Is importance of draft picks and prospects in general overrated?

[Mike C]

I'm not sure. I'm gonna call Lou Lamoriello and ride with his thoughts

Now if I could only find him....

 

[PainForShane]

For anyone who understands poker at a non-trivial level (or is interested in learning more about it), the best comparable to the Q in this thread is a concept called pot odds. It's not the most intuitive idea but if you're interested, worth looking it up / getting smart about it. Imo this idea of pot odds is fairly relevant to life in general, it can be directly applied to many if not most decisions.

***

The idea is that the chance of your hand hitting is low, but if it actually hits, the potential impact is high (or not high, depending on the size of the pot). How do you value the odds of actually staying in the hand (or in life, choosing a particular path)? The size of the potential pot absolutely should be considered and needs to valued appropriately.

To relate this to hockey, an example close to my heart is that I'm a Zona fan. A few years ago we traded NJ a package centered around a first round pick for a Taylor Hall rental, he'd won a Hart a few years earlier and was still a very productive player who could help us make the playoffs for the first time in forever. This is when we had a team based around team defense and Darcy Kuemper was playing like a Vezina nominee, the first ended up being #18 overall in a not very good draft year, who cares. Except that pick turned into Dawson Mercer.

In hindsight, that trade was extremely dumb. It set us back multiple years, for the next 10-15 years I'll see Dawson Mercer and every single time I think of him I'll remember how dumb our mgmt was and how they didn't understand what I think most would consider to be basic probability.

***

Anyway pot odds clearly said we shouldn't have made that trade. We did, and we were burned. And that trade significantly set our franchise back for the entire duration of Dawson Mercer's career.

***

To answer the original Q? Depends on the franchise and where they are in their SC contention cycle, also what the potential return was for whatever trades were on the table. And also how much a franchise actually understands what some ppl (most?) consider basic probability

 

[WarriorofTime]

Maybe, but I also referred to non-rental trades as well. Do you remember people crying when Tampa traded a bunch of magic beans for the young, cost-controlled and already productive player in Hagel? I ‘member.

Would I rather have Oliver Moore plus whatever Tampa Bay's 1st round pick in 2024 ends up being or Brandon Hagel at 8 years/$6.5 million from ages 26-34?

I'd rather have Oliver Moore and Tampa Bay's 1st round pick in 2024 for the Blackhawks sake that's for sure.

"Magic beans"

Yeah, ok.

 

[FrankSidebottom]

Would I rather have Oliver Moore plus whatever Tampa Bay's 1st round pick in 2024 ends up being or Brandon Hagel at 8 years/$6.5 million from ages 26-34?

I'd rather have Oliver Moore and Tampa Bay's 1st round pick in 2024 for the Blackhawks sake that's for sure.

"Magic beans"

Yeah, ok.

Yeah, that’s what I mean. Taking a guy who in 3-4 years maybe will be as good as the real player over the player himself. But probably won’t be, sorry.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Yeah, that’s what I mean. Taking a guy who in 3-4 years maybe will be as good as the real player over the player himself. But probably won’t be, sorry.

Not sure if you understand rebuild and salary cap structuring enough to see the bigger picture here. They can sign a different Brandon Hagel caliber player in 3-4 years when they are actually in a potential window for that amount of cap space. If Oliver Moore and/or 2024 NHL Draft Pick become a Brandon Hagel caliber player then they got a Brandon Hagel caliber player at a much cheaper contract with options to improve the team elsewhere in that medium-term.

Keeping Brandon Hagel just makes it harder to tank for a superstar caliber talent and eats up a cap spot for that 8-year duration. I understand the trade/extend from Tampa's perspective, but from the Hawks perspective, the idea that it's a "magic bean" instead of a "sure thing" in Hagel is seriously misguided.

 

[ijuka]

Yeah, that’s what I mean. Taking a guy who in 3-4 years maybe will be as good as the real player over the player himself. But probably won’t be, sorry.

Except Raddysh himself is a 40 point player, and Hagel 64. So you'd just need them to amount to like a 25 point player. Then consider cost control.

For anyone who understands poker at a non-trivial level (or is interested in learning more about it), the best comparable to the Q in this thread is a concept called pot odds.

Yes, it's like never calling with a drawing hand, simply because you're not the favorite to make a strong hand.

