Since it appears that there is no rapprochement coming, I wanted to break down just how wrong this post is (since for some odd reason it's gotten likes?)
Great, the tool when it gets to 7 years post-draft shows that the Sharks are #1 if you start at 2003-2021. And how many games above expected? 1,800. Take Pavelski out and you're at 600. Right back at "pretty good! but not the best."
I can't stress how misguided this is. I assume what happened here as follows:
He first takes SJ's 2003-2021 GPE for 7-years-post-draft (~1,800)
He then takes Pavelski's career GPE (~1,200) instead of Pavelski's 7-year GPE (roughly 250).
He then subtracts the 1200 from 1800 to get 600 and concludes that hence, the Sharks were nothing great at drafting.
If you can't acknowledge this fundamental misunderstanding of the data, then you're just playing tennis without a net.
If we want to give DW credit for being the best drafting GM from 2003 to 2021 because he grabbed Joe Pavelski in the 7th round, we can. That's what the data shows for your date range.
I, however, am not willing to plant a flag that DW is the best drafting GM in the league during his entire tenure because he drafted Pavs in the 7th round in the first year of his tenure, and then the majority of his games++ came from that one pick over the next 18 years.
No, it doesn't. 7 years post-draft GPE, Pavelski is only fifth on the list, behind Vlasic, Demers, Labanc, and Tierney.
At career GPE, Pavelski is #1, but then you still have players like Braun, Vlasic, Bonino, and Demers driving up the value. Even taking away Pavelski's more than 1200 GPE, the Sharks are still at more than 3600 GPE, just under LAK (although I just realized that this analysis excludes goaltenders! That definitely hurts the Sharks) at #2 league-wide.
Stepping back from this pointless shit fight which I stupidly created by sharing someone else's analysis, I think this discussion has been helpful to me in that it gives me a POV on DW's tenure. Here's my summary and no amount of sexy vocabulary is likely to change it at this point:
- There is no objective way to analyze how good a GM is at drafting
No, but there are good ways and bad helped and helpful ways and stupid ways.
- The fuzzy ways we can look at it show that DW was pretty amazing at finding talent deep in the draft - mostly role players, but one bonafide star (Pavs, easily one of the greatest picks ever) and another with an elite ceiling (Vlasic)
Plus players like Demers, Braun, Bonino, Labanc, Carle, who are of course not elite or stars but are better than depth players
- In that first decade he was decidedly less awesome in rounds 1-3, maybe batting at average or in the quartile above average
Can you show your work here? I'd probably agree with you that he was the quartile above average. The main thing driving him down is his 2003 performance, missing out on superstars several times, and of course 2005 with Kopitar...but Vlasic, Hertl, and Couture in 2009 helped. Eyeballing it isn't great because the Sharks often didn't have picks, or often had low ones. There's also the caveat with players like Wishart, who yes, turned out badly but for the Sharks ultimately resulted in Dan Boyle.
- In the decade following, he was a lot less awesome, but still not in the bottom quartile.
Not even close to the bottom quartile.