#entry draft

#NHLVideos: Watch every pick from the 1st Round of the 2021 NHL Entry Draft

Sorry it took so long for me to see this. 

There are different kinds of drafts and that probably adds to the confusion of them. The most relevant one that you will consistently hear about every year is the NHL Entry Draft so I’ll cover that one first and then touch on expansion drafts.

the NHL entry draft is pretty self explanatory in that its a way for new players to join the league by being picked by teams. This is where teams get their best prospects (usually). There are general trends frm entry drafts like usually the first overall pick will play in the NHL the next year, but defensemen take longer to develop, and sometimes if a draft is strong enough it can extend to the top 10. But also sometimes, certain draft picks are surprises, David Pastrnak for instance was 25th overall, and was the only player from that draft to play in his first eligible season. 

The NHL entry draft works because each team is given a position based on the results of the previous season. The teams that do not make the playoffs get put into a lotter system for the first overall pick, and the team with the lowest amount of points has the best chance while the teams that just missed out on the playoffs have the smallest chance for the first overall pick. Then the teams that do make the playoffs essentially get put into order of who was knocked out of playoffs first, given the stanley cup winner the 31st pick. After that, the picks keep repeating. So each round is 31 picks, one for each team. This means that the team with the first overall pick also owns the 32nd overall pick and he team with the 2nd overall pick owns the 33rd overall pick and that repeats for each round up to 7. Now teams can trade picks which is how you end up with some teams not going in the first round at all and other teams going multiple times.

AS far as the players themselves, they are ranked based on scouting and research. There’s a lot of data and whole departments that rank these players. But generaly the first and second overall picks are agreed upon by everyone and sometimes it can go all the way to the top 5 that are pretty much set in stone. But every year there seems to be a player who drops in the draft. This year it was Zadina. 

Now, the expansion draft, is only really relelvant right now because the NHL is in a era of expansion. We had Vegas obviously and we’re going to have Seattle in a year or two so that’s why it’s come up a bunch but I wouldn’t expect it to be soemthing to continuously worry about each year. However, it can be confusing.

An expansion draft exists when a new team joins the NHL, and it gives them NHL ready players. In theory a team could just scoop up a bunch of amateur/european league players and just sort of suffer until they get good through trades and the draft. However, that’s terrible business planning. For starters, the league is sustained by the owners of every NHL team, meaning when it expands the other owners are investing in the league so even though their opponents the owners want them to succeed. That’s what an expansion draft does, it ensures a teams success to a larger extent than just letting them fend for themselves. 

Expansion drafts change basically every time they’re implemented so it’s hard for me to lay out the format. But generally, a team is given the chance to protect or expose a certain amount of players based on variety of things like position, contracts, age, etc. The expansion team then gets a list of all the players exposed and chooses from them to build a team. It’s not the sort of draft we’re used to seeing with the Entry Draft where a man gets on stage, calls a name, and then a young man is draped in a jersey and a baseball cap. This is done almost entirely behind the scenes, including making the picks. But it still operates in the same way where a department of people combine all sorts of data and research about a specific player to decide whether or not to take them. 

Now even though I said these exist to give the expansion team an easier time, it’s not supposed to make them stanley cup final good. An expansion team, is supposed to use the expansion draft to get fringe NHL players, maybe one or two good players and then suck so bad they end up with good draft picks until 5 years later they’re competitive. They’ll have enough notable names to build a following around but still kind of be the pushover of the NHL. Obviously that didn’t happen this year and Vegas showed us all up. Which I thought was amazing. 

You have the general idea correct but it’s not really that simple. There isn’t a “list” that all the teams follow. each team makes their own individual list. For instance Nico Hischier wasn’t ranked number 1 on most lists, he was ranked number 2, but the devils didn’t choose the player that was Number 1 they picked Nico, because on their list Nico was number 1. This isn’t to say that Nico didn’t deserve to go first, it’s just the Devils prioritized differently. Because in some drafts it’s obvious, like in 2015 Connor McDavid was going first overall we all knew it. in 2016 Auston Matthews was going first overall we all knew it. Again in 2015 everyone knew Jack Eichel was going second and in 2016 everyone knew Patrik Laine was going second. This is because Connor McDavid was significantly better than Jack Eichel who was Significantly better than everyone else. Again same thing in 2016. That’s really rare, that almost never happens. We had four generational elite talents go 1 and 2, two years in a row at the entry draft. And even in those drafts 3 and onwards was pretty up in the air. 

