How bad has our North American Scouting been?

[Run the Jewels]

There is some understandable criticism starting to form regarding Yzerman's return to Detroit. When I look at the criticism, I view much of it as stemming from something I've noticed for quite some time: Detroit's North American scouts have largely done an incredibly poor job.

To be fair, this goes all the way back to Ken Holland, who relied largely on a North American scouting team by providing them with his best draft picks. When he was finally removed as the team's general manager, the prospect pool was barren, making Yzerman's job even more difficult.

The best stat to indicate just how bad our North American scouting has been is the fact we only have two players drafted out of North America who are still on the team and have played over 100 NHL games: Dylan Larkin and Michael Rasmussen. Rasmussen is basically a warm body, not a central building block, making the failure of our North American scouts even more damning.

Let's take a look at one area where Ken Holland and our North American scouting was an unmitigated disaster: drafting and developing defensemen:

Here are all of the first and second rounders we've used to draft defensemen out of North America over the past 25 years:
Andrew Gibson
Brady Cleveland
Shai Buium
Jared McIssac
Dennis Cholowski
Xavier Ouellet
Ryan Sproul
Brendan Smith
Jakub Kindl

Not a single one of them has turned into a top 4 d-man. Smith was the best of the bunch and had a nice NHL career, but any scouting department who only drafted one top 6 d-man over a 25 year period with their best draft capital would be considered a massive failure.

Over that same time period Hakan Andersson has drafted the following defensemen:
Nik Kronwall (29th OA pick)
Jonathan Ericsson (291st OA pick)
Filip Hronek (53rd OA pick)
Gustav Lindstrom (38th OA pick)
Albert Johansson (60th OA pick)
Mo Seider (6th OA pick)
Simon Edvinsson (6th OA pick)
Axel Sandin-Pelikka (17th OA pick - acquired by trading Hronek)

When I have some more time, I'll also review forwards drafted in the first two rounds. That will include draft picks like Filip Zadina with the #6 OA pick in 2018 and Michael Rasmussen with a top 10 pick in 2017.

 

[1878rgw]

Michael Rasmussen with a top 10 pick in 2019.

He is a 2017 pick and a victim of the rules not beeing eligible to the AHL in his draft year.

 

[Coach Reggie Dunlop]

Well tyler wrights drafting was atrocious no matter where we drafted from. I think wright and drapers drafting tenures should be separated, because one is clearly better than the other. I don’t really think their NA drafting since Draper took over has been bad.

 

[GarlicbreadTB]

Think it should be pointed out that since Yzerman took over. He has Håkan Andersson come over for a few weeks around this time a year to look at North American prospects and compare them to the ones in Europe.

 

[Run the Jewels]

He is a 2017 pick and a victim of the rules not beeing eligible to the AHL in his draft year.

Thanks, fixed this.

 

[Steve Yzerlland]

"Pretty pretty bad" *Larry David voice*

 

[rbartnik]

Who's the top-4 defenseman we missed out on after taking Gibson and Cleveland?

After Buium?

After McIsaac?

 

[Zetterberg4Captain]

Draper and Co are awful

 

[JediOrderPizza]

We need some dude named Bob Dallas McShanaman on this team.

 

[HisNoodliness]

There is some understandable criticism starting to form regarding Yzerman's return to Detroit. When I look at the criticism, I view much of it as stemming from something I've noticed for quite some time: Detroit's North American scouts have largely done an incredibly poor job.

To be fair, this goes all the way back to Ken Holland, who relied largely on a North American scouting team by providing them with his best draft picks. When he was finally removed as the team's general manager, the prospect pool was barren, making Yzerman's job even more difficult.

The best stat to indicate just how bad our North American scouting has been is the fact we only have two players drafted out of North America who are still on the team and have played over 100 NHL games: Dylan Larkin and Michael Rasmussen. Rasmussen is basically a warm body, not a central building block, making the failure of our North American scouts even more damning.

