Defensemen Development Myths: Part 3

The success of young defensemen is hard to predict.  This series aims to get to the bottom of a number of myths that have popped up about them over the years.  Here are the links if you missed Part 1 or Part 2.

Photo: Tyson Barrie was selected by the Avs with the 64th Overall pick in the 2009 entry draft. After two more seasons with the Kelowna Rockets of the WHL - including one in which he won the WHL Defenseman of the Year Award - Barrie made his pro debut with the Lake Erie Monsters during the '11-12 season. Later that year, he was an injury call-up for the Avs, playing 10 games for the big club before returning to finish out the year in the AHL.  In '12-13, he was an injury call-up once again, but this time, he met the minimum game requirements for the Calder Trophy.  This past season, he finally stuck on the Avs blueline after yet another injury call-up, playing a key role as a top puck-moving defenseman for the team until his knee was Cooke'd during the first round playoffs.

Myth 8: Teams should focus on height at the draft and not worry about weight.

Traditional wisdom suggests that 18-year-old boys will continue to add muscle mass, so selecting defensemen with a larger frame (ie, more height) is often a better option than selecting the smaller, more filled out player.  But as it turns out, the correlation between height and success is fairly weak, whereas it's extremely strong between weight and success.

Unfortunately, these charts ignore any link between both weight and height.  The average weight for small players is far less than for big players, even if they're both filled out and have a similar percentage of muscle mass.   To judge whether or not a player was underweight, above weight, or standard weight at the time of his draft, I calculated the averages by height for the 1777 defensemen drafted since '92.  I then split the draftees into categories, with mid weight being defined as +/- 5lbs of that average, underweight being below that, and above weight being obviously above.  Luckily, this split the data set fairly evenly into 3.  Then I looked at success rates for each of the groups.

As you can see, players that are underweight at the time of their draft have a very slim chance of success, whereas above weight players have almost double the NHL average chance of panning out.  When the +/- was set at 7 lbs and at 10 lbs, the result was roughly the same.

Myth 9:  It’s harder to find elite scorers later in the draft than it is to find elite shutdown defensemen, so teams shouldn’t use Top-30 picks on shutdown defensemen.

For this myth, I decided to split the defensemen data into three groups based on scoring.  I unfortunately don't have career deployment stats, but I was able to find points per game for all players and TOI data from the '99 season on.  I also figured that if a player was a low scorer who played lots of minutes and still managed 200+ games in the NHL, he was doing something that made him worth keeping him around, which would likely be his defensive play.

To put numbers to this, I decided to set the "elite scorer" category at 35+ pts/season, the "shut down" category  at less than 15 pts/season, and the "Mid" category to account for the rest.

It does appear that the top scorers do tend to come from the 1st round, but there are also a large percentage of shut down players who hail from that category as well.  Scoring carries through well into the later rounds too, but so does the shutdown category.  There's no clear trend either way.

So, let's turn to the single season numbers for '13-14.  Just like with the career numbers, I split the data into 35+pt scorers, below 15pt scorers, and those in the middle.  I then took a look at players who were deployed more in the defensive zone (-2.5 rel ZS%) with lots of minutes and players who faced other team's best players (29%+ Qual Comp).

Again, high scorers tend to fall more in the 1st round, but there are plenty of elite scorers to be found deeper in the draft as well.  And as for players with tough minutes, they too tend to be found in the 1st round but show up at a similar rate to the scorers later as well.

Even if you take a look at high scorers who play over 20 minutes per game with low rel zone starts and high Qual Comp (the true 2-way defensemen), you get Ekman-Larsson, Kronwall, and McDonagh from the 1st round,  but Josi and Gologoski from the 2nd, Chara from the 3rd, and the undrafted Giordano rounding out the list.

Essentially, there is no rhyme or reason to the draft round in which the best defensive players will show up.  If a team concentrates on finding a player in the first round who will make it to the NHL and hope to get lucky with some later picks, they'll be well off.

Myth: BUSTED

Myth 10:  The 2003 draft was the strongest since 1992 for defensemen.

2003 is typically hailed as the strongest draft of recent times.  All the 1st round players have made it to the NHL, and many of the later round players have followed suit.  But was it actually the strongest for defensemen?

Surprisingly, no.  That honor goes to 2008.  55% of all defensemen have already made the NHL.  1998 and 1996 also have had over 50%.  2003 is more middle of the pack at 45%.

Looking at first round success rate, and 2003 is one of 9 drafts at 100%.  However, 1992 had 13 total 1st round D-men who made the show.  2008 and 2009 each had 12.  '03 only had 6.

So, looking at these tables, I'd actually say that 2008, not 2003, is the strongest draft since 1992.  2009 looks promising, as does 2012 and 2011, but to this point, 2008 takes the crown.  Myth: BUSTED