Analyzing the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Draft History

The entry draft is often seen as the building ground for NHL franchises.  Heading into draft day there is always hope that teams will stock their cupboards with a number of prospects who they one day hope will become stars in the league.  The reality is that half the players that are drafted will never play a game in the NHL and two thirds of the players will play less than 50 games making zero impact for the team.

I have analyzed 20 NHL drafts from 1986-2005 and rated each individual player using the following rating system:

The reason for rating players like this is to keep things as analytical as possible.  Surely there will be a debate between who is a “Star” and who is a “Good Player”, but I think for the most part the error will be minimized over the 20 years of draft data. i.e. some players who should be categorized as a “Star” won’t and some that shouldn’t be will.  I did not go further than 2005 because I wanted to allow players plenty of time to reach their full potential before rating them.

***Note: I considered picks from 1-30 to be round one and I only rated picks from 1-210 to be consistent with the current draft format.***

The table below presents the average player rating for players taken in each round of the draft along with the percentage of “Star” players taken in each round.  What this tells us in a nutshell is that first round picks are clearly more valuable than any other round, which should not be news to anybody.

What is most interesting about the first round is that after the first two picks, the probability of drafting a “Star” is essentially the same and completely random, although there is some drop off with the last few picks leading into the second round.  This might be hard for most people to grasp, but the table below shows the average rating and number of stars drafted for each pick in the first round over the 20 years analyzed.

With that established, I was interested to see how teams, specifically the Maple Leafs, have drafted over this time period.  I had a feeling that it was not going to be good for the Blue and White, but I really had no idea how bad it actually has been. The table below shows each team’s average player rating for all picks, average player rating for first round picks, number of “Stars” drafted with all picks and number of “Stars” drafted in the first round.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I put this data together, but some interesting things do arise.  For the most part there isn’t a lot of variability between the average ratings of all draft picks for each team.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise as with 140 picks per team (expansion franchises have less, but still significant amounts) the average rating will be distributed fairly evenly given the nature of the draft.  When looking at the first round results, there is more variability, which should be expected given that there is less data available per team.

There is however one thing that clearly sticks out to me above everything else.  The Maple Leafs are one of only two teams who have not drafted at “Star” player over this twenty year period.  The other team being the Florida Panthers, who have only been in existence since 1993, so they have not done so over 13 years of the analysis.

Given the numbers we have looked at and the randomness of drafting “Star” players after the first two picks, it is almost unexplainable how the Maple Leafs have not been able to draft one “Star” player over that time period.  It should be noted that the Maple Leafs have had 21 first round picks over the time period.  It’s not like they have traded away all of their first round picks like they have been known to do.  This makes things even more perplexing.  There are clearly a number of things that would lead to such an odd result including bad scouting, poor decision making, and ultimately a lot of bad luck given the random nature of the draft.

The Maple Leafs have been able to acquire “Star” players through trade and free agency, which have helped the franchise be competitive at times.  Most notably Doug Gilmour and Mats Sundin, however, it would help to get a little lucky with a draft pick to get this team going in the right direction.  One only needs to look at the Pittsburgh Penguins to see how a little luck can help turn around a franchise.  The Penguins were bankrupt and on the brink of being moved to another city before winning a lottery to draft the best player the game has seen since Wayne Gretzky.  If the lottery balls fell a different way and Sidney Crosby happened to end up in Anaheim, who knows what would have become of the Penguins.

As an aside, I think the draft results of the Detroit Red Wings are very interesting.  The Red Wings have always been thought of as the model organization in the NHL, with the best management and scouting staff.  However, the results of this analysis tell us a different story when it comes to the draft. The Red Wings have drafted six “Star” players over the twenty year period, but not one of them was drafted with their 15 first round picks.  As shown above, it is clear that teams are much more likely to draft a “Star” player in the first round than all other rounds combined, yet the Red Wings have only drafted their “Star” players after the first round.  This has often been credited to good scouting, but I think good luck is a more accurate description.

Follow Tony on Twitter: @TheDailyBites

Follow Maple Leafs Central on Twitter @TML_Central and like Maple Leafs Central on Facebook.