Let's take a look at one area where Ken Holland and our North American scouting was an unmitigated disaster: drafting and developing defensemen:

Here are all of the first and second rounders we've used to draft defensemen out of North America over the past 25 years:
Andrew Gibson
Brady Cleveland
Shai Buium
Jared McIssac
Dennis Cholowski
Xavier Ouellet
Ryan Sproul
Brendan Smith
Jakub Kindl

Not a single one of them has turned into a top 4 d-man. Smith was the best of the bunch and had a nice NHL career, but any scouting department who only drafted one top 6 d-man over a 25 year period with their best draft capital would be considered a massive failure.

Over that same time period Hakan Andersson has drafted the following defensemen:
Nik Kronwall (29th OA pick)
Jonathan Ericsson (291st OA pick)
Filip Hronek (53rd OA pick)
Gustav Lindstrom (38th OA pick)
Albert Johansson (60th OA pick)
Mo Seider (6th OA pick)
Simon Edvinsson (6th OA pick)
Axel Sandin-Pelikka (17th OA pick - acquired by trading Hronek)

When I have some more time, I'll also review forwards drafted in the first two rounds. That will include draft picks like Filip Zadina with the #6 OA pick in 2018 and Michael Rasmussen with a top 10 pick in 2017.

It only makes sense to separate these into two different periods based on the head of our scouting department. No doubt, the Tyler Wright era was miserable. Let's ignore all of that because it pollutes our dataset. I think we should give Draper some credit though. I posted a "Draper needs to go" thread a year or so ago and it was largely based on a few premises:

1. Draper and Yzerman both overvalue the same traits, become an echo chamber and end up failing to take the BPA as a result of looking for big defenseman that can skate, and industrious, defensively responsible forwards. The fact that I don't particularly like the brand of hockey that these player archetypes generally give rise to (defensive, careful, and physical) probably has some influence on me here. I think we've missed out on some good players by sticking to stringently to this narrow goal.

2. We were yet to have a non first round pick establish themselves on the team during the Draper/Yzerman era. Sure, most non-firsts take 4+ years to make it, but we have had enough picks that someone should have made it.

3. There have been enough specific picks that I really didn't like where the media team made it clear that Draper was the guy really pushing them. Brady Cleveland has become a meme, but he's emblematic of this. He gives me flashbacks to Wright talking about all those picks we wasted in the second onwards on big D and responsible Cs. Combined with point one, there's just too many similarities between Draper/Yzerman and Wright/Holland.

But honestly, I'm revising my opinion. Let's start with the excuses. For the same reasons that Hakan didn't perform very well when Holland didn't give him premium picks, Draper shouldn't have been expected to produce many NHL players from few picks, and later ones. In 2019 and 2020 we used 6 1st/2nd round picks on Euros and 2 on NAs. 2023 was Draper's first first round pick (that wasn't a goalie). We've also just been sort of unlucky with the few NA picks that we've had. Carter Mazur would be a great feather in Draper's cap. He's exactly a Draper type of player. He probably would be in the NHL right now and helping our terrible bottom 6 if he didn't break a bone every time he steps back on the ice. Donovan Sobrango and Andrew Gibson both look like likely NHL players out of NA that we drafted. We traded them. Lastly, we tend to slow burn our prospects. Before Elmer and AlJo established themselves down the stretch this season, none of our seconds had made it from the Yzerman era.

Then the accolades. Our drafting during the Draper/Yzerman era as a whole has been really strong. Draper isn't just the head of NA scouting, he's the head of the whole department. Having the good sense to choose to take a Euro that Hakan is pounding the table for over someone that he personally had been scouting heavily is also part of his job. It means that he's scouted the NA options well enough NOT to take them over the Euro. He deserves credit for every pick. We don't need to talk about Seider, Raymond and Edvinsson. Kasper's play this season has been solid vindication of the Draper/Yzerman player archetype. On top of that, our prospects are trending extremely well in general. Elmer and AlJo have established themselves as NHLers, possibly impactful ones. Buch looks like the "high upside breakthrough" that we need. We have many NA prospects likely to get a shot in the next couple years: Mazur, Danielson, Cossa, Lombardi. Finnie, Augustine and Plante are all trending well from the last few drafts. I feel confident that some of these guys will make the team and am pretty hopeful that some of them could be impactful. If that doesn't happen, we can be critical of Draper. As things stand, I'm pretty happy with him and our drafting as a whole.

