Draft Profile – Blake Siebenaler

Rather than do my typical scoring chances post I have decided to change it up and do a summary on draft eligible defencemen Blake Siebenaler. I have seen him play numerous times this season for Niagara. He is currently listed at 6’1, 183 so he needs to add some muscle as he continues to develop and grow. Central Scouting has him ranked 47^th on their list of North American skaters which would have him going in roughly the late second early third round of the draft.    

As a fancy stats enthusiast the first place I always look at is a players stats. I am a big believer as you know of the 0.6 points per game for CHL defencemen. Siebenaler had 30 points (6G, 24A) in 68 games, which is only 0.44 ppg. Normally I would advocate to not drafting a player like this, however from watching him, there are several reasons for his limited offensive output.

The first would be limited special teams time. He plays on the second defensive unit with Vince Dunn on both the power play and penalty kill, as well second pairing time on 5 on 5. The deflated power play ice time is big reason his point totals are low. If he get first power play time next season we should see his point totals rise considerably just through the added ice time alone.

The second reason his point totals are low is that Niagara is not a very good team so the teammates Siebenaler plays with are not the best. As mentioned he gets second pairing minutes for all situations which means he conveniently misses playing with the much talked about Perlini, Verhaege, Difrusia line. The second line on Niagara consists of Billy Jenkins, Jordan Maletta and Eric Ming. All three of those players were passed over in their respective NHL draft years, which give you an idea of their (lack of) skill. This line gets killed in the possession battle, consistently playing in the defensive zone. When this line does create pressure it is usually started by the defencemen, either Siebenaler or his partner Dunn.

Siebenaler is an excellent skater; he has a real fluid motion and gets up the ice quick. He is able to create turnovers in his own zone and rather than pass to his inferior line mates he simply carries the puck out of trouble. Not only does he take it out of his own zone, he has good stick handling and puck control which allow him to carry the puck through the neutral zone and into the offensive zone. He along with Dunn are a big reason why Niagara gets any chances from their secondary lines. From what I've seen of his shot it’s decent but nothing special. He doesn’t get a lot of chances to shoot however as he is the one who has to create the scoring chances. He doesn’t have line mates who can set him up consistently.

Defensively he does a good job of cutting off the lane and forcing players to take low quality shots from the outside. He has good stick work which he uses to create turnovers. His ability to leave the zone is great as mentioned previously. When he gets closed off he has the vision and IQ to make a good first pass out of trouble. He is not very physical but that’s not an issue as he has the puck a lot. Plus physicality can be taught very easily in my opinion.

To conclude here’s my quick profile on Blake Siebenaler.  

Siebenaler is a two way defencemen, with great skating stride. Has the ability to carry the puck out of traffic and makes a good first pass. He plays on a poor Niagara team which limits his chances offensively. Defensively he keeps players to the outside, preventing chances. He is not the most physical player but creates turnovers with good stick work. 

North Bay Battalion vs. Niagara Ice Dogs – Game Summary

First off before getting into reviewing the keys I laid out yesterday, I have to say Eric Ming WOW. He was not someone I had anticipated doing much in this game, but he was very impressive scoring two goals, one of which was absolutely dirty as he toe dragged around the defender and went backhand top shelf (not quite backhand bar down unfortunately).

Now on to the three keys (for a recap check the previous post)

The Perlini-Verhaege-Difruscia line for the Ice Dogs did go out and dominate recording 6 of the 11 scoring chances recorded by Niagara. It could have easily been more except for the fact that Perlini was the recipient of two huge hits from behind, going head first into the board on both occasions. The first hit required Perlini to head to the dressing room to be checked over. He missed about a quarter of the period. The second hit was not as bad and Perlini stayed in the game after it. There zone starts as unit were fairly even by my estimation, I didn’t record it but I would guess they were around even for offensive and defensive starts. Again like much like every other game, this line did a good job of creating pressure, along with the 6 created chances, the line combined for a goal and three assists. This key was definitely completed.  

The second thing I was watching for was the playing tome of the defencemen. It was clear in this game that Luke Mercer and Aaron Haydon are the top defensive pair used by Niagara. They received first power-play and penalty kill time. In being the top pair they benefit from playing with the top line mentioned above. The fact that Haydon more than likely has been receiving this kind of ice time all season and only managed to put up 16 points on the season is crazy to me. He has no offensive upside and someone I am definitely avoiding come draft day. Mercer isn’t as crazy to play more as he is the veteran on the team and the captain. He did lead the Ice Dogs in scoring this season with 39 points; however that was only 6 more than Vince Dunn who is two years younger. It’s pretty clear to me anyway that Dunn and Blake Siebenaler are the better two defencemen.

