How many players are on a team's final NHL draft list? How much intel do teams have on other picks? Rachel Doerrie answers those questions and more.
It’s a big week in the NHL with the awards, draft and free agency happening in quick succession. It is my favorite week of the year.
With that in mind, I put the call out for mailbag questions on the NHL draft. I’ve been a part of two organizations during draft preparation, meetings and execution. Here is some insight into how things work in the lead up to draft day.
How many players are on a team's final draft list? Obviously, they aren't ranking 300 guys and walking into the draft with a list of 300 when they feel some people won't make it. How many are on a "do not draft" list?
This is a great place to start.
Each team does their “list” differently. Some teams make a list with 150 players ranked. That usually gets them to the end of the draft. However, it is so discombobulated by the time the fifth round hits that the ranking becomes, “let’s pick someone from these group of five players” which makes having the list, nearly useless.
In speaking to a lot of scouts, most teams have the top three rounds ranked, which usually gets them to about the fifth round because different teams have players ranked all over the place.
From there, they make player type lists or regional lists. For the latter, the regional scouts will identify and rank the top five to 10 players remaining from their region, depending on how strong it is. For the player type lists, teams will classify players based on skill, speed, compete, low-ceiling, high-risk and more. There are so many ways to do player type lists.
As for the “do not draft” list, that varies by team and usually comes from the GM.
Players can be “DND’d” for several reasons. Some are reasonable, some less so.
Teams have put kids on this list for their height, which is comedic when you take a quick look at the 5-foot-8 Lane Hutson. Others have Russian players on this list for fear they may not come over and more recently, geopolitical reasons. Teams have put a player on this list because they didn’t see him enough to feel comfortable taking him, which is more of an indictment on the scouting staff than of the player.
The most common reason players end up on the DND list is character concerns. Whether it is intel from coaches, trainers, or teachers, poor scores on various tests teams will ask players to fill out, or bad body language during games, these are the quickest ways to end up on the list.
The stricter the team culture and rules are, the longer the list will be.
How much intel do teams have on other teams’ picks?
More than you would think.
Most teams have a pretty good idea of how the top 10 is going to shake out, which teams are targeting which players and so on. This is because scouts of various teams spend a lot of time on the road together throughout the season. They go out for beers and talk shop, share intel and gossip. If you listen carefully, you have a pretty good idea of who the scouts of different teams like and don’t like. There are also the draft insiders who gather intel from their contacts and get a good sense of who could go where.
A good example this year is that it is no secret Washington likes Michkov. If he slides beyond fourth, you could see a team trade up to get him, knowing that they need to get ahead of Washington’s eighth pick to have a shot. Teams know what other teams think of most guys going in based on industry gossip.
How involved do owners get in making draft picks, particularly first rounders?
Too involved. Simply put, if your owner is giving any opinion on an 18-year-old who they learned the name of three days prior, they are too involved. That’s possibly how you end up with Nail Yakupov when the scouts want Ryan Murray.
If the GM can keep the owner at bay and earn their trust to make the right selection, there is no need for any input. The issues arise when the owner is using the GM to make decisions.
Remember the dartboard article earlier this year? This is an excellent case of that. GMs will be faulted for first-round failure, when the likelihood is that most teams who aren’t successful in the first round, are that way because of orders from their owner. There are teams where the owner is involved in draft meetings, and other teams where the owner doesn’t even attend the draft. If you’re a scouting staff, you never want to see the owner.
If a team goes into the draft with limited selections (three or less), would they be more likely to address a positional need rather than “best player available?”
That’s hard to say. What I can say is if you have limited selections, you should be trying to get the most out of those selections.
You need to draft the best player available because you don’t have that many chances to hit. There is already risk in having so few picks – furthering the risk to significantly up the reward may be worthwhile.
However, if this is the case and one of the three picks is a first rounder, the team is more likely to take a “sure bet” player over the highly skilled one.
Drafting for positional need is silly because you don’t know what you will need in three to five years when most of the late-round selections will have a chance to jump into the NHL. The NHL landscape changes year to year. Making a positional based selection in the sixth round based on your current team would be foolish. Teams do it more often than you think, and I have yet to see it pan out in a meaningful way.
If a team likes a player, how many interviews are needed to decide on character?
Teams aren’t so much deciding on character as they are trying to determine if the player is who they believe him to be.
Over the course of the season, the regional scouts will gather intel from coaches, trainers and billets. They will relay the information to the head scout who will speak to others around the game, as well.
Teams send out various questionnaires for players to fill out. That gives the team an opportunity to evaluate them and get a character assessment before interviewing them.
Regional scouts will interview players throughout the season, and teams submit a list to the NHL of which players they want to interview at the combine. That is more structured with the team’s head scout or a psychological expert conducting the interview while the team brass observes.
Once teams have keyed in on players, they can invite them to their city prior to draft week for a more thorough process. You can’t do off-ice testing, but you can learn a lot by spending the day with someone on a golf course.
Lastly, teams will ask three to four players to go to dinner during draft week. Those are usually the players they are most interested in. Word gets around, and that is how teams deduce which players each team likes. At the draft week dinners, the player, maybe his family, the GM, the head scout and the regional scout will attend.