I could swing back the other way on this narrative. I'm forecasting a lot on our "close" prospects, and giving credit for what I think are likely good bets. If they all fizzle, well, that would be pretty rough for Draper's evaluation. As things are now, I'm happy with our drafting and-with proper context- that includes our NA drafting.

 

[PelagicJoe]

I've been saying for years that our scouting department needs some upgrading.

 

[Frk It]

Do we really need to spin up this discussion again?

Most of our high picks have been used on European players. In most cases that has been the correct call. So yeah, we have not seen a ton of NA players make the team.

It’s just logical cause and effect.

I am encouraged by the collective of Cossa, Augustine, Danielson, Plante, Mazur… it just takes time for these guys to make the team.

 

[Run the Jewels]

So as I pointed out in the original post, Detroit's North American scouting hasn't drafted a top 4 defenseman in 25 years. If you are focused on rebuilding, you need to hit on a decent number of draft picks, and not just top 10 picks. So as pointed out previously, the rebuild had been hampered by a truly awful North American scouting team.

Now, let's take a look at the forwards. The scouts were responsible for drafting an elite forward in Dylan Larkin back in 2015, which is great. But what have they surrounded him with? Here's how they've used their best draft capital.

1st and 2nd round forward picks out of North America over the past 25 years:

Max Plante
Nate Danielson
Dylan James
Cross Hanas
Robert Mastrosimone
Filip Zadina
Joe Veleno
Michael Rasmussen
Givani Smith
Evgeni Svechnikov
Dylan Larkin
Anthony Mantha
Zach Nastasiuk
Tyler Bertuzzi
Martin Frk
Tomas Jurco
Riley Sheahan
Landon Ferraro
Corey Emmerton
Shawn Matthias
Justin Abdelkader

I've bolded every player who has played 500 NHL games. I bolded Rasmussen who has a legit shot to hit 500, but not Veleno who is 200 games short. Let's also give them credit for Darren Helm and Andreas Anastasiou who, while neither was drafted in the first two rounds, played 500 or more NHL games.

So add it all up and what have you got?

One legit top line center and a bunch of depth forwards. Larkin as mentioned above is the one clear home run draft pick, as he's averaged 0.79 points per game while carrying some of the worst seasons in Detroit Red Wings history. So in 25 years, our North American scouts identified one clear scoring line forward. That's better than their track record with top 4 d-man, but still incredibly paltry.

Sure, Justin Abdelkader played on a line with Pavel Datsyuk, but he averaged 0.34 points per game over his career. That's bottom 6 production, not scoring line production.

Tyler Bertuzzi (0.62 ppg) and Anthony Mantha (0.60 ppt) were both decent but not particularly notable 2nd line forwards. Both players have bounced around the league and - outside of one outlier season for Bertuzzi - both guys average 45ish points per season. That's run of the mill middle 6 production. No one is building a team around that.

Andreas Athanasiou is the one guy whose point production would place him on a third line, as he's averaged 0.5 ppg over his career. Again, technically a solid piece, but not a core building block. Outside of one outlier season, he's typically been a 30ish point player. If you're feeling overly charitable, you could place Rasmussen here as well, so let's do that.

The rest of the guys are basically 4th line players when it comes to point production:

Justin Abdelkader: 0.34 ppg
Riley Sheahan: 0.19 ppg
Shawn Matthias: 0.32 ppg
Darren Helm: 0.32 ppg

So in short, here are the unqualified successes from using our best draft capital over the past 25 years:

• 1 legit first line center
• 2 run of the mill second line wingers
• 2 run of the mill third line wingers/centers
• 4 fourth line wingers/centers

So if you are growing impatient with the rebuild, I'd suggest you focus your attention on how truly awful our North American scouting has been for nearly a quarter century.

