Create Account

A look at S46 SMJHL Draft and S47 SHL Draft - How well did teams and players do?
#1
(This post was last modified: 04-23-2019, 04:49 PM by Lynxfire.)

4,413 words, double media draft (tables are images not text and not included in the count 'cause tables don't work well here)

Draft time is always exciting in the SHL and its junior league, the SMJHL. Hopes are both crushed and vindicated with the drafting process with some players rising above their perceived station while others are pulled into the depths of obscurity due to a bad season. So, with Season 47 upon us let's take a quick look back all the way to the season 46 SMJHL draft. We're about to find out how well these SMJHL teams are at drafting and developing their players and which players had the biggest gains (and losses) of their draft stock leading up to the SHL S47 draft... but first, lets take a look at the top 3 rounds of the S47 SMJHL Draft:

Table 1: Draft Position in the SMJHL S46 Draft:
[Image: 8KuSKJB.png]

Now some of the players on this list are going to look awfully familiar to anyone who watched the draft live show the other day. Jax Duggan and Gunner Soderberg were the top two picks in the SHL draft this year, and were highly touted even coming into the SMJHL. Other names such as Espen Knutsen, Tony Ford, Cullen Gray, and Eko Van Otter should also ring some bells. But of course, with those shining stars also come with others who may have fallen into obscurity due to poor junior performances, but lets dive into specifics, how did each player do in their SHL draft when compared to their SMJHL draft? The answers await below...

Table 1: Draft position changes of top 30 drafter players
[Image: Z7dyPQf.png]

The table above is sorted by the biggest positive draft position gain sorted to the top. As you can see, the player who, in the top 30 SHL picks, increased their draft position the most from their SMJHL draft was..... Slap McShotty!! He gained an amazing 37 spots, going from 57th to 16th between the two drafts. This player, known for his Slap Mcshotty, seemed to perk the ears of the New England Wolfpack who picked him with their 2nd pick of the draft. When reached for a comment on his rising draft stock, he said "I think it was my quiet and steady work ethic. I'm not an outgoing guy, but I've been keeping up with most of my training. Also, I splurged on all new equipment in preparation for the end of the season and being drafted in the SHL. Perhaps my dedication to hockey was noticed by the more observant general managers. At least, I had that impression after being contacted by several general managers. My stats didn't really back up a 1st round pick, but my potential and dedication did."

Fun note, their first pick, Eko Van Otter, was near the top in draft position gain at an amazing +20. Eko was actually the top player in regards to position gain who was in the top 30 of both drafts. New England's number three pick was also near the top of the list: Przemysław Brzeszczyczkiewicz! Try saying that 3 times fast! I bet you can't... Przemysław Brzeszczyczkiewicz Przemysław Brzeszczyczkiewicz Przemysław Brzeszczyczkiewicz. He's also one of the crazier characters in the SHL, this was his comment from draft day: 

"WOW! MAMA I MAKING TEAM. I GOING PLAYING IN ENLAND BUT IN NEW ENGLAND NO OLD ENGLAND. Mama Bozena so exciting she scream "THANKS GOD JESUS! PRZEMEK IS MAKING THE BIG LIGA!! MIREK WSTAWAJ (WAKE UP) KURWA MAC!! Mama so exciting she hug me even though she covering in cow shit, but at this time its okay because very important day. Papa Mirek hearing news, running out in white tightey underwear and boots only, and hugging us too. Now whole family covering in cow shit. We only having one shower. Great. Anyway, this is all time I having for today. I am very exciting to go play for new team but I will very much missing my Detroitski Falcon brothers. I will always remembering this good times with them and hopefully one day I can come back and visit Detroitski one more time. Thank you to @notorioustig for drafting and believing in polski farmer boi, but now I go and making you and new team very proud."

Most of the top players in terms of gain were obviously not at the top of the SMJHL draft. If they had been, they could not have gained much in position. Players such as Jax Duggan, Gunnar Soderberg, and Corey Kennedy maintained their draft position well. These guys were picked high to start and stayed high, which is probably a better achievement that rising out of obscurity. However, some of those who were in the top of the SMJHL draft did fall by quite a bit in their pro draft. The worst of these were Marc Hagan, falling 19 positions from 4th to 23rd, Juulius Smonk, going down 22 spots from 7th, and Thomas Bathory who was picked 3rd for the SMJHL but fell 23 positions to be picked at 26th.

