NHL Draft Pick Valuation

When it comes to measuring NHL Entry Level draft pick value in the form of the NFL's draft value board, a ton of work has been done on this. But what I really cared about in when writing my analysis on the recent Robin Lehner, Cam Talbot, Martin Jones and Eddie Lack trades was the expected contributions of the players that those traded picks were selected with, as opposed to what those picks would have been worth to move up and down in the draft. So when I stumbled upon Scott Cullen's, my work was done for me. But I do think there are a lot of caveats that should be disclosed here in addition to the ones he highlights.

First off, the 1 to 10 scale is very subjective once you get up into the 8-9-10 range, particularly when we are separating out Generational from Elite players. There's also some scale comparability issues (e.g., the gap between a 4 and 1 is significantly less than a 10 and 7), but since the picks I'm dealing with in my analysis are further down the scale, I think the system does a nice job of getting in the right ballpark. It should also be noted that there's probably not much difference between a 4.7 and 4.8 in the below table (i.e., the Lehner and Talbot trades); but it's interesting to note that there's a clear hierarchy between the goalie trades, with Jones, Lehner/Talbot, Lack and Niemi's negotiating rights rating from most to least costly.

Where I think this system could use further refinement is making it more mathematical to account for the fact that we're only working with 20 drafts worth of data. Though the #21 pick that went over to Ottawa for Lehner is rated a 4.7, it actually is higher than several picks above it, but #21 should not be projected to have a higher expected value than #15-19 in future drafts. Smoothing this out with a best fit line would more definitively help teams value draft picks in terms of future vs. current NHLers as well as to identifies potential trading market inefficiencies such as position in lower round draft picks.

As far as my own application of Cullen's model I had to make a few estimations with the 2016 futures to get the Cam Talbot and Martin Jones trades into order. The 2016 7th round pick that the Rangers trade sent with Talbot to Edmonton was easy enough to estimate at around 1.5, given there's little variation in the expected value of players drafted in the 7th round. The 2016 1st rounder that the Sharks traded Boston is considerably more difficult.

For the first time in a decade, the Sharks can't be penciled in for a playoff spot. What was once a dominant possession team fell to being 'just' above average last season, and it's anyone's guess whether the infusion of Pete DeBoer, Paul Martin, Joel Ward and Martin Jones into next year's squad will be enough to get them back. Though I would predict they get back in given how unlucky the team was this past season, next year's first round pick is potentially worth even more than in past seasons due to the NHL's draft lottery format getting retooled to more closely resemble the NBA's (i.e., the top three spots are subject to a lottery vs. just the top pick). With all that said, I pegged the pick to be worth somewhere between a 1st round forward and a 1st round defenseman (assuming Boston doesn't take a goalie with that pick) at a 4.85. I also used Sean Kurlay's draft pick position (#133 in the 2011 draft) to help highlight just how much the Sharks had to pay to acquire Jones.