They played exactly the way I said they would in the preview post. They both have the ability to create turnovers in their own end and when they do both are able to skate the puck out the zone. One thing I really liked from these two players was how they both never seemed to dump the puck it. On numerous occasions they created a turnover in the defensive end and took the puck all the way into the opponents end by themselves. Another thing I liked from both of these defencemen was their stick work. They both have excellent hand eye coordination to bat the puck down at the line and keep it in. Siebenaler is draft eligible this season. He is currently ranked 47^th among North American skaters, and 19 spots below Haydon. I would pick Siebenaler over Haydon any day. Dunn is not draft eligible until next season, he is someone who I don’t see being ranked very highly due to his size (6’ 185), but I see the upside in his game and he could real steal for a team that looks past his size. 

Finally we come to Brent Moran, who despite receiving the first star in this game was rather shaky in this one. I said in the preview that he would face 40 shots and would have to stop 38-39 of them to win. He practically did just that. He faced 39 shots and saved 36 of them(.923 SV%) . Moran did not look good in the first period. He was making plenty of saves but he looked like he had no idea where the puck was. He allowed tons of rebounds, even when the puck hit him in the chest it would drop to the ground allowing North Bay a chance to get a few more whacks at it. Despite all that he only managed to give up one goal in the first period and eventually settled down.

Even though only two of my three keys occurred in this game, Niagara managed to pull off the victory 5-3. This gives them a 3-1 lead in the series and a chance to end it tonight in North Bay. I will be watching that game tonight and again will be looking for these same things.    

Scoring Chances by Period

Team	First Period	Second Period	Third Period	Total
North Bay	10(3)	9(3)	4(3)	23(8)
Niagara	3(3)	6(1)	2(2)	11(6)

North Bay Battalion vs. Niagara Ice Dogs – Preview

I'm headed down to “The Jack” tonight to watch the Ice Dogs take on the Battalion in OHL playoff play. The Dogs are up 2-1 in the series after shutting out North Bay in game 3. This will be my fourth time seeing Niagara live this season (along with multiple times on TV), so I feel I have a decent understanding of how their team works. With that being said here are the some things I will be watching for in tonight’s game.

1.     I want to see the line of Perlini-Verhaege-Difruscia dominate play for the majority of time they are on the ice. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts this is the one line on Niagara that can drive play and keep possession in the offensive zone. It doesn’t matter what zone they start in whether defensive or neutral zone they find a way to get the puck out and into the opponents end. The Ice Dogs need this line to create that pressure and score in order to have a chance.  

2.    They need to get the D pair of Vince Dunn and Blake Siebenaler, more playing time. From what I have seen those two are the Ice Dogs best D pair. I know Luke Mercer has the experience (229 career OHL games played) and Aaron Haydon has the draft pedigree (28^th among NA Skaters per CSS), but from what I've seen from that defence pair is they are always pinned in their own end. They do a poor job of getting possession and getting the puck into the offensive zone. They do block shots and get in passing lanes a lot but the reason they have to do that so much is they don’t have the puck.  What Dunn and Siebenaler do are they get control of the puck and are able to either carry it out their zone and into the offensive end or they make a good first pass to the forward who usually dumps it or carries it into the zone. I'm hoping to see significant playing time for both of them.  

3.    Brent Moran has to the stop the puck. Yes this is what all goalies have to do, but as mentioned all lines other than the Perlini-Verhaege-Difruscia line, and Dunn-Siebenaler, get beat in the possession game. Moran is going to be peppered with shots whenever those five are not on the ice. Moran is likely going to face 40 shots tonight; he needs to save 38-39 of those in order for the Ice Dogs to win.

If those three things happen tonight the Ice Dogs will win this game and have a 3-1 stranglehold on the series. 