Well anyway, on with the show. And onto the fun: which players became way, way worse. And here's the top list of the players who fell out of the top 30!

Table 3: Top players falling out of the SHL draft
[Image: N9hlnoP.png]

These players, who were all selected in the top 30 in the SMJHL draft, did not fare well during their regular season and as a result did not draft well up to the big leagues. I'd say shame on their junior teams for not encouraging them and finding out their home addresses and stalking them into submission. Looking at you Raiders Knights Falcons Raptors Scarecrows and Whalers. However, taking a bit deeper dive, some of these rooks didn't actually do that badly. 

For example, Parmborg scored 15 points in his rookie campaign. Nothing stellar of course, but looking at Jax Duggan's 22 points, it doesn't seem that far off the mark. Perhaps he had some personality conflict with his coaches causing his decline, but I do not know for sure. So what happened, lets hear it from the man himself... "Yeah I don’t know what happened, I did everything right, earned all the tpe, was a good teammate and was active in the room, but not a single SHL GM contacted me before the draft.. weird. Maybe I’m missing something and I’m not as big of a deal as I thought. Apparently I was a kind of a big deal at the time of the SMJHL draft where I went 1st overall to Halifax, but something must have happened to fall all the way to 41st overall in the SHL draft. I just wish I knew what I did wrong… maybe I’m too nice and need to be meaner around the league, try something different, who knows. "

Malichov, on the other hand, only had 5 points as a forward. That's a pretty good sign of why his draft stock fell so heavily, those are not numbers that SHL GMs get excited about. His 9 minutes of average playtime was also very low, perhaps pointing to some issues with effort. 

Ender Zavala had a solid rookie defenseman campaign though with 11 points through the season. Now of course that was probably only about half of what the top defenseman were getting that season, but as a rook with limited playing time that isn't anything to sneeze at. 

Same with Wibbly Mcbutternutz, posting 9 points in his junior campaign for the Falcons with a respectable 16.31 minutes of playing time average.

Going further down the list, the Raptor's Jason Kruger posted  a - 9 and 7 points, with zero goals.

Isaac Yamada had 13 points on the scarecrows but his -13 wasn't a stellar number for the defenseman. 

Anderrson-Grande actually didn't fall that far overall, but did fall out of the top 30. As as basically the 2nd goalie picked in the draft his SMJHL stats weren't half bad, 10-1-1 record, 0.905 save percentage and 1.8 GAA. Solid stats, I guess goalies just weren't in hot demand this time around in the draft.

Ackroyd didn't fall that far either as his solid 15 point defensive campaign probably didn't do much to impress, but didn't hurt him either.

Falcon forward Lex Peters scored 13 points and a -7 in his season. 7 power play points as well for the rook. 

And how could anyone not pick a guy named after the world's favorite detective, Jake Peralta. He even scored 13 points, although his -14 wasn't all too great. Not an eye for the details on this one I guess. 

But what about the SMJHL teams themselves? Are they actually good at drafting? Do the prospects that they pick out from the sea of whining voices saying 'Pick me! Pick me! I'll post media and get jobs!' actually follow through? Well, lets find out!

Table 4: SMJHL Draft Performance When Graded Based On SHL Draft
[Image: ZF982u6.png]

Four of the SMJHL had a startling first 3 rounds. The Outlaws, Armada, Lions and Militia had all their top 30 picks go in the top 30 again when next season rolled around. Surprisingly nobody hit 0%, but Raiders and the Knights took a couple swings and whiffed. Overall the Outlaws, Lions and Whalers each had 3 top 30 picks go in the top 30 again. But who did the best job getting their prospects ready for the big time? In season 46, it was none other than the Anchorage Armada and their GM @Acsolap, who hit it 3 for 3 AND overall improved his prospects draft ranking by a combined score of +20, all thanks to the one amazing pick of Eko Van Otter. Now, Tony Ford ain't no slouch either, but he went from a #6 pick to a #6 pick, so one solid choice and one deep sleeper hit out of the park. Ford also seemed excited to go to the West Kendall Platoon, as it has close ties to the Armada: "My SMJHL team, the Anchorage Armada, have really close ties with West Kendall Platoon (despite being about as far away as it's possible to be), so I was really excited when they expressed interest in me a few days ago. I talked to a few other guys, and they were saying that they'd heard a lot of interest too, so I was very pleased when they picked me up. Looking back at the draft order, if West Kendall didn't take me I'd probably have dropped to New Orleans at 10, which wouldn't have been bad either. Definitely looking forward to the change in weather. Anchorage is way too cold for me."

