FanPost

Even-strength goals-per-game (of sorts) chart WHL/OHL 1st round forwards 2003-2014

Goal salute. - Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Note: If you find it difficult to view the chart on this FanPost (it may be scrunched and hard to read names), here is the direct LINK to it:

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EV GPG Chart

I took even-strength goals-per-game for OHL/WHL forwards drafted 2003-2014 (each their pre-draft season), weighted a little towards %top-5 scoring (% of points player scored on his team out of points of top-5 players), then slightly factored in each of the following: age, height, team-goals, and EV points-per-game.... This is not quite complete. It is missing a few players, such as Getzlaf and Fehr, but the missing players will be towards the bottom of the chart.

Note: I moved some players slightly horizontally so avoid overlap, so draft position isn't precise. (I didn't move anyone vertically, except for PKane and Seguin, because they were above the ceiling-- PKane 0.673, Seguin 0.650.)

Basically:

- Every player whose number came out to .40+ has been successful scorers (goal-scoring, in particular) in the NHL: PKane, Seguin, Tavares, Stamkos, Landeskog, Skinner, Grabner, Ennis, EKane, THall, EStaal.... TBD: Fabbri, Bennett, Yakupov, Virtanen, Goldobin, Draisaitl, Reinhart, Ritchie.

- Players 0.35-0.40 have been largely successful: BRyan, Horton, CStewart, Eberle....TBD: Nino, Strome, Dal Colle, MDomi, KRychel, Puempel, Shinkaruk, Ho-Sang.

- This isn't by any means a perfectly predictive graph. There are many players below 0.35 who have turned into fine NHLers: Ladd, Duchene, Johansen, JCarter, Couture, Kadri and DBrown perhaps the most noticeable.... But notice how Nugent-Hopkins, JStaal, Pouliot, BSchenn, and Gagner each struggled to score EV goals in pre-draft season, and each have had some trouble scoring in the NHL, relative to draft position.... And similarly with 7th-10th overalls Glennie, Mueller, Hamill, and Bailey. Some of those players put up really good overall points-per-game rates, but EV goals seems to be a better indicator of NHL scoring success than total points-per-game.

- Each of the four players selected 11th-30th who scored above 0.35 on this chart have been good NHLers: Grabner, CStewart, Eberle, and Ennis.... And Skinner's EV goal-scoring was rare at 7th overall his draft.

- Nine of the 32 forwards above 0.35 on this chart are from this 2014 draft. So that's about 3x the average. I will be surprised if more than one or two busts.... Goldobin and Ho-Sang seem like good bets to succeed.... Not sure about Fabbri. Hard to gauge, because he was on such a powerhouse team (like Gagner was).... Why were there so many high even-strength scorers this draft? Doesn't appear scoring league-wide in OHL or WHL was up noticeably. Were leagues weaker this season in general, or was there was an atypical amount of OHL/WHL scoring talent available this draft?

Bennett, Virtanen, Ritchie, Fabbri, and Goldobin each have quite a bit of distance between them and those who were chosen at similar draft spots. (Visually, that's more than half the positive outliers, after 1st/2nd overall picks.... Which seems absurd for a typical draft, let alone a draft with a "weak" label.)

Goldobin and Ho-Sang are interesting, because Goldobin played about 33% more at EV per game than Ho-Sang. (Though other draftees weren't too far behind Goldobin in EV ice time per game.) So the two are actually very close in even-strength production. (I don't have per-60 for players before the 2013-14 season, and now I don't even have access to that since ExtraSkater is down.)

You will find Nino, Strome, and Dal Colle virtually on top of one another on the chart. (Strome and Dal Colle had better overall numbers, but Nino had a good EV goals-per-game rate in pre-draft season.)

Notice the distance between Ho-Sang and Schremp.

End.

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