Yes, lots of different charts out there but they all tend to produce the same basic curve. But personally, I’d more value ones based on some sort of overall player valuation/impact like a game score or WAR. One based on games played creates close to the same curve but obviously Mario Lemieux’s 915 games played and Mike Bossy’s 752 games played were more impactful than Lars Eller’s 1184 (and counting) games played. So if I was someone in charge, I’d be sure to use data that tries to measure total impact of a player.
And yes, the line only looks nice and makes a nice curve when you average a bunch of years together. Include the actual data and it gets messy fast.
You give some examples of teams that perhaps made some poor decisions. So again, my answer would be to simply make sure you’re making better decisions. Better talent evaluations and thus better selections.
IMO, Philly trading picks 22 and 31 for pick 12 isn’t an example of a team making a bad decision by giving up 2 picks for 1; it’s an example of a team overvaluing size and toughness because they have a Broadstreet Bullies reputation to keep. The error was in the player evaluation. Hopefully our GM and scouts are smarter than Philly’s. I trust they are.
In the end, it comes down to how much you trust your scouts IMO as good scouts consistently make quality player evaluations. You try to move up if you trust your scouts have identified a quality player that’s worth the assets to move up.
I mean, you think SJ regrets giving up picks 13, 44 and 87 for pick 9 in 2007 to draft Logan Couture?
Or how about a year later when Nashville saw Roman Josi still on the board and traded picks 46 and 76 for pick 38 to get him? Franchise altering move right there. Should they have just wanted to 46 to see if Josi would still be available so they could also still use pick 76?
I like the wiggly charts much better.
You're kind of proving my point with your examples though. Philly obviously had Nesbitt in a tier above everyone else. In 2007, we clearly had Eller in
at least the same tier as Couture. In 2008, every single team mis-evaluated Roman Josi. Call it hindsight if you must, but that's exactly the point. Maybe every scout in the league in 2008 just sucked. Or maybe it's really hard to scout 17-18 year olds. Just because you have a guy in a "higher tier" pre-draft, doesn't mean you've got your tiers right in the first place.
In 2013 we traded 3 picks to take William Carrier (a 3rd and 2 4ths). He's had a nice career, and none of the guys EDM took with the picks we sent them did anything at the pro level. That doesn't mean it was a good trade for us, per se. What if instead of taking Bogdan Yakimov with pick 83, they (or we) took Oliver Bjorkstrand instead? What if instead of taking Jackson Houck at pick 94, they (or we) had taken Jusse Saros, Miles Wood, Nick Paul, or Andrew Copp? What if instead of taking Aidan Muir with pick 113, they (or we) had taken Hudson Fasching or Tyler Motte? Again, Carrier has been a good NHL player and won 2 Cups. But would you take him over a Bjorkstrand, Copp, Motte draft class? I wouldn't. Because then, even if you go ahead with the ill-advised Ryan Miller trade and send one of those three to Buffalo, you still have two bona fide NHL players left over.
The trade charts mostly agree with me. In that Carrier trade, pick 57 was obviously the most valuable single pick involved. But the total value of the picks we sent to EDM was, depending on which chart you use, the equivalent of a free 48th, 71st, or 72nd pick going their way. E.g. in one chart, the value of pick 57 is 15.3, and we sent them 28.0 in pick value, which shakes out to a difference of 12.7, or the value of pick 71. Would they have accepted a deal where they weren't coming out on top? Of course not. But the trade chart agrees that they were correct to move back. That they squandered that surplus value is an indictment of their drafting, rather than the concept of moving back.
In 2013, these boards ranked our top-10 prospect pool like this: Tarasenko, Schwartz, Rattie, Allen, Jaskin, Carrier, Hakanpaa, Schmaltz, Edmundson, Binnington. Parayko was a distant 17th. That's a mixed bag that falls off hard after the first two. But it's not a bad pool! It's hard to think it wouldn't have been better if we had stayed pat in the 2013 draft and nailed those three picks instead of shipping a haul to EDM for the Carrier pick.
I've said it before, but I'm not impressed by draft success in the 1st round. That, to me, is the bare minimum expectation. Since 2021 when Feltrin took over, only one player selected outside of the first round has put on a Blues sweater in a regular season game: Kaskimaki. It's still super early, and we'll see how the more recent picks shake out, but right now it's not looking like anybody else from the 2021 or 2022 draft classes is going to make it (with apologies to Koromyslov). I still really like our prospect pool, for the record. But to me, that doesn't scream that our scouts know how to find those gems, and ought to be given surplus value to go shopping with to find the "right" guy.