On the other hand, for the Lions, while their picks all made it to the SHL in the top 30, they might have picked some of those guys a bit high as their total draft position change was the worst out of all teams. Word on the street is that they might have had some insider knowledge that didn't pan out...

But, one of the more interesting stats is the GRAND TOTAL. Out of the 30 first picks in the SMJHL, only 20 of those were picked in the top 30 in the SHL. Meaning about a 1/3 wash out rate, or a third of the players fell out of the top 3 rounds. But, more interestingly, is that SMJHL GMs tended to over-value the first 30 picks by a fairly large margin. In fact, when looking at the overall top 30 picks, their draft value tanked by near 40 overall positions. Now, this is misleading as the analysis only includes the first 30 or so players. It doesn't account for those players who were picked low and then gained coming into the SHL draft. so the overall 'real' over/under value of SMJHL GM draft picks is most likely better than what is indicated by this graph. 

What about draft performance by position? If we break down and group players by position (center, right wing, left wing, defenseman, and goalie), which positions made greater headways before the SHL draft?

Table 5: Positional Draft Performance
[Image: GqNh6Od.png]

There are a couple of ways to think on this data, and for that reason I have included the average draft position change for each position as a group, the maximum any one player in the group gained, the minimum (or worst) a player in the group gained, and the count of players in the group. First, the goalies, there was 1. The sample size isn't big enough to really say anything aside from the fact that the goalie, Harry Carpet, did a good job on improving his draft stock before the draft. But we can't say much about goalies as a whole aside from the fact that the one SMJHL goalie who was draft in S46 also didn't make the top 30 in S47, so its probably a wash positionally. Going down the line, centers as a group made the greatest gains from one draft to the other. Was this because the centers in the draft were just good players who improved on their game throughout the SMJHL season, or was it because SHL teams were short on players? Who knows, not I as this analysis is not going to that depth. However, we can say that no single center made up that lofty 67 position gain, the most any one player gained was 37 spots, so we can say overall centers did a good job increasing their value, even if one player did drop 19 positions. The one player was also the only negative within the centers. 

Next up, defenseman. In general they trended up, but with a 14 point total gain, and a max of 30 and min of -23, it was a mixed bag. Some went up, some went down, just eyeballing the data and not doing any robust statistical analysis, I'd say the position didn't drive the gains in rankings. Left wingers also did well, gaining a total of 54 positions with 6 players. Like the centers its hard to say whether the increase was due to SHL need or player improvement. In general though, only one left winger had a negative draft gain, but there were some left wingers from the SMJHL draft that weren't drafted in the SHL from what I could see at all, so the LW numbers might be worse than they appear on the surface. Right wingers are the fun story here as they overall lost 21 position points, with the maximum gain only being 7. Over the 5 RW drafted in the top 30 of the SHL draft, it would seem the majority were treading water, and while the position seems overall to be negative, the one large -18 might be the big swing to bring the whole group down as a whole. 

That's it for now, thanks everyone. words, double media draft (tables are images not text and not included in the count 'cause tables don't work well here)

Draft time is always exciting in the SHL and its junior league, the SMJHL. Hopes are both crushed and vindicated with the drafting process with some players rising above their perceived station while others are pulled into the depths of obscurity due to a bad season. So, with Season 47 upon us let's take a quick look back all the way to the season 46 SMJHL draft. We're about to find out how well these SMJHL teams are at drafting and developing their players and which players had the biggest gains (and losses) of their draft stock leading up to the SHL S47 draft... but first, lets take a look at the top 3 rounds of the S47 SMJHL Draft:

Table 1: Draft Position in the SMJHL S46 Draft:
[Image: 8KuSKJB.png]

Now some of the players on this list are going to look awfully familiar to anyone who watched the draft live show the other day. Jax Duggan and Gunner Soderberg were the top two picks in the SHL draft this year, and were highly touted even coming into the SMJHL. Other names such as Espen Knutsen, Tony Ford, Cullen Gray, and Eko Van Otter should also ring some bells. But of course, with those shining stars also come with others who may have fallen into obscurity due to poor junior performances, but lets dive into specifics, how did each player do in their SHL draft when compared to their SMJHL draft? The answers await below...

