News Article: Sens big losers of draft, per TheScore

[edguy]

Safe to say Toronto are the true geniuses of the first round. They managed to grab Auston Matthews!

But after AM i dont think they had that great of a draft..

 

[KevinRedkey]

Apparently Ottawa wanted to trade up with Buffalo so they could take Sergachev, but that was too pricey. Can't blame them for giving up a 3rd for what may have been the only guy left on their "we really want one of these guys" list.

 

[Cosmix]

But after AM i dont think they had that great of a draft..

No team, other than Toronto, had a great draft!

 

[Frank8]

Bonk,

I truly appreciate your deliberately obtuse responses. It makes the board more lively. You know the regime is mostly the same and you know the point I'm making has credence - drafting isn't an exact science, we're not markedly better than anyone else to justify trading up, there's often decent value in the third, we should be maximising the odds.

Brown might work out, I truly hope he does. But for Dorion to make the choice to squander a third to move up one spot, he better have a solid rationale beyond a gut feeling. Given the available information, I'm not sure how he could. Hopefully the risk pays off.

 

[bigfatfist]

http://www.thehockeynews.com/blog/winners-and-losers-from-the-first-round-of-the-draft/

Says Ottawa is the losers here also.

Personally Brown was a target of mine even when he was ranked in the 20's. IMO Ottawa did what they had to do to get the player they wanted. They probably have an inside track on this kid since he spent time in Ottawa over the last few seasons working out with the club.

These are the guys that said Ottawa was stupid for giving up on Cowen and Babcock would turn him around, right...

 

[bigfatfist]

But after AM i dont think they had that great of a draft..

Story going in --> leafs can use all these picks to trade up, control the draft, do so many things

Story after the draft --> leafs were really smart to do nothing but stockpile lots of mediocre prospects

 

[HavlatMach9]

drafting isn't an exact science, we're not markedly better than anyone else to justify trading up

it might not be an exact science, but the Sens are very good at it. We aren't drafting for the sake of drafting, we are drafting players who have been scouted. It could be as simple as we don't like any players after Brown, or we think the 3rd round is very weak and won't result in a player. The odds that you get a player drops off the cliff after the 2nd round.

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

Maybe. In that case, wouldn't Jersey have simply told Ottawa they needed to up their offer to compete with those other teams? Or perhaps Ottawa gave them the best offer. Or only offer. Again, we will never really know. We'll just hear anecdotes about it for years from Dorion and his staff if Brown does well.

At least with the Kadri-Cowen (2009?) draft we had video of Burke asking Murray who he was taking and Murray telling him they would pick Kadri if he fell to them. So Burke picked him at 7 instead. Of course, Murray could have been bluffing..... ugh. This is all speculation at this point. I still think it was Dorion getting pumped as Brown kept dropping and finally to the point where he finally offered something to a team in front of him. He obviously thought it was a reasonable price to make sure he got the big center.

Simple.

Teams only have a few minutes to make their selection. If a team delays too long (in theory) they could lose the pick altogether.

When a trade presents itself on the draft floor, you can't exactly go back and forth with several other teams to get a lot of counter offers, especially if other teams are still on the fence with who they want to move up for and how much they'll pay.

 

[HavlatMach9]

i think you can delay and it's also makes for good TV getting footage of GMs on the phone and talking, being anxious

 

[Do Make Say Think]

Bonk,

I truly appreciate your deliberately obtuse responses. It makes the board more lively. You know the regime is mostly the same and you know the point I'm making has credence - drafting isn't an exact science, we're not markedly better than anyone else to justify trading up, there's often decent value in the third, we should be maximising the odds.

Brown might work out, I truly hope he does. But for Dorion to make the choice to squander a third to move up one spot, he better have a solid rationale beyond a gut feeling. Given the available information, I'm not sure how he could. Hopefully the risk pays off.

No mention of the chart that clearly indicates that we have a solid record in terms of drafting eh?

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

i think you can delay and it's also makes for good TV getting footage of GMs on the phone and talking, being anxious

Iirc, you can ask for 1 time extension, but that's it. Overall, you're looking at 10 minutes (or less) to make a selection or trade. That's not much time.

 

[DrEasy]

The value of draft picks probably follows a power law, so it drops off really fast early and flattens up near the end. See this fairly unscientific evaluation for example. The value of a third round pick might not be that different from the difference between a 11th and a 12th pick, and even if it is an overpay, it may well be worth it if you're doing it for a specific reason (your private value of the player you want is higher than the private value for the other team, or the public value). It's clearly a win-win if the Sens wanted to make sure they got Brown, who they valued much more than the alternative, and if NJ didn't care much either way about drafting Brown or McLeod, or they were fairly sure we weren't going to draft McLeod.

