Edmonton Oilers: Should Peter Chiarelli Take Notes From The Coyotes?

Edmonton Oilers: Sunday night saw Coyotes General Manager John Chayka cut the rope with two struggling high profile prospects in exchange for a solidified NHL regular coming off a 20 goal, 50 point season. Many are shocked to see a team give up on a 3rd overall pick so quickly. But is Chayka just ahead of the curve when it comes to asset management?

Edmonton Oilers: Gunna start this off with a pretty staggering list tweeted out by Cam Lewis of players that have outscored Dylan Strome early on in the center’s career:

Now look, its only been two-and-a-half years, so it’s still way too early to cross off Strome from having the ability to become the player everyone expected he would be for the Arizona Coyotes. And in my opinion, the 2015 draft is going to go down as producing the most quality NHL players since the 2003 draft that people are still drooling over 16 years later.

However, with that said, the Coyotes have watched this player more than anyone else, and know probably more than anyone, that he wasn’t going to turn into the contributor down the middle for their club that they were hoping to get on draft day.

At just over two years in, this is when many teams like to throw out the frequent claims that they need to be patient, or that these players take time. Instead, John Chayka decided to go against this traditional method of dealing with struggling high-profile draft picks and got a serviceable top 6 forward for his assets rather than waiting until their value potentially hit rock bottom.

Strome and Brendan Perlini may very well turn out to have solid NHL careers. I especially like Strome’s chances if he’s able to put something together playing next to Patrick Kane and former Eerie Otter team-mate Alex Debrincat. But what if they don’t…

Draft Busts

Let’s see if you remember hearing any of these highly touted top 10 picks on draft day from

2009 to 2016 that have so far failed to live up to their hype:

2010: Brett Connolly (TB), Alex Burmistrov (ATL), Dylan McIlrath (NYR),

2011: Ryan Strome (NYI)

2012: Nail Yakupov (EDM) Ryan Murray (CBJ), Griffin Reinhart (NYI), Derrick Pouliot (PIT),  Slater Koekkek (TB)

2013: No real considerable busts in the top 10, but 9 in the next 20 picks. Curtis Lazar by Ottawa stands out. Calgary had three first round picks in this draft, striking out on two of them.

2014: Michael Dal Colle (NYI), *Jake Virtanen (VAN), *Haydn Fleury (CAR)

2015: *Dylan Strome (ARI)

2016: *Jesse Puljujarvi (EDM), *Olli Juolevi (VAN)

* players who still have a chance of reaching their draft day potential, all-be-it a less likely one.

Courtesy of http://www.hockey-reference.com

Almost every draft year has them. This is only a small sample size of players who were never able to fulfill what franchises expect to be getting in a player they put the faith of selecting with their top draft choice. Now some of these players are still going to put together solid NHL careers. Some still even have a chance of living up to these expectations.

However, almost all of these players were at one point high profile prospects that would carry significant value in a trade the first 2-3 years after they were drafted. And some were held onto until their value diminished and are now either playing in a support role, are out of the league, or were traded for a bag of pucks.

Using data provided from Scott Cullens Statistically Speaking article he wrote in June 2017, I calculated that an average of only 53.86 percent of top 10 picks have turned into top 6 forwards or top 4 D between 1990-2013 per draft year. With an average of just 61.0 percent of all first round picks in the same time frame managing to play over 100 games in the big leagues.

Getting full value for your assets

If most of these high pedigree players are still holding significant trade value for the first few years after they are drafted, why aren’t more teams assessing the player’s likelihood of contributing to their team?

And focusing on getting full value for their asset before it’s too late? Many franchises are electing to hold onto these prospects. Whether it be because they are afraid of admitting the failure of drafting among scouting personnel, or in fear that the player will end up finding his way and did just need some more time.

But in reality, the odds aren’t all that great. I’d be even more curious to find out the percentage of top draft picks that end up fulfilling expectations after not cracking an NHL roster in the first two years after their draft year.

So why not allocate more time to assessing the probability of your prospect being able to transfer his dominance from juniors or other leagues to the NHL? And making that assessment within the time frame that these high pedigree picks could still be used as a valuable bargaining chip rather than watching their worth deteriorate with every waiting season.

It’s not something you see teams do often, but John Chayka has once again gone off untraditional tactics to get the full value of his assets. Which brings us to an essential part of the article…