Table 1: Draft position changes of top 30 drafter players
[Image: Z7dyPQf.png]

The table above is sorted by the biggest positive draft position gain sorted to the top. As you can see, the player who, in the top 30 SHL picks, increased their draft position the most from their SMJHL draft was..... Slap McShotty!! He gained an amazing 37 spots, going from 57th to 16th between the two drafts. This player, known for his Slap Mcshotty, seemed to perk the ears of the New England Wolfpack who picked him with their 2nd pick of the draft. Fun note, their first pick, Eko Van Otter, was near the top in draft position gain at an amazing +20. Eko was actually the top player in regards to position gain who was in the top 30 of both drafts. New England's number three pick was also near the top of the list: Przemysław Brzeszczyczkiewicz! Try saying that 3 times fast! I bet you can't... Przemysław Brzeszczyczkiewicz Przemysław Brzeszczyczkiewicz Przemysław Brzeszczyczkiewicz.

Most of the top players in terms of gain were obviously not at the top of the SMJHL draft. If they had been, they could not have gained much in position. Players such as Jax Duggan, Gunnar Soderberg, and Corey Kennedy maintained their draft position well. These guys were picked high to start and stayed high, which is probably a better achievement that rising out of obscurity. However, some of those who were in the top of the SMJHL draft did fall by quite a bit in their pro draft. The worst of these were Marc Hagan, falling 19 positions from 4th to 23rd, Juulius Smonk, going down 22 spots from 7th, and Thomas Bathory who was picked 3rd for the SMJHL but fell 23 positions to be picked at 26th.

Well anyway, on with the show. And onto the fun: which players became way, way worse. And here's the top list of the players who fell out of the top 30!

Table 3: Top players falling out of the SHL draft
[Image: N9hlnoP.png]

These players, who were all selected in the top 30 in the SMJHL draft, did not fare well during their regular season and as a result did not draft well up to the big leagues. I'd say shame on their junior teams for not encouraging them and finding out their home addresses and stalking them into submission. Looking at you Raiders Knights Falcons Raptors Scarecrows and Whalers. However, taking a bit deeper dive, some of these rooks didn't actually do that badly. 

For example, Parmborg scored 15 points in his rookie campaign. Nothing stellar of course, but looking at Jax Duggan's 22 points, it doesn't seem that far off the mark. Perhaps he had some personality conflict with his coaches causing his decline, but I do not know for sure. 

Malichov, on the other hand, only had 5 points as a forward. That's a pretty good sign of why his draft stock fell so heavily, those are not numbers that SHL GMs get excited about. His 9 minutes of average playtime was also very low, perhaps pointing to some issues with effort. 

Ender Zavala had a solid rookie defenseman campaign though with 11 points through the season. Now of course that was probably only about half of what the top defenseman were getting that season, but as a rook with limited playing time that isn't anything to sneeze at. 

Same with Wibbly Mcbutternutz, posting 9 points in his junior campaign for the Falcons with a respectable 16.31 minutes of playing time average.

Going further down the list, the Raptor's Jason Kruger posted  a - 9 and 7 points, with zero goals.

Isaac Yamada had 13 points on the scarecrows but his -13 wasn't a stellar number for the defenseman. 

Anderrson-Grande actually didn't fall that far overall, but did fall out of the top 30. As as basically the 2nd goalie picked in the draft his SMJHL stats weren't half bad, 10-1-1 record, 0.905 save percentage and 1.8 GAA. Solid stats, I guess goalies just weren't in hot demand this time around in the draft.

Ackroyd didn't fall that far either as his solid 15 point defensive campaign probably didn't do much to impress, but didn't hurt him either.

Falcon forward Lex Peters scored 13 points and a -7 in his season. 7 power play points as well for the rook. 

And how could anyone not pick a guy named after the world's favorite detective, Jake Peralta. He even scored 13 points, although his -14 wasn't all too great. Not an eye for the details on this one I guess. 

But what about the SMJHL teams themselves? Are they actually good at drafting? Do the prospects that they pick out from the sea of whining voices saying 'Pick me! Pick me! I'll post media and get jobs!' actually follow through? Well, lets find out!