The thing I'd love to know though is: was NJ going to pick McLeod with that 11th pick anyway? Because if so, we could have saved that 3rd round pick altogether and drafted Brown anyway. Clearly, either they wanted McLeod all along (but then they had to make sure we weren't going to draft him ourselves), or they weren't feeling so strongly about Brown that they were ok losing him for McLeod + 3rd rd pick.

What's the best way to conduct a negotiation like this? Do you start by asking them: "who are you going to draft with that pick?" (see: Burke and Murray re: Kadri/Cowen) and you offer a trade if they want the guy you want, but then they can also be bluffing to extract value from you. Or you just offer the 3rd round pick without disclosing who you want? Either way, it seems to me the side who initiates the trade discussion is automatically at a disadvantage.

 

[Knave]

Bonk,

I truly appreciate your deliberately obtuse responses. It makes the board more lively. You know the regime is mostly the same and you know the point I'm making has credence - drafting isn't an exact science, we're not markedly better than anyone else to justify trading up, there's often decent value in the third, we should be maximising the odds.

Brown might work out, I truly hope he does. But for Dorion to make the choice to squander a third to move up one spot, he better have a solid rationale beyond a gut feeling. Given the available information, I'm not sure how he could. Hopefully the risk pays off.

A first round pick in the top 15 (lets say 10-15) has a 30-50% chance of turning into an impact player.

A third round pick has at best a 5-10% chance of turning into an impact player and a 75% chance of failure.

These are rough percentages looking back at the history of the NHL draft.

If you want to maximize odds - you're likely going to want to move up as high as possible in the draft wherever possible. Since you have no faith in our scouts... I'm not sure how you could be against giving up a measly third.

 

[Hutz]

I will never forget you third rounder.

Oh Brandon Gignac, we hardly knew thee.

 

[BonkTastic]

Bonk,

I truly appreciate your deliberately obtuse responses. It makes the board more lively. You know the regime is mostly the same and you know the point I'm making has credence - drafting isn't an exact science, we're not markedly better than anyone else to justify trading up, there's often decent value in the third, we should be maximising the odds.

Brown might work out, I truly hope he does. But for Dorion to make the choice to squander a third to move up one spot, he better have a solid rationale beyond a gut feeling. Given the available information, I'm not sure how he could. Hopefully the risk pays off.

Deliberately obtuse?

This is the point I have been arguing against:

The Sens aren't great at drafting, they're average

I never said anything about whether it was worth a 3rd round pick to move up one spot. That is entirely subjective, and we won't know for years (depending on how Brown turns out), if ever (because we have no idea who the Sens would have taken with that 3rd rounder). Arguing it seems silly, because there are so many conditions to the argument that the variables become impossible to track.

My point was that, contrary to your assertion, there is plenty of evidence to suggest we are one of the league's better drafting teams, and that your original example that we weren't was based off of one round of one draft year. A tiny sample size like that is insufficient as proof to back up your argument.

 

[Willy Stylez]

Great two first picks, how can you be loosers? The rest i don't know much about. But you only had 5 picks and first two is great.

 

[Frank8]

No mention of the chart that clearly indicates that we have a solid record in terms of drafting eh?

Unfortunately, DMST, the chart you posted doesn't show what you think it does.

We're 5th in games played by picks and 11th in points. On the surface that looks good, right? Above average in games played, slightly above average in points.

Unfortunately, the 6 place disparity between games played and points produced is only better than the Leafs and Buffalo.

It means while we're using more of our drafted players, they're producing at a rate lower than the majority of the league.

 

[tony d]

We had a fine draft, don't listen to what the Score says, the only program I watch on their channel is wrestling.

 

[Micklebot]

Unfortunately, DMST, the chart you posted doesn't show what you think it does.

We're 5th in games played by picks and 11th in points. On the surface that looks good, right? Above average in games played, slightly above average in points.

Unfortunately, the 6 place disparity between games played and points produced is only better than the Leafs and Buffalo.

It means while we're using more of our drafted players, they're producing at a rate lower than the majority of the league.

Here's a post ranking all the teams succes since 2000, the link is specific to Ottawa, but he did every team.

https://tifubyjoiningreddit.wordpre...-have-the-ottawa-senators-drafted-since-2000/

His analysis is more in depth than the chart posted, but here's his summary:

The Senators have a first round success rate of 73 percent which is much higher than expectated considering the majority of their first round picks have been 20th to 30th overall. Their second round drafting ranks just above average while the third round is where they’ve selected worst (although they still rank near the league average). The Senators have drafted very well in the depth rounds with 15 percent of their picks playing at least 100 games (fourth highest success rate in the league). The Sens should rank as one of the top 10 drafting teams over the last 15 years.

