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NamesMonday · 02-10-2025, 12:08 AM

What an awesome draft! I am super excited to help Nevada as the season begins but that's not what this article is about!

I wanted to take a look at all of the mock drafts that were created. Of course of the 53 mock drafts done by the league none were 100% right. In this article I will try to cover a few things, peoples strategies for picking players with such limited info, who got the most votes for first over all and what are the statistical chances of getting all 16 right!

Let's start with strategy, it appears as though there were three main strategies after talking with some of my fellow rookies.

Funny Names-TPE Spent- Copy and Paste

I feel as though these are pretty straight forward but I will give a little insight. Many players built their mock draft around the name of the players, myself included. This included players such as Pasta Turtle II, Gappy Gilmore, Patrick Evil and Cowboy Casanova. These are just a few of the many hilarious or gimmick names that players came up with.

Next was the picking based on TPE spent, this is probably the more sound route if you were trying to go for accuracy as I have to believe that many GMs were looking to see how active a player was before they decided to reach out to them, more on this later!

Lastly was the copy and paste method. Per the rules you didn’t have to have an original list meaning if you just wanted the TPE from completing the mock draft and didn't care about accuracy this was the way to go.

Now let's take a look at who some of the most popular players were during the mock draft:

1. Koen Boekbinder
First Overall Picks: 25
Second Overall Picks: 12
Third Overall Picks: 4

2.Wal Rus
First Overall Picks: 17
Second Overall Picks: 11
Third Overall Picks: 1

3.Toivo Jokinen
First Overall Picks: 5
Second Overall Picks: 0
Third Overall Picks: 0

4.Ryan Dino Nugget
First Overall Picks: 3
Second Overall Picks: 1
Third Overall Picks: 24

These were some of the names to have multiple mentions in the top three picks.
Wal Rus and Koen Boekinder were clear favorites to the most recent draft class but neither placed in the first round. Koen Boekinder fell to 19th over all being taken by the Great Falls Grizzlies and Wal Rus fell to 50th over all eventually being taken by the St.Louis Scarecrows.

In a surprise twist of events Toivo Jokinen and Ryan Dino Nugget fared much better. Toivo Jokinen was taken second overall by the St.Louis Scarecrow and Ryan Dino Nugget was taken 9th overall by the Carolina Kraken! Seems like we might have been onto something with these two and the GMs agreed!

Next, I wanna look at how closely players draft models were to the actual end result. Of the 53 mock drafts created thirty-four people got zero picks correct, fifteen people got one correct and only four people got two correct. A quick shoutout to those four!

HoodRatRoyalty-xNJRangersFanx-Pray107-Zamrael

The odds of guessing just the first overall pick correctly are 1/89 (if this number is still accurate for number of draftees), to guess the whole first round your odds would be 1/89^16. This is an astronomically small chance especially with no data on the players to help influence your choice. So I wanted to take a deep dive into how the GMs saw the draft going down to see if they might have had a better chance picking the whole first round correctly.

I spoke briefly with JohnFranklinKennedy (Nevada GM), Figgy (Anchorage GM), Jimmysmo27 (St.Louis GM), Magenta (Newfoundland GM) and Lore (A scout with Quebec City).

Each GM was asked the same four questions.
-How did you guys pick players with such limited information?
-What was the driving factor for picking certain players?
-Did you guys have to change your game plan as the size of the class grew?
-Were there any players you wish you could have gotten but were picked early?”

Many of the GMs/Scouts had similar answers to the first question, they wanted to talk to as many players as possible before the draft. Getting to know a player pre-draft would help determine whether that player's goals/wants/needs matched that of the team. A lot of the GMs wanted players who were going to not only earn but were going to be a good presence in the LR. They wanted people who were going to be involved and active with the team. Here is a direct quote from Lore during our conversation on the topic.

“Every scout has different styles, so that's a little harder to pin down, but generally we look for high energy and enthusiasm. Not necessarily about the SHL, just in general! Locker room activity is a huge part of team success, so we start with the user themselves before we even look at their player.”

This plays into the next question as many of the driving factors for certain players revolved around their personality and future activity. It of course was also determined by availability. With many first rounders they are popular with a number of teams this meant that the GMs had to have reactive game plans in case their number one was taken early.

Of the GMs/Scouts I spoke with there was a split on whether the size of the class would change their strat. Mageta stated that they believed the size of the class was going to drive the value of early picks up.They traded a number of their picks in an attempt to capitalize on their current playoff window. On the flip side, Jimmysmo27 said that the only thing about their plan that had to change was they were now going to speak with way more players. They wanted to try and have a quality conversation with every new player before the draft. A few of the GMs/Scouts mentioned a new sense of urgency as the draft class grew, as mentioned by Jimmysmo27 they wanted to try and talk with everyone.

Finally we get to hear about who the GMs/Scouts thought were some of the best and brightest from our draft class. The two names I heard the most were Toaster and Tmoney. This stands to reason as both were drafted in the top five but the GMs/Scouts only had good things to say about the class and said that we made it very difficult for them to make final picks when it came down to it!

So with all this information do I believe that the GMs might have guessed the first round correctly? No, I believe that they may have done better but with so many teams having their own preferences on players I still believe it would have been tough to decide who each team was going to take.

Congrats to all my fellow players, let's kick some ass this season!