Longshots and Luck

By Ken Warren, The Ottawa Citizen

We’ve all seen those teenage prospects forced to sweat through round after round of the National Hockey League entry draft before they hear their names called.

Well, maybe there’s no reason to feel sorry for them.

A comprehensive study of the history of NHL draft selections, compiled by researchers at Simon Fraser University, shows that lateround picks have almost the same chance of a career in the big leagues as mid-round selections.

And, says the report, there is no significant difference in future success between players chosen late in the second round of the draft with those taken at any point in the third round.

The statistics came as a surprise to researchers, who originally thought there would be a more dramatic dropoff in NHL success after the supposed elite players from each draft class had been selected.

“We just didn’t expect the numbers to flatten out the way they did,” says Peter Tingling, a professor of business administration at SFU and co-author of the report, Does Order Matter?, which will be featured in the upcoming edition of Sport Business & Management.

The research reveals that, from 1990 until 2003, players selected from 121st to 150th overall (the fourth round of a 30-player draft) had a 14.9-per-cent chance of playing 160 NHL games. (For the study, an NHL career is considered to be 160 games, the point at which players qualify for a pension.)

Meanwhile, prospects chosen in the eighth round had a nine-per-cent chance of sticking in the NHL.

Interestingly, those eighthround picks were actually more likely to succeed than the teenagers who were chosen in the seventh round (7.2 per cent).

Players picked in the latter half of the second round had a 24.9-per-cent future success rate, compared to 23.5 per cent of those selected in the third round.

Accordingly, regardless of where players fall into that range -from 45th to 90th -their chances of staying in the NHL is almost one in four.

To read the complete article printed in the March 12, 2011 edition of the Ottawa Citizen, visit: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/Draft+Longshots+luck/4427851/story.html