 

[Run the Jewels]

But honestly, I'm revising my opinion. Let's start with the excuses. For the same reasons that Hakan didn't perform very well when Holland didn't give him premium picks, Draper shouldn't have been expected to produce many NHL players from few picks, and later ones. In 2019 and 2020 we used 6 1st/2nd round picks on Euros and 2 on NAs. 2023 was Draper's first first round pick (that wasn't a goalie). We've also just been sort of unlucky with the few NA picks that we've had. Carter Mazur would be a great feather in Draper's cap. He's exactly a Draper type of player. He probably would be in the NHL right now and helping our terrible bottom 6 if he didn't break a bone every time he steps back on the ice. Donovan Sobrango and Andrew Gibson both look like likely NHL players out of NA that we drafted. We traded them. Lastly, we tend to slow burn our prospects. Before Elmer and AlJo established themselves down the stretch this season, none of our seconds had made it from the Yzerman era.


I could swing back the other way on this narrative. I'm forecasting a lot on our "close" prospects, and giving credit for what I think are likely good bets. If they all fizzle, well, that would be pretty rough for Draper's evaluation. As things are now, I'm happy with our drafting and-with proper context- that includes our NA drafting.

I debated adding Hakan's draft record when covering our poor NA scouting when it comes to forwards, but the post was already quite long. Regardless, your view is simply wrong. Even when Hakan wasn't given great draft picks, he still produced plenty of quality players who were capable of hitting 500 NHL games.

Tomas Tatar
Gus Nyquist
Johan Franzen
Valtteri Filppula
Jiri Hudler
Tomas Fleischmann
Calle Jarnkrok
Mattias Janmark

And that's just forwards with few being in the first two rounds.

 

[AlwaysSunnyInDetroit]

So as I pointed out in the original post, Detroit's North American scouting hasn't drafted a top 4 defenseman in 25 years. If you are focused on rebuilding, you need to hit on a decent number of draft picks, and not just top 10 picks. So as pointed out previously, the rebuild had been hampered by a truly awful North American scouting team.

Now, let's take a look at the forwards. The scouts were responsible for drafting an elite forward in Dylan Larkin back in 2015, which is great. But what have they surrounded him with? Here's how they've used their best draft capital.

1st and 2nd round forward picks out of North America over the past 25 years:

Max Plante
Nate Danielson
Dylan James
Cross Hanas
Robert Mastrosimone
Filip Zadina
Joe Veleno
Michael Rasmussen
Givani Smith
Evgeni Svechnikov
Dylan Larkin
Anthony Mantha
Zach Nastasiuk
Tyler Bertuzzi
Martin Frk
Tomas Jurco
Riley Sheahan
Landon Ferraro
Corey Emmerton
Shawn Matthias
Justin Abdelkader

I've bolded every player who has played 500 NHL games. I bolded Rasmussen who has a legit shot to hit 500, but not Veleno who is 200 games short. Let's also give them credit for Darren Helm and Andreas Anastasiou who, while neither was drafted in the first two rounds, played 500 or more NHL games.

So add it all up and what have you got?

One legit top line center and a bunch of depth forwards. Larkin as mentioned above is the one clear home run draft pick, as he's averaged 0.79 points per game while carrying some of the worst seasons in Detroit Red Wings history. So in 25 years, our North American scouts identified one clear scoring line forward. That's better than their track record with top 4 d-man, but still incredibly paltry.

Sure, Justin Abdelkader played on a line with Pavel Datsyuk, but he averaged 0.34 points per game over his career. That's bottom 6 production, not scoring line production.

Tyler Bertuzzi (0.62 ppg) and Anthony Mantha (0.60 ppt) were both decent but not particularly notable 2nd line forwards. Both players have bounced around the league and - outside of one outlier season for Bertuzzi - both guys average 45ish points per season. That's run of the mill middle 6 production. No one is building a team around that.

