While talking to Jeff Kealty, chief amateur scout of the Nashville Predators, and Tod Button, Calgary Flames director of scouting, about the NCAA vs. Major Junior debate a couple of weeks ago, we also briefly discussed the mindset behind taking the best available player in the draft vs. drafting for a specific need. Unlike the NFL and NBA drafts, you're not going to get immediate returns on your picks in the NHL. It happens, sure, but for the most part, you're going to be waiting two, three, or sometimes even four years before a player makes the NHL and actually makes a sizable impact for your team.
Going back to the 2005 draft, only 21 of the 865 players selected made their NHL debuts in their draft year. Twelve players selected during the 2008 draft went directly to the NHL, including eight of the top 10 picks.
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Obviously, it's difficult to peer into the crystal ball and know exactly what your team will look like in three years, or what your strengths and weaknesses will be, so it makes quite a bit of sense to simply take the best available player, regardless of position, and sort the prospects out down the road.
"At the end of the day, it's a process that takes time for that pick to play for your team," said Kealty. "It takes, three, four, five years in some cases, and you don't know what the landscape of your team is going to be at that time. So I don't think you can ever go wrong by drafting the best player available."
"We've always gone by the motto of trying to draft the best player available," he continued. "Given where we're picking in the draft and what players are going to be in our wheelhouse at a certain point, that's not to say we would never say never that we won't deviate from that, but we always go into every draft and every scenario and say that we want to draft the best player available."
When talking about the Flames' strategy, Button echoed a similar sentiment, but also made mention of the fact that if they already have a number of prospects at a certain position it could definitely impact what they do on draft day. Especially if that position happened to be goaltender.
"In goal, we try not to," said Button. "We wouldn't pick the best player available if he was a goalie if we already had a lot of goalies in the system. Because, you know, there's only one goalie on the ice at a time. So, in that situation, we wouldn't draft the goalie even if he was the best player."
"We always, early in the draft, say, and we don't have a set number in the first round or second round, we always try to take the best player available, and then if we need to address a depth position we'll do that later in the draft."
That said, with Miikka Kiprusoff cemented in as the starter for the past five seasons -- and signed for the next five -- the Flames haven't had much of a need in goal in recent years. As a result, they haven't selected a goalie since they used a first-round pick (26th overall) on Leland Irving in 2006, which is the only time they've used a pick in the first three rounds on a goalie since 2001.
Button also explained that what a team does in the draft isn't always determined by what's already in the system, but also by what the team has done earlier in the draft.
"If you draft two defensemen with your first two picks you might not take a defensemen with your last five, or vice versa, said Button. "So it's not only what you have in your organization, it's what you do early in the draft which determines what you do later in the draft."
While I see Button's overall point, I'm not sure I agree with ever really drifting away from the best player approach. Not only do you not know what your team will look like in three years, you don't know how the individual prospects you already have are going to develop. Just because you have, say, six goalies in your system, there's no guarantee that any of them will ever play in the NHL, especially when you're talking about a position that is as hit-or-miss as goalie.
"Well, there's a lot that goes into it," said Button. "You know, we could be sitting late in the draft and our general manager might come in and say, 'hey, we really need a couple of young defensemen here, let's pick one up. So, as much as you want to stick to it, it's not always about the best player. Sometimes you simply need to fill out your depth, especially in the later rounds."
