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.
In Part 1 of this article, we saw how the first 10 teams
fared under the P.D.T. Some teams would have done very well (Toronto), some
teams would have done OK, and some teams would not have done so well. In this
article, we’ll turn our attention to the middle 10 teams (starting with the NY
Islanders) and their results. Looking at Table 1 below things look grim.
Table 1.
Picking up with the eleventh team in the above table, the
NY Islanders would have been able to designate a player under their P.D.T. for six
of the fifteen years. Here is that list of players:
Table 2.
A closer look at the above table shows that of the four players who have
played NHL games, all four had or are having very solid NHL careers. So
although the Islanders wouldn’t have had a large quantity of players designated
under their P.D.T., their results would have been fairly good. In fact, their
results might end up being even better as the jury is still out on what kind of
NHL careers the other two players listed for the years 2013 and 2014 might
have.
Looking at the results for the 12th team from Table 1. above,
it is apparent that the NY Rangers would have fared extremely poorly under the
P.D.T.:
Table 3.
Even though it can be said that the jury is still out for Steven Santini
in the 2013 spot and perhaps might still be out for Tim Erixon from 2009, there is only one other player who is having
a good if not sold NHL career – Zach Bogosian.
Looking at the results for the 13th team from Table 1. above,
it is apparent that even though Chicago would have had almost as many players
designated under their P.D.T. as the NY Islanders, their results would have
been somewhat worse:
Table 4.
As the jury could still be considered to be out for the two players from
the years 2012 and 2013, that leaves three other players. Of those three, two
are still active in the NHL. Again, even though their quantity might be lower
than other teams, Chicago’s quality is very respectable.
Looking at the results for the 14th team from Table 1. above, it
is apparent that the jury would still be out on Anaheim’s P.D.T. picks:
Table 5.
Of the four players above, two saw action in the NHL during the 2014/2015
season – Emerson Etem and Jonathon Blum. The other two players would still be
considered works-in-progress.
Looking at the results for the 15th team from Table 1. above, it is
apparent that Dallas had much fewer designations under their P.D.T. but would
have fared very well in the quality department:
Table 6.
Of the four players, two have turned into good NHL players – Seth Jones
and Tyler Myers but the other two players still might develop into solid if not
good NHL players.
Looking at the results for the 16th team from Table 1. above,
it is apparent that New Jersey would have not fared very well with quantity but
would have made up for it with quality under their P.D.T:
Table 7.
Two players – James Van Riemsdyk and Bobby Ryan who are solid NHL players.
As well one player taken in 2014 who could still turn into something of
significance.
Looking at the results for the 17th team from Table 1. above,
it is apparent that Colorado would not have fared very well under the P.D.T.:
Table 8.
Of the three players above, one had a decent if not spectacular NHL
career, one was a bust, and the jury is still out on another. Not the kind of
results to be expected from a team located in an area that most would consider “friendly”
to hockey.
Looking at the results for the 18th team from Table 1. above,
it is apparent that even though Winnipeg would not have had the benefit of
making designations under the P.D.T. until 2012 (since they only rejoined the
league in 2011), they are more than making up for it now:
Table 9.
Even though there are three players listed above, one is turning out to be
a solid NHL player while the jury would still definitely be out on the
remaining two.
Looking at the results for the 19th team from Table 1. above,
it seems that Arizona (Phoenix) has fared very badly under the P.D.T.:
Table 10.
But while the number of players they would have been able to designate
under their P.D.T. would have been small, it seems grass-roots hockey is taking
hold in the desert and one quality player, with perhaps another on the way, in the past four years is not a bad return. Of
course, we can peak ahead and see that Arizona would absolutely be salivating
at the player they would be able to designate under their P.D.T. in 2016 –
Auston Matthews – the current consensus 1st overall pick in the 2016
NHL Entry Draft.
Looking at the results for the 20th team from Table 1. above, similar
to Arizona, it seems that Columbus’
results are abysmal. But like Arizona. It seems that Columbus’ trend is heading
in the right direction with two players being eligible for designation under
their P.D.T. in the past four years:
Table 11.
Of the two players above, one is a solid NHL player while the other is
still too early in his development path to know what his NHL career might be.
Looking at the results presented in this article from the middle 10 NHL teams,
it is not surprising to see the quantity of players that would have been
designated under the P.D.T. declining. But as noted for a few of the teams,
what they were lacking in quantity was more than made up for in quality. And
most encouraging, the results for a few of the teams is trending in the right
direction – up.
In the third and last article in this series, we’ll look at what results
the bottom 10 teams would have been able to secure under the P.D.T. and come up
with some suggestions on how those results could be improved.
No comments:
Post a Comment