Friday Night Hockey Scoring Chances–Playoff Edition

I had the pleasure of watching Jonathan Drouin and the Halifax Mooseheads take on the Charlottetown Islanders in the first game of what expects to be a long playoff run again for the Mooseheads. The QMJHL playoffs are a little different than what most people are used to. Rather than the typical 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7 etc. the “Q” seeds all playoff teams together from 1-16. So Halifax who finished second in the Q with 97 points (Baie-Comeau had 99) is playing Charlottetown who are the #15 seed. On paper this game (and the whole series really) should be a cake walk for Halifax. Halifax won the game 6-3 out chancing Charlottetown 25-11 and 15-4 at even strength.

Obviously Drouin was the star of this game, not much I can add that you don’t already know. He looked like an NHL player. He had 8 scoring chances of his own and set up numerous others. Playing alongside Drouin and not looking out of place was potential top 5 pick Nikolaj Ehlers. Ehlers finished the season second on the team to Drouin with 104 points in 63 games (49G, 55A). What impressed me most about Ehlers wasn’t the impressive skill level, or the fact that he dominated in the possession game, no it was how his coach trusted him in all situations. He played the power play obviously, but also received significant time with Drouin on the penalty kill. From this game anyway it seemed that Drouin and Ehlers were the team’s top penalty killing forwards. As you probably know from previous posts, I love players who are trusted to kill penalties. It shows they are trusted as good defensive players by their coach. The one issue I had with Elhers was when he was killing a penalty in the second; he took a very undisciplined slashing penalty in retaliation to being interfered with. It gave Charlottetown a long 5-3 power play which they ended up scoring on. It wasn’t crucial in the end result of the game as the score was so one-sided but against a better team he can’t afford to take those bad penalties.

Turing our attention to the 2015 NHL draft, 16 year old right winger Daniel Sprong stood out for Charlottetown. He had 4 of the 11 scoring chances for Charlottetown. He came to Charlottetown via the bantam draft going 13^th overall in 2013. He has become the team’s best player leading them in all sorts of offensive categories including goals (30), assists (38), points (68) power play goals (9) and shots (260). His 1.01 points per game was third among QMJHL rookies, behind Ehlers, and Vladimir Tkachev. He is already being projected by some mock drafts to go in the late first round, but I think he could go even higher if he takes a big jump next season and improves even more. I can honestly see 100 points for Sprong next season, provided health of course, and a shot of going in the top 15 in next summer’s draft. He is someone I am definitely going to be keeping my eye on next season.

Scoring Chances by Period

Team	First Period	Second Period	Third Period	Total
Charlottetown	6(2)	3(1)	2(1)	11(4)
Halifax	10(4)	10(9)	5(2)	25(15)

OHL Playoff Preview 2014

The OHL playoffs begin tonight with Sudbury taking on Barrie. Rather than do a traditional playoff preview going through each match up, I thought in the spirit of March Madness I would post my OHL playoff bracket!

*Hopefully that is legible enough, apologies if its not.

I'm taking the favourites this year, with Peterborough as my only upset pick of the first round.

In the Eastern Conference I see Oshawa rolling through the first two rounds pretty easily before a tough match-up against Barrie in the East finals. Oshawa wins the East through their great offense lead by potential top 10 Michael Dal Colle, and Flyers first round pick Scott Laughton (20^th overall, 2012). Dal Colle led the Generals in scoring with 95 points (39G, 56A) in 67 games this season (1.4ppg). Laughton is highly regarded for his two-way play helped the Generals to the third best penalty kill in the league (82.9%), and even chipped in with five shorthanded goals.

Barrie on the other hand is carried by big time defencemen Aaron Ekblad. Ekblad led the Colts to the best goal differential in the East (+48) which resulted in a fourth place finish in the standings. Ekblad has been deadly from the back end this season, especially on the power-play where he has scored 16 of his 23 goals. Those 16 power play goals were tops among OHL defencemen and third in the lead behind Erie snipers Conner Brown and Dane Fox. Offensively the Colts are led by winger Andreas Athanasiou who put up 95 

points (49G, 46A) in 66 games (1.4ppg).

The battles out west are going to be fun. With four super teams set to collide in the second round, expect each series to be a long fought battle. I predict Guelph and Erie to win the battles with Erie winning the West and then getting through Oshawa to be the OHL’s representative (along with hosts London) at the MasterCard Memorial Cup.