So yes they draft in order and they pick the best player available the issue comes with 1. what type of player they want to draft, generally in the first round you won’t see them draft by position you’ll see them draft by talent but again if you’re team values defense over offense or something you’ll think who the best player available is different than a team who values speed over size or something like that and 2. people just have different opinions and different knowledge, some players may have been sick during their draft year and only some teams know that and so some teams may draft them a little higher than other teams would have because they’re giving them a break for being sick or just scouts saw someting different. The NHL doesn’t send one guy around to look at all the draft picks and make reports, each team has multiple scouts that go all over the world and report back to their on individual NHL team. so you’re going to get lists that are wildly different.

So some draftees will know where they go. Usually the first overall pick will know he’s going first overall. Not because he knows he’s the best and he knows who’s picking first (in Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews’ case this was probably true but like i said players like them are very rare even in drafts), but because the team with the first overall pick will tell them, during interviews probably. But after that it’s very up in the air. Players are usually projected to go by number bracket as opposed to a specific one. For instance Jaret Anderson-Dolan was projected to go between 20th and 40th. That’s a huge span to go in and he ended up going in the 30′s. But he could have gone int he second round. a Player like Mitch Marner was projected to go in the top 10 and he ended up going 4th which is very different from 10th. So most of these players have an idea but it’s really difficult to get a consensus on exact numbers for every single player. It’s really hard, most years, to get a consensus on the first overall player.

So to summarize, yes teams pick the best players in order however they all have different opinions so the players generally won’t know if they’re out of the top 2.

Okay this is, kind of complicated because it’s not an NHL rule, it’s an NCAA rule. This doesn’t apply to CIS which is the Canadian version of the NCAA, I know my school which is part of the CIS has a few players that go back and forth between Juniors. So you can technically play college and junior level hockey but CIS players don’t usually make the NHL. 

This rule, that you can’t play in both the CHL and the NCAA is a one way rule, meaning an NCAA player can leave to play in the CHL but a CHL player cannot leave to play in the NCAA. This is because of how the leagues function monetarily. the NCAA is very strict about a players eligibility based on what they are compensated. an NCAA team will compensate things like travel and lodging during road games and can compensate you with something like scholarships but that’s it. the CHL is a lot more giving. They’ll get you housing, get you lodging, get you food, etc. and i believe there is some sort of payment system but i’m not sure how that works necessarily because lower level mens hockey isn’t necessarily my area of expertise, but i do believe either they, their billet family, or both get some sort of extra compensation. Because of all o that the NCAA will not allow you to play for a Juniors team and then come to them.

The NCAA wants amateur athletes so they say if you play for a pro team you cannot play in the NCAA. they consider the CHL to be pro but they also consider other leagues like the ECHL, the AHL, and the NHL to be pro (i’m sure european leagues fall under this as well). But according to this article which sites the NCAA’s recruitment FAQ page, you are allowed to go to CHL or NHL training camps but you can only receive financial compensation for 48 hours. that means if a camp is 5 days long you are responsible for paying for your lodging, your food and anything else for 3 of those days, or else you lose your eligibility. You also are not allowed to accept any sort of gift from another pro team. that includes something like a baseball hat or whatever.

Now whether or not I think this is all bullshit or not is pretty complicated. Theres a lot of gross, suspicious stuff the NCAA tries to pull, with the way they exploit their players and profit off of them. However, these players are getting paid in the form of an education which is very valuable, at places like BC and BU which are two of the biggest hockey schools in the world, if you get a full scholarship that can be around 70,000 dollars a year, that’s a sizeable AHL contract. So i get where they’re coming from with this idea of getting amateur athletes and keep them amateurs and integrity. I just think they go overboard. What’s a meal bought by another team and how does that affect your integrity as an amateur athlete? what’s a 20 dollar hat? I assume these rules are so strict because they don’t want people to get around them but i don’t know how legitimately valid this all is or how much of it is tradition. Because one on hand it could signal well, this player is being bought, giving him more resources so he has an unfair advantage OR it could go the other way which is, this kid can’t afford to go to NHL camp, because he cant pay for his own food or else he loses eligibility. So i think that question is more complicated. 

High Rollers

The 2025 edition of the PWHL Entry Draft was an eventful night not just because we had two new teams make their first selections but there was a lot of trades on the floor that made Cassie look like a pantomine villain