 

[shakes the clown]

my team just got Bedard so that's a big no from me dawg.

 

[FrankSidebottom]

Not sure if you understand rebuild and salary cap structuring enough to see the bigger picture here. They can sign a different Brandon Hagel caliber player in 3-4 years when they are actually in a potential window for that amount of cap space. If Oliver Moore and/or 2024 NHL Draft Pick become a Brandon Hagel caliber player then they got a Brandon Hagel caliber player at a much cheaper contract with options to improve the team elsewhere in that medium-term.

Keeping Brandon Hagel just makes it harder to tank for a superstar caliber talent and eats up a cap spot for that 8-year duration. I understand the trade/extend from Tampa's perspective, but from the Hawks perspective, the idea that it's a "magic bean" instead of a "sure thing" in Hagel is seriously misguided.

I was talking only about contending teams. I brought Hagel only from Tampa‘s perspective, not Chicago‘s.

 

[FrankSidebottom]

Except Raddysh himself is a 40 point player, and Hagel 64. So you'd just need them to amount to like a 25 point player. Then consider cost control.


Yes, it's like never calling with a drawing hand, simply because you're not the favorite to make a strong hand.

Raddysh is not a 40 point player under normal circumstances (without 1PP and top 6) and the difference is far from just 25 points. It may sound mean, but he’s a one-dimensional nobody in comparison to Hagel.

 

[Muffin]

Yes.

Many ways to build a team.

Look no further than Vegas or Florida.

You need to draft good players to trade them for other good players. Florida doesn't get Tkachuk without Huberdeau

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

I wouldn't trade any more than a third round pick for a rental. I think it's a very bad value investment, and good teams that want their windows to be anything other than very short shouldn't do so. Maybe you can do so the last year or two of a window, if the situation is a terrific fit, but otherwise it shouldn't happen. The rental market has become insane, and shouldn't be what it is. Hockey's rental market way exceeds the rental markets in other sports, and it shouldn't be that way.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Raddysh is not a 40 point player under normal circumstances (without 1PP and top 6) and the difference is far from just 25 points. It may sound mean, but he’s a one-dimensional nobody in comparison to Hagel.

Raddysh is irrelevant. He's a stop gap player, maybe gets another Blackhawk contract if he's cheap, but extremely unlikely to get two more contracts. Best case scenario is probably a leap and getting traded at the deadline to someone that thinks they can use him for a postseason run. Two 1st round picks are not irrelevant for the Hawks.

 

[SnuggaRUDE]

Draft picks themselves might be a little overrated, but draft picks + production from an ELC contract I think is close to accurate.

 

[Panthaz89]

I wouldn't trade any more than a third round pick for a rental. I think it's a very bad value investment, and good teams that want their windows to be anything other than very short shouldn't do so. Maybe you can do so the last year or two of a window, if the situation is a terrific fit, but otherwise it shouldn't happen. The rental market has become insane, and shouldn't be what it is. Hockey's rental market way exceeds the rental markets in other sports, and it shouldn't be that way.

It really depends on who it is....if its a star player but a depth level guy for a decent pick for just a year is crazy unless he's massively improving a weakness of a team but chances are if you had that big of a hole in the team that they aren't going to win the cup anyway.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

It really depends on who it is....if its a star player but a depth level guy for a decent pick for just a year is crazy unless he's massively improving a weakness of a team but chances are if you had that big of a hole in the team that they aren't going to win the cup anyway.

I wouldn't do it for a star either, unless you are at the end of your Cup window.

One 85 point player doesn't increase your odds to win the Cup that much. You get that player for what could be 4 games in the playoffs, and you spent a first round pick that contending teams will need in the upcoming years as the cost.

And even worse, that guy could get injured. The Bruins traded the Rangers a first round pick and Ryan Lindgren for what ended up being 23 games of Rick Nash. He got injured before the playoffs. That's the type of thing that can happen. Unless you just don't care about the value of the trade, like at the very end of the window, there is no way you can take on that value assessment of a few months (that could turn into that Nash scenario) for a first round pick.

