Calgary Flames receive credit for their draft-day success over the years
For all of the criticism surrounding the Calgary Flames and their drafting over the years, they deserve extreme accolades for the work from 2007 through 2018.
According to the criteria created by Harman Dayal and Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic, the Flames rated second in the league for success over those dozen drafts, which takes into account value of their selections — for example the Edmonton Oilers had more top-10 picks, including four first-overall selections, than any other club.
Top honours went to the Dallas Stars, who rocketed up the charts for their home-run 2017 haul in which they netted cornerstone defenseman Miro Heiskanen third overall, cornerstone goaltender Jake Oettinger 26th and cornerstone forward Jason Robertson 39th.
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The Flames only had 74 picks in those years, second fewest (the Pittsburgh Penguins had only 70), but scored high with several picks outside the first round, including Johnny Gaudreau, Adam Fox, Rasmus Andersson, T.J. Brodie, Andrew Mangipane, Dillon Dube, Adam Ruzicka, Oliver Kylington and Brett Kulak.
Time may become even kinder to the club with 2018 fourth-rounder Martin Pospisil and 2017 first-rounder Juuso Valimaki both still on an upward trajectory.
Curiously, the Flames essentially had just as many misses as hits with their first-round selections. On the plus side of the ledger, you have Mikael Backlund, Sean Monahan, Sam Bennett and Matthew Tkachuk as very good selections. On the negative, Greg Nemisz (2008) and Tim Erixon (2009) barely cracked the NHL, while Sven Baertschi (2011) and Mark Jankowski (2012) never reached expectations despite having around 300 NHL games to the name.
