What Is the Value of an NHL Draft Pick In a Trade? An Online Tool Can Help Figure It Out
NHL teams have methods to assign value to draft picks in trades, but one former club's director of analytics brought a "behind-the-scenes view" to the public with an online tool.
Draft picks are one of the NHL’s most valuable assets.
At their best, they give teams franchise-altering players. And the more picks there are, the more chances a team has to build their prospect pool or find a gem.
“You’re giving yourself more at-bats,” one NHL front office member told The Hockey News. “If you give yourself more at-bats, you have a greater likelihood of hitting one out of the park.”
But draft picks can also be effective trade pieces. Even for the most hardcore hockey fans, though, the market value of draft picks is hard to grasp on a basic level.
That was the case on May 24 when the Chicago Blackhawks traded the 20th, 54th, and 61st picks to the New York Islanders for the 18th and 50th selections. It was the case again on June 25 when the Detroit Red Wings traded a second-round pick with defenseman Jake Walman for future considerations.
That said, an online draft pick calculator can help.
Developed by former Arizona Coyotes director of analytics Matt Perri and brought to life by PuckPedia founder Hart Levine, the Perri Draft Pick Value Calculator weighs the value of each draft pick on a scale of one to 100, based entirely on past draft pick swaps.
“Every team has some version of a draft pick value tool or multiple versions of it,” Perri told The Hockey News. “But the general public isn’t aware of how teams are using these evaluation systems. The idea was to kind of show a behind-of-scenes view of things, from an analytical perspective.”
According to Perri’s model, the Hawks overpaid by 5.19 points (equivalent to a mid-second-round pick or a few mid-round picks, by his model's standards) to move up two spots.
The model doesn’t value the likelihood of the player selected with a given pick becoming an NHL player. Rather, it articulates the market value of picks based on historical precedent.
“The one thing that was important for me to show is that in the NHL, teams have methods and techniques that are standardized for assigning value,” Perri said. “But the general public isn’t aware of how teams are using these evaluation systems. The idea was to kind of show a behind-of-scenes view of things from an analytical perspective.”
The Perri Draft Pick Value Calculator fuels a corresponding tool — the Perri Salary Cap Relief Calculator — which shows what degree of draft capital is needed for a team to offload liability contracts or get a third-party broker to retain a sliver of a cap hit at the deadline.
“All those third-party retention trades at the trade deadline were almost identical to what the relief calculator said,” Levine said.
Like the value calculator, the relief calculator relies heavily on historical precedence, although Perri also incorporated basic statistics — like time-on-ice and points per game — to gauge the player's value. You can select a player contract and fiddle around with how much will be retained and for how long, and the calculator will tell you what level of draft pick is typically required to be able to offset that sum of money.
For example, the relief calculator says the Calgary Flames would have to sacrifice the draft pick compensation equivalent of the first-overall pick to offload the entirety of Jonathan Huberdeau's contract. That sort of trade would never, ever happen — it's just a way of articulating value and how little each team is getting from each of those deals as of right now.
"The salary cap relief model uses historical trades that are purely cap relief trades," Levine said. "That’s one of the big caveats.
"If you put a players full cap hit in there, you’re assuming they have zero value and is not an NHL player anymore. Say, for instance, you think that a player who has a $10-million cap hit for one more year, is worth half of that. The idea is that we can tell you what $5 million in cap relief is worth in draft picks."
The tools aren't for every hockey observer, but the hardcore ones will surely be putting it to work ahead of the NHL draft and free agency.
“It’s for the fans that want to know 'OK, how are teams deriving their value?' " Perri said.
Get the latest news and trending stories right to your inbox by subscribing to The Hockey News newsletter here.