Winners and Losers of the 2007 NHL Draft?

Ask Me in Five--No, Ten--Years

I have always loved the NHL draft. I love to watch the smiles, hugs, and handshakes as teenagers, if only momentarily, realize a lifelong dream. In particular, the first round of the NHL draft is typically great theater. In creative writing terms, there are several dramatic questions to be answered. "Who will go first overall?" "Will there be trades?" "Where will this often injured/fast-rising/falling prospect go?"

Yet the real dramatic question of the NHL draft--"Which of these teenagers will turn into legitimate NHL stars/supporting players/role players?"--is one that cannot, honestly, be accurately assessed until several years after that draft. Which is one of the reasons I absolutely refuse to participate in the whole punditry/blogging/etc. game of assessing the "winners and losers" of a particular entry draft. Because, generally speaking, unless you're drafting a Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, or other once-in-a-generation talent or minimally a franchise talent, you cannot accurately say that you have "won" or "lost" anything. Not yet. Not now.

Now, of course, others would beg to dispute this point with me. For example, Pierre McGuire will insist that the Rangers got a steal at the seventeenth overall pick. Well, maybe, the kid who idolized Jagr is going to end up being a kid who can ultimately replace Jags as the centerpiece of the Rangers. (Though, as an aside, I'd beg Jags not to hang up his skates too soon; I still enjoy watching him play.) Or maybe that kid's not going to be able to replace Jagr but will serve as a wonderful supporting player. Perhaps the kid might have difficulty adjusting to the culture of North America or to the American ice rinks for a few years and not begin to hit his professional stride until he's in his mid-twenties. And, while of course no one wishes this for any player, there's a possibility that something horrible happens when that kid, or any of the kids drafted this year, plays next season, and some type of injury prevents them from becoming a NHL player.

My point in the above paragraph, which could just as easily be applied to the Penguins' pick of Angelo Esposito, is that no one knows. Not really. Not yet. In the cases of Mario, Crosby, and a few others, okay, everyone knows. In other cases, however, well, it takes time. While often it only takes five years to determine that the college kid you took a chance on in a later round is never going to play in the NHL, when it comes to certain other players, I'd rather wait ten years, not five, to evaluate a draft. And as a fan and not a professional scout or general manager, I have this luxury.

Let's examine the case of 2 former Penguins, both Europeans, both the captains of their respective teams.

Case 1: Jaromir Jagr: He was drafted fifth overall in 1990.

Five Years After His Draft Year: He's won his first league scoring title in the lockout-shortened season by scoring more goals than Eric Lindros. We know he's good, but he hasn't quite yet ascended to the level of best hockey player on the planet.

Ten Years After His Draft Year: He's won multiple league scoring championships as well as captured the Pearson and the Hart. He's become the best hockey player in the world, and Craig Patrick, along with Pens' fans, are grateful that four other teams passed on the "risk" that was an eighteen-year-old Jaromir Jagr in the 1990 entry draft.


Case 2: Markus Naslund: He was drafted sixteenth overall in 1991.

Five Years After His Draft Year: Despite obvious talent, Naslund has shown only flashes of scoring ability in the NHL. On March 20, 1996, Craig Patrick trades Naslund to Vancouver for another underachieving former first-round draft pick.

Ten Years After His Draft Year: Maturity and a new setting eventually help Naslund to become the player he was drafted to become. He is the captain of his team and a NHL All-Star.


Examining the cases of Jagr and Naslund--both of whom, whether Pens' fans like it or not, have succeeded as NHL stars at various points in their respective careers--reveals that evaluating a player only five years after his draft year makes for an incomplete evaluation. In the case of Naslund, who fits the moniker "late bloomer" too perfectly, it was twelve years after his draft year when he was voted the NHL's best player by a jury of his peers and won the Pearson Trophy. If you'd judged Jagr after five years, you would have said, "Great pick." If you had judged Naslund after five years, you would have been attempted, as many Pittsburgh hockey fans did at the time, to say, "Bust." But you wouldn't have known just how "great" Jaromir Jagr would become, and you surely never would have anticipated that a player who also initially struggled in Vancouver would become a NHL captain and 1st Team NHL All Star. Which just goes to show you that if it's a stretch to evaluate a draft five years after the fact and that you can still have things to learn ten years after the draft--how utterly silly it is to compose a list of "winners and losers" the day after the draft ends. Let's wait until these children play a NHL game or two, all right, before we start labeling teams as "winners" or "losers," okay?

Of course, NHL general managers and scouting staffs do not have the luxury that I have. In order to evaluate their own draft performance, general managers and scouting teams have to assess their team's draft performance year after year after year. They don't get to say, 10 years later, Oh, we learned from that correct projection and that incorrect projection. They have to evaluate and evaluate and evaluate, and for them, it's a much shorter cycle.

All that being said, of course, unless a team is clearing the last hurdles it needs to capture a Cup, it's silly to hemorrhage assets (e.g. draft picks). In the days that immediately follow a draft, shortsighted quick fixes where draft picks are sacrificed and that ultimately don't move a team into the category of legitimate Cup contender, well, okay, those teams can be called "draft day losers." Minimally, they lost out on adding organizational depth, but perhaps they lost out on a future star. So I'll maintain those short-sighted quick fixes that fail to catapult a team to Cup contender, honestly, are a waste that can result in the short-term label of draft day losers and perhaps longer term label of still losers.

But since I'm not a general manager or a scout, let's be honest and let's be real. The time to ask me about who won and who lost in this draft is going to be, minimally, in 5 years, save for the exceptional, precocious cases of a player or two. And better still, ask me in 10 years.

Except you won't have to ask me. Or anyone else. Because everyone will know. Because we'll know which prospects turned into players.

That's what makes me tune into the NHL draft every summer (aside from being in desperate need of a hockey fix while suffering through another interminable season of losing Pirates baseball). It's fun to remember the kids as prospects and watch those NHL prospects morph into NHL players. It's more fun still because we don't know what will be yet, and somehow, the unknown is always a bit more exciting than what we know.