I like Erie to win the OHL championship because they are the perfect example of how to win in today’s hockey. I've had the chance to see Erie play a few times this season, granted it was against some weaker teams, but they are a puck possession team. They have so much skill on offense that once they gain the zone with the puck they do not relinquish it. That style of play on offense was the key to only allowing 170 goals all season, fewest in the OHL. That offense featuring some of the best in the league, be it OHL point leader Conner Brown (128), OHL goal leader Dane Fox (64) or phenom Conner McDavid who just missed the 100 point mark as a 16 year old (he finished with 99), helped keep the pressure off of the defence. It’s not like the defence is poor either, with team Canada defencemen Adam Pelech and silver medalist Oscar Dansk. This team has an excellent offensive core, god defence and a solid goalie, that’s why they are my pick to be the OHL Champions.   

Counting Cards at the Draft – NCAA Defencemen

As mentioned in my previous post, I am going to study the draft to see if point production in a players draft season, translates into NHL success. The goal of this is to hopefully identify the type of player who is more likely to succeed, thus being able to hit on later round picks and beat the odds of any given draft. Today we are going to look at defencemen drafted out of American colleges or the NCAA.

I defined the NCAA as the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA), the Eastern Collegiate Hockey Association (ECHA), Hockey-East (H-East) and the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA). These were all described as NCAA Division I schools on the site hockey data base. I tried to follow what “That’s Offside” did in their piece on CHL defencemen. I had to make some tweaks obviously but overall I tried to follow the same methodology for consistency purposes.

I followed the same time period of 1998-2008, and also used the “NHL regular” definition of having played in at least 40% of your eligible NHL games. The one change I made was I included all defencemen taken in the draft, rather than just the ones taken in the first three rounds. I did this predominately because of sample size issues. There are just not as many NCAA players taken compared to the CHL and I wanted the largest sample size to increase reliability. I calculated the points per game of each player in their draft eligible season and compared it to the percentage of NHL games played in. Plotting these in a scatter plat yields the following graph:

The cluster of dots on the bottom line of the graph (0% of NHL games), begins to take off at around 0.45 points per game. Dividing this graph into quadrants at 40% and 0.50 points per game gives us the following. 

As you can tell the majority players who are unlikely to make the NHL are the ones who fall below the 0.50 points per game. These results are encouraging as they are quite similar percentage wise to what “That’s Offside” found.

There definitely appears to be a trend here at 0.50 points per game but before this goes too far the exceptions need to be looked to see why the players who scored over 0.50 (the bottom right) failed and why the players under 0.50 (top left) succeeded.

How they Missed:

• Grant Lewis (40^th overall, 2004), Juha Alen (90^th overall, 2003), Zach Redmond (184^th overall, 2001), and Mike Gabinet (237^th overall, 2001). These players all suffered significant injuries which cut short their careers.
• Mark McRae (288^th overall, 2000), Bobby Allen (52^nd overall, 1998), Peter Metcalf (267^th overall, 1999), Cody Wild (140^th overall, 2006) Chris Bahen (189^th overall, 2000). These players all had a scoring drop off either there next season in college or when they made the jump to the AHL.
• AJ Thelen (12^th overall, 2004), Danny Richmond (31^st overall, 2003), both went to the CHL. Thelen went because he was kicked off his college team for underage drinking, and struggled in the WHL. Richmond was solid in the OHL (0.59ppg) but struggled in the AHL.
• Jeff Jillson (14^th overall, 2004). He bounded around the NHL for a number of seasons, but couldn’t shake the label of being a poor defender he was given in his rookie season.  He is now playing over in the Czech-Republic.
• Brian Salcido (141^st overall, 2005). Had some success in the AHL before going to Europe.

Alec Martinez was excluded from this list as he just missed the threshold of being an NHL regular (38%), but he has defiantly moved past the 40% mark with the number of games he has played this season.

How They Made it:

Here is the list of all the players who fell below the 0.50 points per game but still managed to have an NHL career; Duncan Keith, Brooks Orpik, Ron Hainsey, Mike Komisarek, Kevin Bieksa , Mike Commodore, Matt Hunwick, Mike Lundin.

All of those players, with the exception of Commodore, managed to improve their scoring up to 0.5 before they finished college, or in the case of Keith went and succeeded in the CHL (1.20ppg).

Here is the short list of draft eligible defencemen from the NCAA as per Central Scouting.

