Ritchie is a slightly undersized, not-very-fast winger with pretty nice hands and a decent compete level. If he hits, he’ll probably be a 30-50 point middle-6 utility winger, much like what Suter basically is.
There is no value to this type of asset. If you would take him at #17 overall (as in that ranking list) you’re essentially ‘trading’ a mid-first round pick for a player who would be nowhere near a mid-first even in a 90th percentile result.
I don’t think Ritchie is as dynamic as Bjorkstrand, but Bjorkstrand makes the same point – at age 27, dead in the middle of his prime and signed not-unreasonably long-term and coming off a 57-point career year … Bjorkstrand was traded for a 3rd and a 4th round pick.
The league doesn’t value this sort of asset, so what’s the point in investing high draft picks in players that project as smallish middle-6 wingers?
To be fair, Ryder Ritchie is miles ahead of where Pius Suter at this point in his initial draft year. I don't think you can
completely dismiss that factor. But i do agree with the general premise you're getting at here. I was a little bit shocked by how low you seem to rank him, but i get it. His projection is
not as a big value asset through any of the general "middle 68% of outcomes".
Getting smallish Top-9 Filler/Utility wingers is basically the easiest assets to acquire in the league. Ryder isn't absolutely tiny though. I'm not nearly as negative on him overall i don't think. Even though i agree with your reasoning for dropping him hard. Part of that is just...a kind of cruddy draft too.
The value of any draft pick is essentially the cap savings while on cost-controlled contracts...because you could get almost any type of player in free agency if you're willing to spend enough.
I haven't really followed this draft class as much, but there's a big difference between a 30 point winger and a 50 point winger...if you can get a 50 point winger who also contributes in ways besides scoring on an ELC or even bridge RFA deal that's part of the formula for winning.
The thing is...i don't think there always
is that huge of a difference between 30 and 50pt wingers. They're often the same guy, in different situations. Particularly when you start to break down how much of it is powerplay and role dependent.
It matters at the NHL level. I think there's still a bit of a "market inefficiency" that exists for guys like Garland, Farabee, et al who can produce extremely well without needing to rely on PP time and production. And it can often be a real mirage when it comes to Junior players with inflated numbers who are just part of a lethal powerplay collecting shrapnel points (and suppress the perceived value of players who are blocked a bit by older/bigger name talent).
That's one thing that i think at least softens my stance on Ryder Ritchie a tiny bit. He's in a role that's been a bit "blocked" and he's clearly not just a total "powerplay merchant". But as a whole, i think he still does fit more into that Pius Suter type projection. He's just not that dynamic offensively, or in general really.
Yeah, we saw this last year when all these sites had the Benson/Cristall/Perron crowd rated incredibly high and then were baffled that ‘dumb’ NHL teams didn’t see it the same way.
And through the 1990s and 2000s, yeah. There were incredible value disparities offered by taking small skill players in an era where NHL teams were taking 12-point face-punching defenders in the first round but a guy who led his league in scoring would go in the 4th round. And these sites (and most of the fans posting here, including myself) realized you could just focus on (usually smallish) high-producing skill players and that you would statistically blow apart the drafting of most NHL teams.
But these things are very fluid and what was smart and represented good value in 2012 isn’t necessarily what is smart and represents good value in 2024.
1. The value proposition has changed completely over the last decade. In 2014 Brayden Point went #79 overall. In 2023 Zach Benson who was basically the exact same player (except a wing and not a C) went #13 overall. The league has adjusted and small players are now valued … pretty appropriately and you can’t just default to ‘draft small guys’ and expect to get some sort of insane moneypuck value.
2. What I’ve realized over years now of draft watching and rating guys is that continually rating small high-producing players highly means that you essentially build a roster of nothing but tiny skill wingers and small PP QB defenders. And it’s not a recipe for success.
3. Further from (2), there has always been this notion that ‘if you draft good players at one position you can trade them for need’ but if you draft a bunch of small skill wingers, that just isn’t how it works. Nobody is trading their top young defensemen for little scoring wingers.
I’ve done a 180 in the last 5 years from being of a stat-counting mindset in draft analysis where instead of looking to generate the most GP/points with my picks and ‘be smarter’ than NHL teams who have lower GP/point totals from their picks I’m looking at generating the highest value from picks and how important it is to add C and D and build the spine of your team.
But most of these scouting sites (and most of the prospect board posters here) are still stuck in 2014 and haven’t made this adjustment. And they’re operating from a totally different playbook than what NHL teams are right now. C, D, and size/physicality are at an incredible premium. And the top 20 picks of the draft will be absolutely dominated by players at those positions or with those traits.
Conor Garland has been a massive eye-opener for me. I loved Garland back in 2015, had him rated in the 2nd round. And I theoretically got that evaluation dead on. But if I had taken him in the 2nd round … he’s only had a couple moments in his career where he would have returned that invested cost in a trade. At age 27 coming off a 46-point season he was basically judged to be completely worthless by the NHL. And even though I nailed the player evaluation, it wouldn’t really have been a very good pick if I’d actually taken him as highly as I had him rated. The guys that actually carry value out of that range of that draft are guys like Roope Hintz, Rasmus Andersson, Anthony Cirelli, Erik Cernak. Big players or C/D or both. And if you keep taking Garlands you’re never going to have those sorts of hits of core-type assets that are nearly impossible to find if you don’t draft them.
Really good post. And i think pretty well sums up my thoughts on "draft value" and the way things have shifted. At this point, it's about getting the assets you can't really get anywhere else. Or at least, not without an exorbitant cost and a huge amount of risk. Namely...it's good Centers and big mobile defencemen.
The mindset is
Generational
Elite talent
#1D
#1C
#2D
First line forward
Second line center
#3D
Second line wingers
#4 D
Third line players
bottom pairing D
Fourth line forwards
See, i think this is somewhat on the right track. But i feel like it's breaking things down in a somewhat overly detailed way numerical way...at the expense of really reflecting some of the value discrepancies in "player types" within those categorizations.
It's why say...Dakota Joshua and Pius Suter scored at a fairly comparable rate this year. But if Suter were a UFA again...he's probably still not touching much more than his $1.6M "bargain" deal. While Joshua is probably looking at a stupid $4M deal from some teams. He brings elements that are more coveted, more scarce, and harder to acquire without overpaying or "overdrafting" or just getting a bit lucky with a late bloomer like that. Even though numerically...Suter played a lot more as a "2nd or even 1st line winger". Rather than a "3rd line winger". Where as above...it's vital to contextualize production and role.
It's where i tend to look at things, and i think a lot more teams are starting to look at things very differently than those specific rigidly numbered roles like that. And more in terms of the role they'll actually play, or what the limits of their capacity is to "carry play".
And what sort of impact a player will have in those roles.