 

[ello]

I mean pretty obvious answer is that it depends, but I think a better way to explain it would be that individually each pick that ain’t a high first is probably expendable to trade for a better playoff roster but as the trades stack up you’re drastically decreasing the quality of your prospect pool

Quick math to demonstrate:

Let’s say that the number of good, difference making players (top 6F or top 4D) picked from picks 21-32 are around 1-2 per draft. I’m too lazy to compile the numbers but it’s probably around that so roughly 15% per low first round pick. Not high at all and probably worth trading for a good rental.

However, even after just 5 years of drafting in the low first the odds jump really high to 56%
1 - (0.85^5) = 0.56
So the odds of finding at least one really good player gets much higher and the low first picks you throw away like candy will come back to bite u.

If you’re getting good, long term value back like Hagel in trades then ur probably good but overall yeah can’t be trading away too many picks

 

[majormajor]

I say yes, significantly.

You can have the best prospect pool in the league and never get a winning season out of it.

Or you can win a cup without developing more than four or five prospects, if they're great ones (Colorado has the worst depth drafting record from 2010 onward).

Would I rather have Oliver Moore plus whatever Tampa Bay's 1st round pick in 2024 ends up being or Brandon Hagel at 8 years/$6.5 million from ages 26-34?

I'd rather have Oliver Moore and Tampa Bay's 1st round pick in 2024 for the Blackhawks sake that's for sure.

"Magic beans"

Yeah, ok.

If your team is awful you don't have much choice in the matter. There's no win now option so you trade for tomorrow. But for the league as a whole I'd say picks/prospects are overvalued. Not necessarily overvalued relative to rentals but certainly overvalued relative to having prime age players.

 

[MrOT]

Somewhere between 2 and 3. The tighter the salary cap the more important are draft picks.

 

[WarriorofTime]

If your team is awful you don't have much choice in the matter. There's no win now option so you trade for tomorrow. But for the league as a whole I'd say picks/prospects are overvalued. Not necessarily overvalued relative to rentals but certainly overvalued relative to having prime age players.

Ultimately though that is my point. It all highly depends on your specific positioning. I will say though that having a bottom 5 prospect pool is *NEVER* good. Having years of traded away draft capital is *NEVER* good because all of your flexibility is now gone and you cannot trade away picks for current talent going forward. The teams near the middle really do need a strong prospect pool so they shouldn't be punting away picks and ensuring a bad prospect pool just to lose anyways.

 

[CascadiaPuck]

Yes, significantly. But so are veteran free agents that get massively overpaid every year.

 

[Peat]

With rentals, if a team isn’t very good at the time then fans might be right to complain.

Fans are often also think longterm, while a GM might not be, because only one side is in danger of getting fired from a very lucrative job.

It depends on the team, the assets and the rental.

But fans of true contenders are usually fine with losing assets to win now, so you’re taking a very brave stand on conventional accepted wisdom here.

It’s not news that prospects might not make it.

And fans typically are more invested in their team’s prospects, you cracked the code there too. So what?

I am enthusiastic about my team spending assets to win now.

I think rentals are, by and large, an awful idea.

Not only are they overpriced, but they're at low odds to have a big impact themselves. They have a very short period to adjust to their new team. The big shot rentals have to build a lot of chemistry very quickly while dealing with intense pressure. The lesser ones find it easier to slot in, but are wasted if the top of the roster doesn't take off.

Sometimes teams have to do it to fill a hole, but I think a good general rule is to only spend on guys with term. Sometimes that rule is wrong because a team needs an important player and can only afford it as a rental or have a temporary hole but, generally,

Also generally nothing is worse for a franchise than a GM fearing for his job.

 

[I am Bettman]

I'm not sure. I'm gonna call Lou Lamoriello and ride with his thoughts

Now if I could only find him....

Found him

 

[ManofSteel55]

On HF it is. But you know...Hockey's Future. Ha ha.

 

[Lou Bloom]

All those established players were at one time picks and prospects. Now, that doesn't mean you should just horde all your assets and never make a trade but any good organization interested in building a long term contender should at least be mindful of having a constant influx of young talent, especially when taking into account the salary cap and how important having productive players on ELCs are.

 

[TBF1972]

All those established players were at one time picks and prospects. Now, that doesn't mean you should just horde all your assets and never make a trade but any good organization interested in building a long term contender should at least be mindful of having a constant influx of young talent, especially when taking into account the salary cap and how important having productive players on ELCs are.

the lower you pick. the less likely they make an impact on their elc