Protected Draft Territory - Summary for the Years 2000 to 2014 - Part 1

With the completion of the fifteenth and last article (Protected Draft Territory – Alternate Draft History for the Year 2014) in the series describing the results of implementing a Protected Draft Territory (P.D.T.) for each NHL team and the alternate history for the NHL Entry Drafts that would have resulted, it is now possible to summarize the results and look at whether my suggested solution to rectify the problems with the NHL Entry Draft is a viable one.

If a poll had been taken, right after publication of the original article (How to Rectify the NHL Draft Lottery) which launched this series, on which of the NHL teams would have benefited the most from the implementation of a P.D.T. rule, the overwhelming majority of respondents would have said ALL the NHL’s Canadian teams - probably in this order. Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Edmonton,  Calgary, and Winnipeg.

As it turned out, those respondents would have been mostly correct, except there are some interesting results from a few of the NHL’s U.S. teams. Of the data collected over the fifteen years from 2000 to 2014, here are how many players, from the 1^st and early 2^nd rounds of the original entry drafts, each of the NHL’s teams would have been able to designate under their P.D.T.:

Table 1.

There are some interesting results in Table 1 above but we’ll start out by looking at the most predictable of results.

We can see from the above table that Toronto would have been able to designate a player under their P.D.T. for each of the fifteen years. Here is that list of players:

Table 2.

A closer look at the above table shows that twelve of the fifteen players are currently playing in the NHL. Of those twelve players, eight are centres. Toronto would have had such a plethora of centres that they likely would have run into the same cap problems other teams (Chicago, Boston, etc.) have and been forced to shed many of these quality centres to other teams for prospects and/or picks.

Looking at the results for the 2^nd team from Table 1. above, it is apparent that Minnesota would have fared almost as well as Toronto under the P.D.T.:

Table 3.

A closer look at Minnesota’s results shows the majority of players they likely would have designated under their P.D.T. would have been defensemen – six of the thirteen. Minnesota would have been able to build from defense out. Their current defense core, assuming they didn’t run into cap problems, would be comprised of Ryan Suter, Ryan McDonagh, Nick Leddy, Jake Gardiner, Erik Johnson, and Keith Ballard – a very solid six.

Looking at the results for the 3^rd team from Table 1. above, it is apparent that even though Edmonton would have had as many players designated under their P.D.T. as Minnesota, their results would have been somewhat worse:

Table 4.

Of the thirteen players above, only five are currently active in the NHL – Jay Bouwmeester, Dion Phaneuf, Kyle Chipchura, Bryan Little, and Tyler Ennis. Perhaps Edmonton would have fared better in the revised Entry Drafts?

Looking at the results for the 4^th team from Table 1. above, it is apparent that even though Calgary would have had almost as many players designated under their P.D.T. as Minnesota, their results would not have been as good:

Table 5.

Of the twelve players above, six saw action in the NHL during the 2014/2015 season – Ty Rattie, Taylor Hall, Zach Boychuk, Thomas Hickey, Devin Setoguchi, and Jeff Schultz. For three of the players, William Nylander, Josh Morrissey, and Mitch Moroz it is still too early to tell what the duration of their NHL careers will be.

Looking at the results for the 5th team from Table 1. above, it is apparent that even though Montreal would have had as many players designated under their P.D.T. as Calgary (12), their results would have been somewhat worse:

Table 6.

Of the twelve players above, only four saw action in the NHL during the 2014/2015 season – Jonathan Drouin, Jonathan Huberdeau, Derick Brassard, and Marc Andre Fleury. For one other player – Michael Matheson – it is still probably too early to tell what the duration of his NHL careers might be.

Looking at the results for the 6^th team from Table 1. above, it is apparent that Vancouver, with the same number of players designated under their P.D.T., would have fared substantially better than Montreal.

Table 7.

Of the twelve players above, only one did not see action in the NHL during the 2014/2015 season – Kyle Beach! That is a pretty remarkable stat.

Looking at the results for the 7^th team from Table 1. above, it is apparent that Detroit, with almost the same number of players designated under their P.D.T. as Vancouver, would not have fared quite as well.

 Table 8.

Of the eleven players above,eight saw action in the NHL during the 2014/2015 season – Aaron Ekblad, Jacob Trouba, Rocco Grimaldi, Ian Cole, Chris Summers, Ryan Kesler, Jim Slater, Tim Gleason, and Andy Hibert. For one other player – Michael McCarron – the jury is still out on how long his NHL career might be.

Looking at the results for the 8^th team from Table 1. above, it is apparent that Ottawa, with the same number of players designated under their P.D.T. as Detroit, would have fared almost as well.

Table 9.

Of the eleven players above,seven saw action in the NHL during the 2014/2015 season – Slater KoekKoek, Erik Gudbranson, Matt Duchene, Eric O’Dell, Benoit Pouliot, Derek Roy, and Justin Williams. For two of the other players – Eric Cornel and Remi Elie –it is still to early to tell how long their NHL careers might be.

Looking at the results for the 9^th team from Table 1. above, it is apparent that Boston, with a fewer number of players designated under their P.D.T. than Ottawa, would have fared almost as well.

Table 10.

Of the eight players above,seven saw action in the NHL during the 2014/2015 season – Connor Murphy, Kevin Hayes, Chris Kreider, John Carlson, Cory Schneider, Brian Boyle, and Ron Hainsey. A pretty remarkable stat!

Looking at the results for the 10^th team from Table 1. above, it is apparent that Buffalo, with the same number of players designated under their P.D.T. as Boston, have fared slightly worse.

Table 11.

Of the eight players above, five saw action in the NHL during the 2014/2015 season – Adam Clendening, Tom McCollum, Patrick Kane, Nick Foligno, and Dustin Brown. A further two players – Alex Tuch and Dylan Blujus – are still too early into their respective careers to know how long their NHL careers might be.

Looking at the results from the top 10 teams under the P.D.T. presented in this article, it is not surprising to see six of the current seven Canadian teams represented. Perhaps it is no surprise to see two or three of what would be considered solid U.S. hockey markets represented in the top 10 – Minnesota, Boston, and maybe Detroit.  The real surprise, and a beacon for better results for the remaining twenty teams, is Buffalo.

In the second article in this series, we’ll look at what results those remaining twenty teams would have been able to secure under the P.D.T.