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Article written by Pierre Ferland.

Even good poker players can’t win all the time, they have to go with the cards they draw.  The best they may expect is to beat the odds and play better than their hands.  The same applies to the NHL draft, you can’t expect every prospect picked to make the big show but you may try to get a better return than the value of your picks.

Montreal fans are continually asking the same question:  is Trevor Timmins really the best at drafting?  They are looking at prospects, pointing at the ones that got away, arguing that development could have been better, combing each draft but the debate is still going on.  I am not proposing to close it once and for all, but rather to look at it from another point of view by asking the question:  Has Timmins beaten the odds?

First you have to establish what the odds are.  Many people have tried to put value on draft choices and on NHL draft choices, publishing probabilities of success, equations and charts.  In order not to repeat all the process, I have arbitrarily selected the 2011 Michael Shuckers NHL draft value pick chart to establish the odds.  Since the period of scope will go from 2003 to 2013, running from Timmins’ first draft (we have to suppose he is the one calling the shots) to the last one players drafted by the Habs played in the NHL, the 2011 chart seems to be the best choice.

Now suppose every team got their draft choices determined by their standing and the lottery and only theirs, they would have the following Shuckers’s points (SP) for a seven round draft:

Order SP Order SP Order SP
1 1709 11 1240 21 976
2 1651 12 1204 22 959
3 1593 13 1170 23 945
4 1537 14 1137 24 932
5 1486 15 1106 25 921
6 1438 16 1080 26 909
7 1393 17 1055 27 899
8 1352 18 1033 28 884
9 1313 19 1013 29 872
10 1277 20 996 30 857

But everybody knows that draft pick is a currency used to buy and sell players and coaches, created like bitcoins to compensate teams for unsigned draft picks, (and there were nine rounds in 2003 and 2004) so teams came to the draft table with various number of draft picks and various total of Shuckers’s points.  So from 2003 to 2013, the number of draft choices (Picks) were as follows:

Team Rank Picks Team Rank Picks Team Rank Picks
Chicago 1 107 Winnipeg 11 86 Dallas 21 80
Nashville 2 94 Tampa Bay 12 84 Detroit 22 80
NY Islanders 3 92 Ottawa 13 83 Calgary 23 79
Florida 4 90 San Jose 14 82 Arizona 24 79
Columbus 5 90 Montreal 15 82 Minnesota 25 78
Edmonton 6 90 Philadelphia 16 81 Carolina 26 75
Buffalo 7 89 Anaheim 17 81 New Jersey 27 74
Los Angeles 8 89 Colorado 18 81 Boston 28 74
St. Louis 9 89 Pittsburgh 19 80 Toronto 29 74
Washington 10 86 NY Rangers 20 80 Vancouver 30 71

The average number of choices by team was 83.3. And the Shuckers’s average points (SP) by team and by draft were:

Team Rank SP Team Rank SP Team Rank SP
Chicago 1 1496.1 Winnipeg 11 1268.5 Dallas 21 1097.1
Edmonton 2 1475.0 Arizona 12 1241.9 Ottawa 22 1088.3
Florida 3 1467.3 Nashville 13 1223.5 Philadelphia 23 1040.3
NY Islanders 4 1455.1 Pittsburgh 14 1213.9 Boston 24 1039.2
Columbus 5 1421.6 Tampa Bay 15 1171.2 Calgary 25 1017.5
St. Louis 6 1328.8 Carolina 16 1170.5 San Jose 26 986.8
Los Angeles 7 1324.7 Colorado 17 1165.7 Toronto 27 935.7
Washington 8 1281.3 Montreal 18 1151.2 New Jersey 28 891.8
Buffalo 9 1278.1 NY Rangers 19 1139.3 Vancouver 29 872.6
Anaheim 10 1271.9 Minnesota 20 1122.4 Detroit 30 839.1

So Montreal is in the middle of the pack being 15th for the number of draft choices and 18th for the average total of SP by draft year. Those were the odds Trevor Timmins and the Montreal Canadiens dealt themselves at the draft table.

What did they do or rather what did Timmins do with those odds? Many statistics have been tried to express the outcome of the draft but the one that I saw most frequently was the number of games played in the NHL by drafted players whether it is with the drafting team or not. The number of games played was the metric used to build Shuckers’s table. Let’s take a look at the games played (GP) by players drafted by teams from 2003 to 2013:

Team Rank GP Team Rank GP Team Rank GP
Chicago 1 8606 Boston 11 7600 Minnesota 21 6026
San Jose 2 8424 Washington 12 7441 Philadelphia 22 5810
Los Angeles 3 8352 Edmonton 13 7307 Arizona 23 5790
Columbus 4 8220 NY Islanders 14 7178 Toronto 24 5583
Buffalo 5 8152 Ottawa 15 6991 Detroit 25 5482
Montreal 6 8141 NY Rangers 16 6500 Winnipeg 26 4867
St. Louis 7 8135 Colorado 17 6467 Vancouver 27 4640
Anaheim 8 8050 Carolina 18 6088 New Jersey 28 4531
Nashville 9 7852 Florida 19 6079 Tampa Bay 29 4425
Pittsburgh 10 7655 Dallas 20 6030 Calgary 30 4190

Coming from 15th for the number of draft choices and 18th for the number of SP all the way to 6th for GP by drafted players is quite a climb up, but let’s look at the number of games played by players drafted for each SP they had after draft day (GP/SP):

Team Rk GP/SP Team Rk GP/SP Team Rk GP/SP
San Jose 1 0.776 St. Louis 11 0.557 Vancouver 21 0.483
Boston 2 0.665 Toronto 12 0.542 Carolina 22 0.473
Montreal 3 0.643 Washington 13 0.528 New Jersey 23 0.462
Detroit 4 0.594 Columbus 14 0.526 Edmonton 24 0.450
Ottawa 5 0.584 Chicago 15 0.523 NY Islanders 25 0.448
Nashville 6 0.583 NY Rangers 16 0.519 Arizona 26 0.424
Buffalo 7 0.580 Philadelphia 17 0.508 Florida 27 0.377
Anaheim 8 0.575 Colorado 18 0.504 Calgary 28 0.374
Pittsburgh 9 0.573 Dallas 19 0.500 Winnipeg 29 0.349
Los Angeles 10 0.573 Minnesota 20 0.488 Tampa Bay 30 0.343

That last table really compares the odds, Shuckers’s points, with the outcome, games played by the draftees and shows that Timmins gets a bronze medal at beating the odds from 2003 to 2013 at the draft table. He might not be the best, but based on past performances, I sure would like him at the table if I were the GM.