the NL-A, and RD Moore in the NCAA. At goal, Dostal is only 24 years old with Clang, Clara, and Buteyets behind him. But our best goalie behind Dostal, IMO, is UDFA Suchanek, who has been placed on IR for this whole season.
Because they are above the average at drafting goalies and defensemen, they can focus on acquiring top-10 forwards to supplement. Why are we complaining about not hitting on forwards beyond the top-3 picks? Remember, Anaheim was a consistent playoff participant in eight of the 10 years (2009-2018) and didn't see a top-3 pick until 2021 under Murray & Madden. Playoff teams generally are stuck later in the first round, which, according to all those charts, do not have a great chance of being an impact NHL player compared to being a top-10 or top-3 pick.
Youth Forwards accumulated since the Rebuild of 2019
- 2019: Rd 1, 9OA in C Zegras
- 2021: Rd 1, 3OA in C McTavish
- 2022: Rd 1, 5OA in LW Gauthier (via trade of 2020 Rd 1, 6OA RD Drysdale and 2025 2nd rd pick)
- 2023: Rd 1, 2OA in C Carlsson
- 2024: Rd 1, 3OA in RW Sennecke
Throw Terry into that mix, then that is enough talent to fulfill all top-6 forward positions. Which should mean all we have to worry about are bottom-6 forwards. This season in the AHL, it looks like we have some high-end scorers in RW Colangelo, RW/LW Pastujov, and RW/LW Sidorov. But we don't know how they'll pan out at the NHL level yet.
