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Looking at the Best Draft Results in the Last Two Decades

by Patrick Hoffman on 06/25/09 at 11:36 AM ET
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From John Kresier at NHL.com:

Try as they might, NHL general managers know most of the players they select during the Entry Draft never will wear an NHL sweater. The object is to get maximum value out of their picks—finding the stars they need to build a team around, the role players to support them and the depth to trade for what they can’t find.

Obviously some teams are better at this than others—and they do it in different ways. The core of Pittsburgh’s Stanley Cup-winning team was Marc-Andre Fleury, Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby, all chose with the first or second pick of the draft from 2003-05. Detroit, which lost to Pittsburgh in the 2009 Stanley Cup Final after beating the Penguins in 2008, has fared well with a handful of later-round picks—stars such as Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk—while having just three first-round picks on its roster—Marian Hossa, Brad Stuart and Nicklas Kronwall. And of those three, only Kronwall was chosen by the Wings.

Click here for more. I wonder if any of this year’s picks will have a tremendous impact on their franchises right away.

Filed in: | Goal Line Report | Permalink
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Best draft: Detroit Red Wings, 1989—This is the draft that helped turn the Wings into the elite organization they’ve become. Eight of the players chosen made the NHL, with six having significant careers. Four have played at least 1,000 games and three still were active in 2008-09, 20 years after being drafted. Third-round pick Nicklas Lidstrom, a six-time Norris Trophy winner, is a lock for the Hall of Fame, as is fourth-rounder Sergei Fedorov, the highest-scoring Russian-born player in NHL history. First-round pick Mike Sillinger and sixth-rounder Dallas Drake (who retired after the Wings won the 2008 Cup) have played well over 1,000 games. Second-rounder Bob Boughner played 625 games, and Vladimir Konstantinov, an 11th-round choice, would have played a lot more than 446 were it not for a 1997 auto accident that ended his career.

The Wings’ 1989 class is only one in the history of the draft to produce three 200-goal scorers (Sillinger, Lidstrom and Fedorov), and they are three points (by Lidstrom) away from becoming the first to have two 1,000-point scorers.

Just to be clear, it was Neil Smith who was the Wings’ GM who drafted those guys.  And I still think Charles Wang made a big mistake in firing the guy and replacing him with Garth Snow.

Posted by SYF from a "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" on 06/25/09 at 06:52 PM ET

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Patrick has a tremendous passion for hockey. Besides covering the Rangers and the NHL for Kukla’s Korner, you can also find Patrick’s work over at RLD Hockey, Rangers Tribune, and TheGoodPoint.com.

Prior to writing for the above mentioned outlets, you could find Patrick’s musings at hockey web sites/outlets such as TheHockeyNews.com, The Fourth Period, Spector’s Hockey, Hokeja Vestnesis, Blueshirt Bulletin, SNYRangersBlog.com and many more.

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