*stats as of March 13 2014*

Player	Rank	GP	Goals	Assists	Points	PPG
Gavin Bayreuther	115	34	8	25	33	0.97
Parker Reno	161	20	1	1	2	0.05
Scott Savage	202	29	4	12	16	0.55

Some team is going to get a steal with Gavin Bayreuther. Scoring at almost a point per game, he is projected to go about mid-fourth round. I personally would try and target him a little earlier than that, early fourth, late third perhaps. Scott Savage could be an even bigger steal, likely a 7^th round pick if he even gets drafted at all. If he can maintain that scoring pace or even improve it, some team is going to have themselves an NHL defencemen at very minimal cost. He is definitely worth a gamble in the seventh round. Teams should all just avoid Parker Reno until he can show at least some ability to put up points.  

We have gotten this far and now seems like a good time to mention the big elephant in the room; age. I have not accounted for how old a player was at the time of being drafted. The NCAA does not have age regulations like the CHL does so players can be much older, which could have some impact on the results. If this study were to be re-done it is something to include but for now I think the current analysis gives us a pretty good framework of what players will succeed coming out of the NCAA.

To conclude this study supports the idea that players who make the NHL are ones who can put up points as amateurs. If I am looking to draft a defencemen from the NCAA I would be looking for the players who are putting up points, such as Gavin Bayreuther. This study obviously only covered players who were drafted but I feel this same principle would apply to undrafted college free agents as well. This study is limited by not including age. Future studies should look at including age, as well as looking at other leagues and positions.

All stats are from hockey database and information on players from Hockey’s Future. 

If you have an questions/comments, feel free to leave them below.

Counting Cards at the Draft

We all know that drafting is an inexact science. It is extremely difficult to project what a player is going to do down the road. In doing research on the draft it’s clear the top half of the first round (picks 1-15) have the highest probability of NHL success.  This chart from Derek Zona of Copper Blue outlines these odds very nicely.

Draft Number	Total	Top Players	Percentage
1	7	6	0.857
2-3	17	15	0.882
4-7	32	16	0.500
8-13	51	21	0.412
14-25	99	29	0.293
26-50	202	30	0.149
51-100	405	30	0.074
101-200	771	30	0.039
201+	572	18	0.031

He looked at drafts from 1997-2005. He defined a top player as having as having played a minimum of 200 NHL games having scored at least 0.5 points per game. This eliminates all the grinders and goons who can easily be had in free agency each season for cheap. For defencemen he used the same 200 games played minimum, but reduced the scoring rate to 0.15 points per-game and 18:30 time on ice, this again eliminates any goons but also eliminates players who are just power-play specialists.

As you can the drop from the top picks is pretty staggering.  After pick 7 you have a less than 50% chance of becoming a top NHL player. It’s for all intents purposes a coin flip.

The goal of a team’s draft should be to beat those odds. If you can find a top NHL player after pick 13 you have done very well for your organization. This is what scouting boils down too in my opinion trying to beat the odds. Everyone knows who the top 10-15 players are in a draft class the hard part is knowing the guys after that.

What I want to do is use numbers to study what players have done as amateurs and see if any trends emerge with the goal of beating those odds. This is much what Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s did in Moneyball. The odds were (and still are) stacked against them and they used stats so that they could stack the deck and be card counters at the casino. I want to be able to be the card counter at the draft. 

The best research I have found was the study previously mentioned in this blog from “That’s Offide” Defence, Defencemen andthe Draft. He of course found that among defencemen selected in the top three rounds, the ones who became NHL regulars scored at 0.6 points per game in junior. I have done some research trying to find other studies like this and so far to no avail. In the months leading up to the draft I hope to replicate this study using other leagues and positions. With this I hope to find out more ways to predict NHL success which I understand is not perfect and there will always be exceptions to the rule. But hopefully it will be a better understanding of how to predict future NHL players which can increase the odds of draft picks which really should be every team’s goal.          

Barrie Colts vs. Niagara Ice Dogs – March 9, 2014

Aaron Ekblad and the Barrie Colts were in town for an afternoon tilt against the Ice Dogs. Ekblad as you know is a potential top 3 pick in this year’s draft. I was very interested in seeing how Ice Dogs star Brandan Perlinni did against Ekblad.

Last Niagara game I attended I made a note that Perlinni and Carter Verhaeghe should be playing together as they are the best two players on the team. I was very delighted when I saw those two playing together to start this game. I was also very excited to see Ice Dogs defencemen Aaron Haydon in the line-up as he was scratched in my previous game.

