Protected Draft Territory - Alternate Draft History for the Year 2008

In my previous article (How to Rectify the NHL Draft Lottery) I put forth a proposal on how to rectify what I see as the issues with the current NHL Draft Lottery. My proposal was to give each NHL team what I call a Protected Draft Territory or P.D.T.

In that previous article, I mentioned the uneasiness I had with my proposal – that it would bestow an unfair advantage on the NHL’s Canadian teams because of their proximity to large amateur hockey leagues and unfairly penalize the NHL’s U.S. teams because of their perceived lack of amateur hockey leagues in their vicinity. But as you will see in this article, the application of the P.D.T. to the Entry Draft for the year 2008 did not result in any discernible level of advantage or disadvantage.

At this point I’ll quickly rehash the three P.D.T. rules that I applied to the 2008 NHL Entry Draft:

1. A player’s birth place, not his last amateur hockey team before becoming eligible for the NHL Entry Draft, determined which P.D.T., if any, the player would be eligible for.
2. Where more than one NHL team shares a natural territory (such as a province or a state), how close a player’s birth place is to an NHL team determined which P.D.T. the player would be eligible for.
3. As each player was removed from the original entry draft because of designation under the P.D.T., the players below the removed player were moved up in the draft order. This seems rather arbitrary. But without any knowledge of what each team would have drafted had the player they originally drafted not been available, it seems like a fair compromise. So, for example, if the first player chosen in the original entry draft had been designated under the P.D.T., the second player chosen in the original entry draft was moved up to the first player chosen in the revised entry draft.

The year 2008, though not as deep as 2003, was another stellar entry draft. In fact, there was discussion that Steven Stamkos would be a franchise player for whichever team was lucky enough to draft him. The application of the three simple rules above most definitely would have altered the history of the NHL as we know it. A few key players on Cup winning teams might not have been there to help those teams secure their Cups or perhaps might have helped their new teams secure a Cup instead.

Table 1 below is actually two tables in one. The first six columns represent how the original NHL Entry Draft played out. The second six columns represent how a revised NHL Entry Draft might have transpired after the application of the P.D.T. rules.

Table 1.

Regardless of the fact that it wasn’t as deep a draft as 2003, there are more than a few recognizable names from the original 2008 Entry Draft. For example, Steven Stamkos, Drew Doughty, Zach Bogosian, Alex Pietrangelo, Luke Schenn, Colin Wilson, Joshua Bailey, Cody Hodgson, Tyler Myers, Erik Karlsson, Jake Gardiner, Luca Sbisa, Michael Del Zotto, Jordan Eberle, and Tyler Ennis.

Without a doubt, the Maple Leafs would have been able to secure, via designation of their P.D.T., another franchise player in Steven Stamkos.

With only two of the top ten picks being designated under the P.D.T., the picks in the revised draft would have been slightly different. For example, Drew Doughty, Alex Pietrangelo, Luke Schenn, Colin Wilson, Joshua Bailey, Cody Hodgson, Erik Karlsson, Luca Sbisa, Michael Del Zotto, and Jordan Eberle would have all been drafted by different teams.

By looking closely at Table 1 above, we can see the players in Table 2 below are the players from the first round of the draft who would have been eligible for designation under the P.D.T. rule and therefore would have started their careers with and played for different teams:

Table 2

The casual fan, looking at the names from Table 2, would find the list about evenly split between recognizable and less recognizable names.

From that same list of names above, the one having the most interest for Maple Leafs fans would, of course, be Steven Stamkos. The obvious question:

1.      Does the acquisition of Steven Stamkos allow the Maple Leafs to start unloading some of their centre depth to provide more prospects and picks for continued contention for a Cup?

As intriguing as that question is, the answer will never be known.

As was the case for the revised Entry Drafts from 2000 onwards, the revised Entry Draft for 2008 provides many questions for endless speculation, discussion, and debate.