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***Rankle*** · 07-30-2019, 07:02 PM

980 words, Draft Week Media 2x

Section 1: The Class in General

Alright, let’s get into it. Taking a look at what our draft class currently looks like. Out of the 101 prospects I’ve got in my dataset, we have 20 centers, 25 right wingers, 22 left wingers, 27 defensemen, and 7 goalies. The distribution is more or less representative relative to the proportion of players on a typical team. A typical team would have 10% goalies, 30% defensemen, and 60% forwards. Shown in the graph below, our distribution looks similar, with just forwards taking a little bit more than their fair share of the distribution.

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Taking a peek at the draft from an international standpoint, we have a majority of the new prospects coming from the US and Canada, with 41 and 24 players respectively. Next down the list was kind of surprising, Japan. I guess we have 6 weeaboos in our midst this season, as these six prospects are looking hot heading into the draft. In total players from 18 different countries are poised to be drafted, quite the diverse class.

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Well, what other interesting things can we see in this draft class? How about the size of the prospects. Our largest prospect, George Costanza from Uganda, is a centerman that stands at 6’11’’ and weighs a whopping 280 pounds. Another prospect, Blake Gaudette from Canada, is a right winger stands at 6’7’’ and weighs an incredible 325 pounds, easily the heaviest prospect in the draft. On the other end of the spectrum we have our smallest prospect, Partario Scarangella from the United States, is a right winger that stands at only 5’4’’ and weighs a measly 158 pounds. Being both the lightest and smallest prospect in the draft, he’ll have to really have some skills to make an impact here in the SMJHL. You can expect the average player coming out of this draft to be about 6’2’’ and 208 pounds.

Section 2: Four Words

This group of players makes up the largest portion of our draft class. Our forwards are broken down into six categories: SNP - Snipers, TWF - Two Way Forwards, ENF - Enforcers, PWR - Power Forwards, OFF - Offensive Forwards, and PLY - Playmakers. Two Way Forwards are the most common in this class, sitting at 17 players, followed closely by Playmakers and Offensive Forwards, sitting at 15 players each. Least common is Enforcers, sitting at only 3 players. It looks like passers and 200 ft players are going to be a commodity in the draft, while physical guys and goal scorers are going to be more rare.

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The types of players we see being built are heavily reflected in the strengths and weaknesses each player has listed for themselves. The top four skills selected by forwards as a strength are Passing (41x), Skating (38x), Scoring(35x), and Puck Handling(33x). With 67 total forwards in the draft, half of them selected one of those skills as a strength. Sitting at the bottom 3 of our skills that were selected by forwards are Endurance(2x), Fighting(3x), and Face Offs(6x). It would seem that our draft class doesn’t look super physically inclined. They may be able to do some impressive things with the puck, but they won’t be able to play those real tough minutes. In terms of weaknesses, over half of our forwards selected Checking as theirs, 41 players in total. For reference, the second most common weakness among Forwards is Scoring at only 9 selections.

Section 3: D Fence

Making up around 27% of our draft class is Defensemen. They are broken down into four categories: TWD - Two Way Defenders, OFD - Offensive Defensemen, DFD - Defensive Defensemen, and ENF D - Enforcer Defensemen. Similarly to the Forwards, the Two Way archetype is the most prevalent here with 14 players slotting into it, just over half of the total Defensemen. Defensive Defensemen and Enforcer Defensemen are the least common with 3 and 2 players respectively. It would seem that a lot of our D-Men want to have a bit more of an offensive punch to their game rather than just being your run-of-the-mill shut-down D-Man.

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Now let’s get to the strengths and weaknesses these Defenders boast. Unsurprisingly, the most selected strength is Defense(18x), followed by Passing(16x) and Skating(14x). Similar to the Forwards, Defensemen selected Endurance(1x), Fighting(2x), and Checking(4x) least often. Again, this class seems to be less about physical play and more about moving the puck around on the ice and out maneuvering their opponents, but still lacking in that ability to play the hard minutes. Exactly the same as our Forwards, Defensemen selected Checking(13x) as their weakness most often, followed by Scoring(7x).

Section 4: The Tendies

We only have 7 Goaltenders in this year’s draft so far, so there really isn’t too much to say about them as a whole. Five of them play Hybrid style and the remaining two play Butterfly, leaving no Stand-Up netminders. All seven of them selected Reaction Time as a strength, and only one can boast their ability to make themselves look big in the net as a strength. That being Canada’s Rob Blake. The standout weakness amongst this group is Rebound Control, with 4 out of the 7 listing it as their weakness.

Thanks for reading everyone! This was a ton of work, all collected and compiled by hand be me. All data is here in this Google Sheet.