What is a draft pick worth?

by JohnThe Revelator on Feb 9, 2010 9:37 PM PST

I don’t see why everyone is freaking out about giving up draft picks. Marleau is 30, Heatley is 29, Joe is 30, Nabby is 34, Boyle is 33. The time is now. The window is open. It may not be open past this summer if Patty and/or Nabby leave. Anything that helps us now, this year, is worth any and all of our draft picks. Detroit hasn’t stayed at the top of the league because they have had great first round picks. In fact, they have had the fewest first round picks, only 8 in the last 15 years.

When you are picking in the twentieth (or higher) position in the first round as the Sharks will likely be doing this year, you aren’t going to get an Ovechkin or a Crosby. You are doing well if he becomes an every day player. A second round pick has even longer odds.

When the window closes, the team is going into a slow decline like Dallas. And, most likely back into the wilderness, where we don’t make the playoffs. Maybe we even finish at the bottom five of the standings. Then your first round pick is worth keeping.

Here are the Sharks 1st round picks since 2005

Year # Player Comments

2005 8 Devin Setoguchi 65 points last year

This year, limited by injuries, on pace for 36

2006 16 Ty Wishart (MTL) Part of Dan Boyle trade (picked by Sharks).

Still in AHL

2007 9 Logan Couture Showing promise. AHL All-Star

2007 27 Nick Petrecki Struggling in AHL

The following first round picks passed thru the Sharks hands and these guys were

ultimately picked by other teams. This implies the Sharks would have picked the

same guy, probably not a great assumption, but it gives you a place to start. However, if you do look at who was available when these guys were picked, nobody jumps out at you.

2007 13 STL Lars Eller Part of trading up for Logan Couture.

Showing promise. AHL All-Star

Rated below Couture

2007 22 MTL Max Pacioretty Part of Craig Rivet trade.

Played 34 NHL games last year,

Played 52 NHL games this year

Back in AHL

2007 26 STL David Perron Part of Bill Guerin trade.

In 2nd NHL season. Shows promise.

Had 50 pts (15G-35A) last year.

On pace for 43 points this year.

2008 26 BUF Tyler Ennis Part of Brian Campbell trade.

Played 1 game this year.

Now back in AHL

2009 26 ANA Kyle Palmieri Part of Dan Boyle trade.

On US World Junior pre-tournament team roster

Now playing with Notre Dame in CCHA

Any draft pick this year may help us in 3-4 years, not now.

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Comments

I agree. I’ve seen some people freaking out about losing picks. I think it’s really important to get good worth from any picks we trade away, but it shouldn’t be that big of a deal to lose our picks. We still have some quality prospects in the AHL and our current NHL roster is full of guys who are all fairly young and can keep playing and improving for years to come (cept Blake of course).

We’re getting a steal from a lot of our players’ contracts right now and we need to take advantage of that because next season we probably won’t be able to keep ALL of our star players, at least not without giving up some people. This season we can put together the best possible team that we’ll have in San Jose for some years to come imo.

Next season you have to expect that cap hits would rise for Patty and Nabby since they would get huge offers if they hit the free trade market. So we would either have to lose one of them or lose some people somewhere else on the roster.

The time definitely is now.

by Khaaz on Feb 10, 2010 2:17 AM PST reply actions

I'm not sure how your list shows how picks are valueless

If you can aquire a long term asset for a pick, I’m fine with it. 1st round picks are immensely valuable, especially when you have a scouting staff as good as the Sharks. In this decade, the Sharks have had 1 first round bust, Kaspar. (I’m not going to count Morris because the only reason he didn’t make was because of concussions. From some reports, he could plausibly have been the Sharks’ best pick of the decade and would easily have made the team if it weren’t for his concussions.)

Just looking at your list, nearly all of this players, outside of Eller, who I don’t know much about, are guys I’d love to have on the Sharks. Perron is basically a younger Clowe. Ennis is the 2nd best AHL rookie after Couture. Wishart is Tampa Bay’s top defensive prospect. Pacioretty is doing reasonably well despite the Canadiens continual idiocy in handling their prospects. It’s too soon to really tell anything with Palmieri. But for traded picks, you probably should assume that, on average, the Sharks would do better with them than whatever team used the pick. I think it’s fair to say that the Sharks have one of the top scouting staffs in the league. This especially adds to the value of lower round picks. If you look at the Sharks 2nd and 3rd round picks in the last decade, they’ve had a pretty decent success rate, with only 4 busts out of 13 picks. (I’m counting Sexsmith as a bust here, which is probably a bit hasty.) A 60 % chance of getting a Vlasic, McGinn, or Greiss for cheap for several years is extremely valuable.

Furthermore, I don’t think that this year’s team will be the best for a few years. The defense should improve next year with Jason Demers playing full time and possibly another rookie dman stepping up. (There are several good dmen coming out of college and juniors next year.) Having decent draft picks are necessary to keep this flow of talent available so that when you have to trade expensive players, your team doesn’t take a huge hit. Suppose, the Sharks had used their traded ’08 pick to get Carlson, (who was picked 1 spot after Ennis). Having him instead of Joslin in the lineup would be a huge boost to the defense. In ’07 they could probably have used that pick and packaged it with the pick used on Petrecki to trade up and get someone possibly even better than him. (Maybe if they were all packaged with Couture, we might have even gotten Kane.)

by tarlinian on Feb 11, 2010 3:23 AM PST reply actions

This team is definitely the best we’ll have for years on PAPER at least. We won’t be able to put together a better team than we can now, while keeping all the all the stars we have, without losing people somewhere.

About the picks, hindsight is 20/20 so it’s easy to say what we COULD have done with picks. Either way though, i realize the value of picks. I just think that this season is not a season where we should be saving our picks and building to the future. THE FUTURE IS NOW! lol

by Khaaz on Feb 11, 2010 11:24 AM PST up reply actions