The game was very entertaining but remarkably one sided. The Ice Dogs dominated in terms of the score winning 5-2, but other than that this game was all Barrie. They won the scoring chance battle 23-18 and 18-10 at even strength. They dominated the shot clock as well, almost doubling Niagara’s shot total 48-26. Barrie was clearly the better team in this game despite the score. What went wrong for Barrie in this game was goal-tending. Niagara was being buried in their zone but a couple of quick breakouts were capitalized upon.

My main focus for this game was obviously Ekblad, and he was what I expected. He was put out the Perlinni line as much as possible, and for the most part did pretty well. He was a big part of keeping the Ice Dogs stuck in their own end.  He didn’t generate any scoring chances as he took a lot of point shots but I felt he did a great job of keeping pucks in the zone and pinching in at the right times. Scoring is not as issue as he is well clear of the 0.6ppg I like defencemen to have. He has 50 points (22G, 28A) in 54 games (0.92) this season. Defensively he is not the fastest skater and at times looked to get beat by a forward only to make a really nice poke check or hit to knock the puck loose. I don’t think his skating is an issue by any means it is just not elite. Ekblad played in all situations for the Colts, and by my estimation I would guess he played about 25 minutes in this game. He has the potential to become a great top pair defencemen in the NHL.

Perlinni understandably was not as good in this game as he was against Mississauga. He was not able to drive play but was still pretty clearly the best player on Niagara. Of what little offense Niagara generated it seemed to be when Perlinni was on the ice. His line combined for 9 of the 16 scoring chances for the Ice Dogs. He showed off his great shot, ripping one from the high slot, for his 32nd goal of the season. He was matched up against Ekblad as I said and he was not afraid to be physical with the big defender, hitting him when he could. One thing I didn’t like was that Perlinni took three penalties in this game; two for high sticking and one for elbowing. The elbowing one was a bad decision by Perlinni. He had control of the puck and went to shake off a defender so he left the puck to hit the defender and got his elbows up too high. The issue I had with the play was that he already had possession of the puck; he should be using his skill at this point to try and create chances, no reason to be hitting.

Outside of the two stars already mentioned I was particularly interested in Aaron Haydon. He is ranked 28th on central scouting list. That ranking feels very high to me as Haydon does not score at all. He has only 15 points in 56 games this season good for just 0.28ppg. I understand why he is ranked so highly and that is because he has great size (6’4, 200), skates well for someone with that size, and is physical and gritty. While those attributes are great they mean nothing if you don’t have at least some offensive potential. Think about it, if he is only scoring 15 points in junior what’s he going to do at the NHL level, 5points? 10 points? I don’t think he is even going to have a shot at the NHL unless he takes a huge jump in scoring next season, but that is just not something is see. He was dominated in the possession game, spending the majority of the game in his own end. As a shutdown defenceman he was playing against the top lines of Barrie but still as a guy projected to go in the mid second round I would like to see him have at least some success. He is not someone I want my team looking at come draft day.

Scoring Chances by Period

Team	First Period	Second Period	Third Period	Total
Barrie	8(6)	7(5)	9(7)	23(18)
Niagara	4(4)	7(3)	5(3)	16(10)

Friday Night Hockey Scoring Chances

I was able to catch the nationally televised game between the Oshawa Generals and Kingston Frontenacs. To my disappointment I found out in the pre-game that Sam Bennett currently projected to go first overall in this summer’s draft had been suspended from a cross-check in the previous game.  This game started out as I expected. Oshawa being the best team in the Eastern Conference came out and was controlling the possession game early. Kingston looked like they missed Bennett in the first period especially on the power play. It was terrible registering no chances on their first attempt and barely even getting set up. Their second power play of the period was so bad my friend who was watching the game with my thought Oshawa was on the power play. The highlight of this period was Scott Laughton showing his absolute bomb of a shot, scoring a great power play goal from the high slot.

The second period started much like the first with the game favouring Oshawa. They came out and scored a quick goal to make 2-0. The turning point in this game was when Oshawa had a 5 on 3 power play and Laughton was getting a penalty shot. If Laughton scored the game would have been 3-0 and likely been over.  Laughton however was stopped on his shot and Kingston killed off the penalties. From that point on Kingston took over and dominated. They scored 5 goals in the period highlighted by Corey Pawly going backhand bar down!

The third period had major scoring effects taking place. Kingston scored 30 seconds into the period and cruised the rest of the way. Oshawa having already clinched the top spot in the conference knew the game was over and essentially coasted the rest of the way as well.

