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Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Value of draft picks in NHL
An interesting breakdown of how players turn out, relative to draft position:
http://www.hockeyanalysis.com/?p=316
Just for fun…
let’s give the average first-liner a WAR of 45 wins, the NHL regular 15 wins, the utility player 5 wins, and the rest as 0 wins. Applying these numbers, and we get the following Win value for each draft slot:
WAR Pick
26 1-5
18 6-10
12 11-20
7 21-40
4 41-80
2 81-140
1 140+
From which we can create a quick function (which you are free to modify to best-fit):
WAR = 50 / sqrt(pick+1) - 2
So, the 1st overall pick would be worth 33 WAR. Here are the values of the top 30 picks:
1 33
2 27
3 23
4 20
5 18
6 17
7 16
8 15
9 14
10 13
11 12
12 12
13 11
14 11
15 10
16 10
17 10
18 9
19 9
20 9
21 9
22 8
23 8
24 8
25 8
26 8
27 7
28 7
29 7
30 7
You can see how in the NHL, draft position is important. The bottom 4-5 picks, together, would be worth the same as the first overall pick (in the typical year).
In the NHL, with the rookie cap, there’s a big return on investment potential. Whereby in baseball, a player’s signing bonus is uncapped----and therefore, the advantage of picking first is actually being paid for----the NHL doesn’t have much of that.
The draft data is based on 1988-1995, and Europeans, who used to be drafted in the later rounds for their uncertainity to joining the NHL, have been a huge force since.
All-in-all, I’m sure that each league has its own draft value slotting like this, as well as the cost in dollars of paying for each slot, until free agency.
The NHL data seems to reflect that talent distribution of hockey players follows that of football players, in terms of draft picks.
Look at the NFL “chart”.
http://www.nfl.com/draft/story/6330687
Now, let’s scale my chart here:
By multiplying it by 85 to scale to the NFL chart. We get:
WAR Pick NFL-ized
26.0 1-5 2,210
18.0 6-10 1,530
12.3 11-20 1,041
7.3 21-40 616
3.5 41-80 298
2.3 81-140 191
1.3 140+ 106
So, the average of the first 5 picks, when multiplied by a constant, gives us 2210 points.
The NFL chart, the first 5 picks averaged 2260 points.
The next 5 NHL players are worth 1530 points, while the next 5 NFL players are worth 1430 points.
The next 10 NHL players (11-20) are worth an average of 1041 points. Those 10 NFL players are worth 1033 points.
Picks 21-40 in the NHL are worth 616 points, while the NFL are worth 629 points.
Picks 41-80 in the NHL averaged 298 points, while the NFL players averaged 317 points.
Pretty cool, right?
Picks 81-140: NHL/191, NFL/85.
So, it’s at this point that we get the breakdown.
Remember that with the influx of Europeans in the earlier rounds and away from the later rounds, the quality NHL players in the later rounds may not really be as prevalent these days.
Then again… the NHL players are drafted at an earlier age. Therefore, there are more late surprises than in the NFL, whose players are drafted 3 or 4 years older than NHL players. Therefore, it makes sense that the NHL has better potential for players in the later rounds.
I wonder if an NHL team has already constructed a chart as I’ve done here.
***
A function that seems to fit both the NHL and NFL is:
5000/sqrt(pick+1) - 300
I’m sure you can spend a bit more time to get something more appealing.