Table 4: SMJHL Draft Performance When Graded Based On SHL Draft
[Image: ZF982u6.png]

Four of the SMJHL had a startling first 3 rounds. The Outlaws, Armada, Lions and Militia had all their top 30 picks go in the top 30 again when next season rolled around. Surprisingly nobody hit 0%, but Raiders and the Knights took a couple swings and whiffed. Overall the Outlaws, Lions and Whalers each had 3 top 30 picks go in the top 30 again. But who did the best job getting their prospects ready for the big time? In season 46, it was none other than the Anchorage Armada and their GM @Acsolap, who hit it 3 for 3 AND overall improved his prospects draft ranking by a combined score of +20, all thanks to the one amazing pick of Eko Van Otter. Now, Tony Ford ain't no slouch either, but he went from a #6 pick to a #6 pick, so one solid choice and one deep sleeper hit out of the park.

On the other hand, for the Lions, while their picks all made it to the SHL in the top 30, they might have picked some of those guys a bit high as their total draft position change was the worst out of all teams. Word on the street is that they might have had some insider knowledge that didn't pan out...

But, one of the more interesting stats is the GRAND TOTAL. Out of the 30 first picks in the SMJHL, only 20 of those were picked in the top 30 in the SHL. Meaning about a 1/3 wash out rate, or a third of the players fell out of the top 3 rounds. But, more interestingly, is that SMJHL GMs tended to over-value the first 30 picks by a fairly large margin. In fact, when looking at the overall top 30 picks, their draft value tanked by near 40 overall positions. Now, this is misleading as the analysis only includes the first 30 or so players. It doesn't account for those players who were picked low and then gained coming into the SHL draft. so the overall 'real' over/under value of SMJHL GM draft picks is most likely better than what is indicated by this graph. 

What about draft performance by position? If we break down and group players by position (center, right wing, left wing, defenseman, and goalie), which positions made greater headways before the SHL draft?

Table 5: Positional Draft Performance
[Image: GqNh6Od.png]

There are a couple of ways to think on this data, and for that reason I have included the average draft position change for each position as a group, the maximum any one player in the group gained, the minimum (or worst) a player in the group gained, and the count of players in the group. First, the goalies, there was 1. The sample size isn't big enough to really say anything aside from the fact that the goalie, Harry Carpet, did a good job on improving his draft stock before the draft. But we can't say much about goalies as a whole aside from the fact that the one SMJHL goalie who was draft in S46 also didn't make the top 30 in S47, so its probably a wash positionally. Going down the line, centers as a group made the greatest gains from one draft to the other. Was this because the centers in the draft were just good players who improved on their game throughout the SMJHL season, or was it because SHL teams were short on players? Who knows, not I as this analysis is not going to that depth. However, we can say that no single center made up that lofty 67 position gain, the most any one player gained was 37 spots, so we can say overall centers did a good job increasing their value, even if one player did drop 19 positions. The one player was also the only negative within the centers. 

Next up, defenseman. In general they trended up, but with a 14 point total gain, and a max of 30 and min of -23, it was a mixed bag. Some went up, some went down, just eyeballing the data and not doing any robust statistical analysis, I'd say the position didn't drive the gains in rankings. Left wingers also did well, gaining a total of 54 positions with 6 players. Like the centers its hard to say whether the increase was due to SHL need or player improvement. In general though, only one left winger had a negative draft gain, but there were some left wingers from the SMJHL draft that weren't drafted in the SHL from what I could see at all, so the LW numbers might be worse than they appear on the surface. Right wingers are the fun story here as they overall lost 21 position points, with the maximum gain only being 7. Over the 5 RW drafted in the top 30 of the SHL draft, it would seem the majority were treading water, and while the position seems overall to be negative, the one large -18 might be the big swing to bring the whole group down as a whole. 

That's it for now, thanks everyone.

[Image: Rq2Dtaw.png]  [Image: Anchorage.png]  [Image: PPpK5xb.png]

[Image: vE2xRO8.png]

 
Reply
#2

nice stuff Lynx

[Image: sIjpJeQ.png]





Reply




Users browsing this thread:
1 Guest(s)




Navigation

 

Extra Menu

 

About us

The Simulation Hockey League is a free online forums based sim league where you create your own fantasy hockey player. Join today and create your player, become a GM, get drafted, sign contracts, make trades and compete against hundreds of players from around the world.