There are other sources out there that have Ottawa as a better drafting team. You're 3rd round in 2012 analysis aside.

 

[trentmccleary]

Unfortunately, DMST, the chart you posted doesn't show what you think it does.

We're 5th in games played by picks and 11th in points. On the surface that looks good, right? Above average in games played, slightly above average in points.

Unfortunately, the 6 place disparity between games played and points produced is only better than the Leafs and Buffalo.

It means while we're using more of our drafted players, they're producing at a rate lower than the majority of the league.

The chart starts with a degree of difficulty rating because all draft slots are not alike.

Ottawa started with a 22nd ranked degree of difficulty.
5th in GP
11th in points
18th in PPG (which is what you were arguing was bad)

All measures are above their degree of difficulty. You should have expected Ottawa to finish 22nd across the board if they were average.

Even then, the 18th in PPG isn't that bad because we know that 1,000 of those games were low offense, bottom pairing d-men (Cowen, Gryba, Boro, Wiercioch, Lee). Had we hit on more 3rd liners than 3rd pairing d-men, the PPG would have gone up, but the quality of player wouldn't have necessarily increased.

 

[thinkwild]

Just wanted to reiterate what bk said, in that the criticism in this article doesn’t appear to be levelled at the Brown pick itself, but rather at using a 3rd rounder to move up one spot, whether or not either pick turns out well.

Looking at the costs paid to similarly move up, such as a 3rd to move up from 18 to 15 for EK, this trade seems in line value wise. So I’m assuming that the criticism must be more focused on the strategy in general.

In poker, you can make an analysis that you have a 60% chance of outdrawing your opponent. So almost always you will make that bet. If you end up losing that one time, it is improper analysis to call it a bad bet. In the long run that strategy pays off 6 out of 10 times.

Some are very conservative and never want to trade a pick out of the fear of “what if”? What if we make a trade and it turns out wrong? What if we lost out on someone and others laugh at us? The fear can be paralyzing and used as justification for never doing anything risky. 3rd rounders do pan out 10% or so of the time, so trading them will cause you to be laughed at about 1 in 10 times. Others, myself included, think that not taking any risks is actually the riskier path. In fact without taking risks, we probably have no chance.

It is likely that the GM’s had all talked beforehand about who might be willing to trade a pick to move up or down. If NJ announced that they could be talked into moving down, and all the GM’s knew this, Ottawa sitting on their hands there, paralyzed by fear over what happens if this is one of those odd times a 3rd rounder pans out while the top 10 player we want doesnt, would seem to be up against more than a 1 in 10 chance that someone else would pay a 3rd rounder to get a player we really valued.

It can also have been a good strategy for us to trade down like NJ did. We might have been able to drop down a spot or two and received an extra 3rd for that., especially in a deep draft with many similar calibre players in that spot. That is fair too. Both strategies play with probabilities. A good math student might be able to actually calculate it for us.

But our scouts identified players that we wanted, and our GM paid the price to ensure it. Im happy we take those risks. I will willingly accept the biggest loser nomination from someone preferring that we had sat on our hands. And I hope that we do it again with our scouting staff if the circumstances are right, regardless whether this particular trade works or not.
 

 

[Burrowsaurus]

Bonk,

I truly appreciate your deliberately obtuse responses. It makes the board more lively. You know the regime is mostly the same and you know the point I'm making has credence - drafting isn't an exact science, we're not markedly better than anyone else to justify trading up, there's often decent value in the third, we should be maximising the odds.

Brown might work out, I truly hope he does. But for Dorion to make the choice to squander a third to move up one spot, he better have a solid rationale beyond a gut feeling. Given the available information, I'm not sure how he could. Hopefully the risk pays off.

Point is. The risk is small.

 

[Burrowsaurus]

A) dorion probably got sucked in. But he didn't get sucked in for much.

B) to the "Sens aren't great drafters so should maximize their odds" argument a few posts up: if that's the case. I think it's SAFER (word?) to package later round picks to move up because the kids higher in the draft are much more sure things than who ever we could have gotten in the third.

 

[BankStreetParade]

You guys just about **** yourselves when we got a third rounder for Prince because it was such a worthless asset to so many of you and now a third rounder is the ****ing lottomax winning combo????

 

[Chabot84]

A) dorion probably got sucked in. But he didn't get sucked in for much.

B) to the "Sens aren't great drafters so should maximize their odds" argument a few posts up: if that's the case. I think it's SAFER (word?) to package later round picks to move up because the kids higher in the draft are much more sure things than who ever we could have gotten in the third.

I would trade every pick we have besides the first and second rounders to get into the first round every time! Or to move up to grab a SURE THING!