Andreas Athanasiou is the one guy whose point production would place him on a third line, as he's averaged 0.5 ppg over his career. Again, technically a solid piece, but not a core building block. Outside of one outlier season, he's typically been a 30ish point player. If you're feeling overly charitable, you could place Rasmussen here as well, so let's do that.

The rest of the guys are basically 4th line players when it comes to point production:

Justin Abdelkader: 0.34 ppg
Riley Sheahan: 0.19 ppg
Shawn Matthias: 0.32 ppg
Darren Helm: 0.32 ppg

So in short, here are the unqualified successes from using our best draft capital over the past 25 years:

• 1 legit first line center
• 2 run of the mill second line wingers
• 2 run of the mill third line wingers/centers
• 4 fourth line wingers/centers

So if you are growing impatient with the rebuild, I'd suggest you focus your attention on how truly awful our North American scouting has been for nearly a quarter century.

this information is useless without proper context. is our record league average? bad? worst all-time? i have a hard time believing that our na drafting has been worst in the league for 25 years without anyone in charge noticing or caring

 

[Gniwder]

There is some understandable criticism starting to form regarding Yzerman's return to Detroit. When I look at the criticism, I view much of it as stemming from something I've noticed for quite some time: Detroit's North American scouts have largely done an incredibly poor job.

To be fair, this goes all the way back to Ken Holland, who relied largely on a North American scouting team by providing them with his best draft picks. When he was finally removed as the team's general manager, the prospect pool was barren, making Yzerman's job even more difficult.

The best stat to indicate just how bad our North American scouting has been is the fact we only have two players drafted out of North America who are still on the team and have played over 100 NHL games: Dylan Larkin and Michael Rasmussen. Rasmussen is basically a warm body, not a central building block, making the failure of our North American scouts even more damning.

Let's take a look at one area where Ken Holland and our North American scouting was an unmitigated disaster: drafting and developing defensemen:

Here are all of the first and second rounders we've used to draft defensemen out of North America over the past 25 years:
Andrew Gibson
Brady Cleveland
Shai Buium
Jared McIssac
Dennis Cholowski
Xavier Ouellet
Ryan Sproul
Brendan Smith
Jakub Kindl

Not a single one of them has turned into a top 4 d-man. Smith was the best of the bunch and had a nice NHL career, but any scouting department who only drafted one top 6 d-man over a 25 year period with their best draft capital would be considered a massive failure.

Over that same time period Hakan Andersson has drafted the following defensemen:
Nik Kronwall (29th OA pick)
Jonathan Ericsson (291st OA pick)
Filip Hronek (53rd OA pick)
Gustav Lindstrom (38th OA pick)
Albert Johansson (60th OA pick)
Mo Seider (6th OA pick)
Simon Edvinsson (6th OA pick)
Axel Sandin-Pelikka (17th OA pick - acquired by trading Hronek)

When I have some more time, I'll also review forwards drafted in the first two rounds. That will include draft picks like Filip Zadina with the #6 OA pick in 2018 and Michael Rasmussen with a top 10 pick in 2017.

You deliberately left out the only success, Nick Jensen

 

[Run the Jewels]

You deliberately left out the only success, Nick Jensen

I initially looked at first and second round draft picks when it comes to defense, where you are most likely to draft a top 4 d-man. But sure, Nick Jensen has played 600 NHL games and has averaged 18:50 per game.

Does this change the larger picture when it comes to our North American scouting? I'd argue it does not.

 

[Frk It]

Well tyler wrights drafting was atrocious no matter where we drafted from. I think wright and drapers drafting tenures should be separated, because one is clearly better than the other. I don’t really think their NA drafting since Draper took over has been bad.

Why are we talking about the Holland era or draft picks from 2006 at all?

 

[KasperTheGrittyGhost]

Pro scouting is much worse than the amateur group. I would love to see us add a major voice to the group this summer.

 

[GMR]

Who was the last good Canadian player we developed?

 

[JediOrderPizza]

Who was the last good Canadian player we developed?

Bert or Mantha.

Hopefully Nate Danielson, Lombardi and Cossa soon.