Draft Longshots
March 25, 2024
By Bob Trask
Much has been made about the picks accumulated by the Montreal Canadiens for the 2023 entry draft – they have 12 in total. But 3 of those picks are in the 7th round. If you go back through the 20 drafts between 1999 and 2018 you can see what the success rate of those 7th round picks have been. In fact, using a minimum of 200 games played as a cutoff, only 49 players out of the approximately 600 drafted in the 7th round have seen significant NHL playing time. That represents about an 8% success rate. Looking at it another way, a team has chance of drafting a player in the 7th round who will eventually be successful about once in every 12 years. And an even smaller percentage of these selections become impact players. Using that as a measuring stick and with 3 picks in the 7th round there is about a 24% chance that one of the Canadiens’ picks from that round will eventually play more than a handful of games in the NHL. The cutoff at the 2018 draft was used because many players drafted after that are young and still have a shot a making the NHL. Good advice might be to temper our expectations regarding late round picks. – Trask