The
next installment of Counting Cards at the Draft is looking at defencemen
selected from the US National Development Program. This pool of players was the
smallest (just 21 players) seen so far just due to the fact that only one team
is being looked at compared to an entire league. Still despite the small size I
figured they were still worth wile taking a look at. Just keep in mind that the
results are the least reliable of the series so far because of the sample size.
The
majority of players are from the US National Under 18 team with four players
from the US Junior National Team. Without further ado the graphs:
It’s tough to see much of anything from the graph due to the
limited number of points but I think a case could be made that 0.6 seems to be
a rough area of where the points begin to take off. Drawing the lines on 0.6
and the usually 40% provides this:
The percentages actually match up pretty favorably to the
other ones which bodes very well for this.
How they missed
-David
Warsofsky (95th overall, 2008): He had a good college career
posting a 0.6ppg. Was traded to Boston and is buried on the Bruins depth chart
behind young guys like Dougie Hamilton and Torey Krug.
-J.D.
Forrest (181st overall, 2000): Also had a great college career
putting up 0.67ppg. He went to Europe when college was done. *Was drafted out
of the Junior National Team
How they made it
-Ryan
Suter (7th overall, 2003) he put up 0.57ppg in his draft season which
is close enough to 0.6 to be considered a success. *Was drafted out of the
Junior National Team
-Jack
Johnson (3rd overall, 2005) clear he is an offensive defencemen.
Put up almost a point per game in college (0.96). *Was drafted out of the
Junior National Team
Of the four exceptions three of them are from the Junior
National Team. If we remove them we have only 1 player who failed to score more
than 0.6 and not make the NHL. There would also be no players who scored less than
0.6 and ended up making it. This year’s draft class is going to put this to the
test.
2014 Draft Eligible US U18 Defensemen as per Central
Scouting’s final ranking.
|
Player
|
Rank
|
GP
|
Goals
|
Assists
|
Points
|
PPG
|
|
Jack Dougherty
|
30
|
55
|
6
|
16
|
22
|
0.40
|
|
Jack Glover
|
38
|
59
|
2
|
26
|
28
|
0.47
|
|
Johnathan.Macleod
|
44
|
51
|
5
|
6
|
11
|
0.22
|
|
Ryan Collins
|
57
|
59
|
1
|
6
|
7
|
0.12
|
|
Louis Belpedio
|
107
|
61
|
7
|
16
|
23
|
0.38
|
As
you can clearly see none of these players reach the 0.6 mark. Its not enough
for me to say don’t draft any of these players,
but it makes me second guess where these players should be ranked. Jack
Dougherty and Jack Glover are both projected to be high second rounders with an
outside chance of going in the first round. I would defiantly pick them both
lower than that. I know 17 players is an extremely small sample, but it’s a bit
unsettling that no previous US U-18 player has scored below 0.6 and succeeded.
Dougherty, Glover and throw in Louis Belpedio into this mix as well, they all
need to show some scoring ability in college to avoid becoming busts.
As
for Johnathan Macleod and Ryan Collins I would just avoid them as they just don’t
have enough offence to be worth the gamble.
In
conclusion the small sample makes this study somewhat unreliable. However it
still supports the notion that in order to make the NHL you need to show some
scoring as an amateur. This years class of defencemen are an interesting case
as none of them have reached the 0.6 ppg outlined by this study. It will be
interesting going forward how these players perform and if they can become the
first one to make the NHL while being below 0.6 ppg.
If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.
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