One final note the Oshawa power was very poor in this game I felt. They scored on their first attempt with Laughton scoring from the point/high slot. From there they never seemed to make an adjustment as Kingston covered Laughton and Laughton repeatedly took point shots that were easily blocked. I'm not sure if they have run this power play style all season but if they have its worked as they have the second best power play in the OHL (behind Erie), converting at a 26.8% clip. It will be interesting to see how teams approach defending this power play in the playoffs, and see if they follow the same strategy Kingston did.  

Here are the scoring chances.

Team	First Period	Second Period	Third Period	Total
Oshawa	4(2)	8(3)	5(3)	17(8)
Kingston	5(4)	10(6)	3(1)	18(11)

Jack Eichel OHL??

             
Bob Mckenzie tweeted this afternoon that American Jack Eichel- projected currently to go second overall in the 2015 draft to Conner McDavid- is considering coming over to the OHL. Eichel wants the chance to go head to head with McDavid in their draft seasons.

               
The first hurdle for Eichel to get over is the fact that his rights are owned by the Saint John Sea Dogs of the QMJHL. As Bob tweeted the only way for a player to go from the QMJHL to the OHL is to be placed on waivers by the QMJHL team and then go unclaimed through the Q and then picked up on waivers by an OHL team. A player of Eichel’s caliber is unlikely to be waived by Saint John and even if he is I find it hard to believe he will go unclaimed.

                

The second issue would be what team(s) would he be willing to play for. Since he wants to go head to head with McDavid that would mean a Western Conference team, preferably one in Erie’s division (the Midwest Division). However if Eichel were to be placed on waivers Sarnia would have first crack at him as they have the worst record. If for whatever reason he did not want to play in Sarina his other options would be the four (non-Erie) teams in the mid-west division. If it were up to me I would want to go play on the powerhouse London Knights. They have consistently been one of the top teams for years; they have one of the best coaches in Dale Hunter, and have produced a substantial number of NHL players.

               
The CHL has never had a situation like this before, where a superstar caliber player wants to change leagues. A similar situation to this occurred with Matthew Peca. His rights were owned by the OHL and he wanted to go play in the QMJHL for Patrick Roy. His transfer was blocked because another OHL team claimed Peca. The similarities are obvious here but Peca was nowhere near the star Eichel is (Peca was a 7^th round selection by Tampa Bay in 2011).

               

Eichel may not know this but he has all the leverage in this situation. He is a superstar that both the CHL and NCAA would love to have.  Leagues need star talent to survive; they help grow markets which in turn bring in more money for the league. They help attract sponsors and help drive interest in the league. Thinking about this it makes sense, how many of you could say who had heard of or followed the Halifax Mooseheads before Nathan Mackinnon and Jonathan Drouin arrived there.

                

This situation I see as very similar to John Tavares when he was 14. My professor in my Sport Economics class mentioned that Tavares threatened to go to the USA and play if he was unable to go into the OHL as a 15 year old. The OHL in this situation recognized they could lose a potential star so they made a whole new rule to accommodate him; exceptional player status. This is the situation I see happening with Eichel. If he is really serious about coming to the OHL, I believe David Branch will do everything in his power to get Eichel into the OHL even if it means creating a new rule.

                

The potential gain of getting Eichel into the OHL is massive. It offsets any losses that would occur to the QMJHL. This is a huge opportunity for the CHL to steal one of the best from the NCAA and I believe David Branch will make it happen.

Comments are appreciated and encouraged. I appreciate the feedback. Thanks.   

Draft Pick Trades and Goals Versus Threshold

                    Since this is a prospect blog I'm going to look at trades that specifically affect the draft, i.e. draft picks. I am going to look at trades that are just draft picks for a player. I am going to evaluate these trades based on the catch all stat goals versus threshold (GVT). This is a stat very similar to wins above replacement (WAR) in baseball. I know it is not the perfect stat no stat is but I feel GVT does a decent job of evaluating everything.  To learn more on GVT the hockey prospectus glossary is a great place to start.

The first thing we need to know is what draft picks are worth in terms of GVT. This is difficult to answer as we do not know what players will be selected with each pick.  Iain Fyffe did a piece on this back in 2011. He came up with this formula:

v = (4.1 x (200 – d) / 210) + (20 x .7 ^ .9d)

Where v is the estimated peak GVT of the pick (peak GVT is defined as the player's GVT in the best five of 10 seasons after his draft year, on a per-82-game basis) and d is the number of the pick (#1 overall is 1, #25th overall is 25 etc).

I used this formula to calculate the GVT value of every pick.  From there I averaged the value of each pick to a general idea for a pick in each round. I spilt up the first round into two halves as there is a significant drop from the top 15 picks to the bottom 15. From there I used “hockey 3-1-1 rule” which states that 3 goals (scored or prevented) gives you 1 point in the standings and costs 1 million dollars.  

Round	Average Peak GVT	“3-1-1” ($M)
Pick 1-10	7.24	$2.41
Pick 15-30	3.48	$1.16
Round 2	3.02	$1.00
Round 3	2.43	$0.81
Round 4	1.80	$0.62
Round 5	1.26	$0.42
Round 6	0.67	$0.22
Round 7	0.09	$0.02

To evaluate players you need to look at what they are going to do in the future not what they have done for their previous team. In order to do that I am simply going to calculate each players GVT per-game and extrapolate it out over the remaining games for the player’s new team. I know this is not the best way to do this as a number of factors in play, but I feel it’s a good quick way to get a decent idea of what to expect from players going forward.

*Goalie Trades have been removed due to the uncertainty of projecting games played*

Player	New Team	Expected GVT	Draft Picks	Old Team	Value of Picks	Difference
Mike Weaver	Canadians	-0.07	5th round (2015)	Panthers	1.26	-1.33
Dustin Penner	Capitals	2.86	4th round (2014)	Ducks	1.80	1.06
Stephane Robidas	Ducks	2.00	4th round (2014)	Stars	1.80	0.2
David Rundblad Mathieu Brisebois	Blackhawks	-1.90*	2nd round (2014)	Coyotes	3.02	-4.92
Ales Hemsky	Senators	0.739	5th round (2014) 3rd round (2015)	Oilers	3.69	-2.95
Marcel Goc	Penguins	1.00	5th round (2014) 3rd round (2015)	Florida	3.69	-2.69
Nick Schultz	Blue Jackets	0	5th round (2014)	Oilers	1.26	-1.26
Raphael Diaz	Rangers	1	5th round (2014)	Vancouver	1.26	-0.26
Andrej Meszaros	Bruins	2.93	3rd round (2014)	Flyers	2.34	0.59

At first glance many of these trades look like negatives but remember the value of the picks is over 82 games. The value the players are providing is over the remainder of the season, which for most teams is about 20 games. The clear winners here are the Capitals, Ducks, and Bruins, as they have a chance to get more value from their players over 20 games than the pick would be expected to provide over a whole season. If we break this chart down to GVT per game we get the following:   

Player	New Team	GVT/Game	Draft Picks	Old Team	Value of Picks/Game	Difference
Mike Weaver	Canadians	-0.004	5th round (2015)	Panthers	0.015	-0.019
Dustin Penner	Capitals	0.143	4th round (2014)	Ducks	0.021	0.122
Stephane Robidas	Ducks	0.10	4th round (2014)	Stars	0.021	0.079
David Rundblad Mathieu Brisebois	Blackhawks	-0.10*	2nd round (2014)	Coyotes	0.037	-0.137
Ales Hemsky	Senators	0.039	5th round (2014) 3rd round (2015)	Oilers	0.044	-0.005
Marcel Goc	Penguins	0.048	5th round (2014) 3rd round (2015)	Florida	0.044	0.004
Nick Schultz	Blue Jackets	0	5th round (2014)	Oilers	0.015	-0.015
Raphael Diaz	Rangers	0.05	5th round (2014)	Vancouver	0.015	0.035
Andrej Meszaros	Bruins	0.139	3rd round (2014)	Flyers	0.029	0.11

*Rundblad’s GVT value only

This makes all the trades look much better. The thing to take away from these two charts is that draft picks have very little value. They are worth the gamble for the selling team as the other option is losing the player for nothing in free agency.  As a contender looking to make the playoffs they need all the additional value they can get to make that playoff run. These charts show that they should not let draft picks hold them back from improving their team.

I plan to look back at these trades when the season is over and see how close the expected value matches up with the actual value provided. Then we can officially see how much value each team paid for.

Comments are appreciated and encouraged. I appreciate the feedback. Thanks.