Having built a base trade value chart using only intra-season trades, my next project was to look at trades involving picks from multiple years to determine how teams value future draft picks in trades. In other words, analyze the time value effect on draft pick trades. What additional value did a team obtain if it agreed to convert a present draft asset into a future draft asset?
With respect to the NFL draft, the well-worn “conventional wisdom” suggests a one-round premium would need to be paid to get a team to move into the future. A team trading a fourth-round pick in the upcoming 2022 draft would demand a third-round pick in the 2023 draft in return.
I wanted to do slightly better than “conventional wisdom” or hand waving, so here we go.
Approach
I isolated the trades involving a one-for-one swap of a pick in year X for a pick in year X+1. This yielded a list of 60 trades.
As I have described previously, there is an obvious limitation in analyzing deals involving future picks; when a team trades in year X, it does not know where the draft pick in year X+1 will fall precisely.
To deal with that uncertainty in this rudimentary year-over-year analysis, I have presumed that NHL teams are able to reasonably approximate the future draft pick position of the picks they obtain; teams may err in both directions in their estimates, but on average their projections are sound. Therefore, I used the actual draft position of the year X+1 pick as a proxy for the teams’ prediction at the time of the trade.
I then ran the 60 sample trades through the value chart as if they were intra-season trades and looked for a trend in the error rate. The four 2021 trades are listed in the chart below.
One note before moving onto our findings, high picks were not frequently involved in future-pick trades. The highest pick traded in this type of swap was pick No. 65, which was traded in 2014 for a third-round pick in 2015. Without any future pick swaps in the first or second rounds to guide us, any model of discount value in this range is speculative.
Three Takeaways
1. Future draft pick trades did not generate a “full round” of value. In almost every instance, this additional value obtained in a draft pick trade into the future was not close to a “full round” worth of additional value. Instead it was most often the equivalent of moving up somewhere between five and twelve picks. A trade generating value in this range could reasonably described as “fair” based on historical precedent.
2. Mid-round picks traded into the future create small, but real, draft pick value. For third- or fourth-round picks traded for a future asset, teams received on average an additional 5.98 “points” of draft pick value. This is a significant result. And, under the value chart, it is roughly equivalent to obtaining an additional late fourth-round pick.
3. Late-round picks traded into the future create marginal draft pick value. For picks traded in the fifth, sixth, or seventh rounds, the additional value received by the trading team was minimal, registering at just .19 additional “points” of draft pick value on average. This is roughly the equivalent of a late seventh-round pick. It is also within the error range we might expect to see in a normal intra-season transaction.
This suggests to me that towards the bottom of the draft, teams trading into future years are less focused on value generation and more often driven to trade because they do not see a player on the board they want to select or because they would rather use reserve list space elsewhere. This is speculation, though.
There are other potential explanations. It could be that teams are not particularly accurate in predicting where their trade partner will fall in the draft in year X+1, perhaps because of optimism bias. If so, this would leave the trading team, on average, with less value than they believed they were receiving when the trade was made.
Methodology Postscript
At first I attempted to create a unified model that would link the draft pick value points of a current-year draft pick to an expected return of additional draft points if that pick were traded into the next year. For example, if pick No. 97 was traded into the future, how many points should be expected in return? How about pick No. 125?
Unfortunately, the best fit models did not yield a strong model for all picks. The most intelligible fit was linear and it was quite weak:
The x axis in the above is the draft chart pick value traded into the future. The y axis is the net draft pick value received in return in year X+1. This is usually a positive value but is sometimes negative. The trend line attempts to discern an expected additional value of trading a pick this year into a pick next year. In chart form, the expected additional values derived from the trend line are as follows:
The numbers have some intuitive appeal, but I cannot really endorse this model because of its weak predictive value.
For Seattle hockey fans, things haven’t gone their way recently. The Seattle Thunderbirds are now down 3-1 in the WHL Championship Series after losing two straight at home this week to the Edmonton Oil Kings, and Kraken goalie Chris Driedger tore his ACL playing in the IIHF World Championship.
On this episode, the Sound Of Hockey Podcast breaks down those WHL games and discusses what options the Kraken have to backfill Driedger’s position.
For the 2021-22 season, USA Hockey player membership has increased 20 percent nationwide over the 2020-21 season. According to the recently released numbers from USA Hockey, there were 93,603 player memberships added over the 2021-22 season increasing the total to 547,429. Recovery from the pandemic-impacted season is in full swing, but the overall numbers have not returned to their pre-pandemic levels where player memberships were 561,700 for 2019-20. Of the 52 territories in the report, 23 of them are exceeding their 2019-20 player membership numbers.
Here is a deep dive into some of the insights in the report.
USA Hockey memberships – the biggest increase
The biggest gainers in memberships were also the hardest hit during the pandemic season. California, Michigan, and New York saw the biggest rebound in memberships this season. California added 16,113 this year after losing 20,769 from 2019-20 to 2020-21 season.
It’s awesome to see Washington State add the fifth most members this season with an additional 4,610 memberships. In terms of percentage increase, Washington added the second most players.
USA Hockey breakdown by age groups
When we slice the data by age groups we can see the most robust recovery is coming from the adult hockey space (19+), but the second biggest increase is from the ‘Six and Under’ age group.
Washington State by the numbers
If we just filter on Washington State, we can see where the growth is coming from locally.
The biggest net additions is coming from the adult levels. There are two main reasons for this:
Recovery. Several leagues had significant shut downs during the 2020-21 season, so as these leagues started to come back, so would the players. Several of the leagues did not come back online until spring of 2021 as COVID-19 vaccines started to become available. These leagues were slow to ramp up and in most cases did not hit their stride until late spring/early summer when new memberships were classified for the 2021-22 season.
Kraken Adult Learn To Play. Adult learn-to-play programs are not new to the greater Seattle area, but the Kraken ran their programs all year and had multiple programs going each week. This meant their capacity per class was significantly higher than other programs.
On the youth hockey front, the biggest growth came from players 10 and under. Again, this is another indication of the Kraken’s influence and commitment to grow the game in the region. Part of this is a function of the NHL Learn to Play program that, up until this year, was not available to people in this part of the country.
Local organizations do not share their individual membership totals, but it is a safe assumption that the growth was not strictly from the Kraken youth hockey programs. The Kraken will get a lot of credit for the growth, but there are about a dozen associations in or near Seattle that continue to support learn-to-play programs of their own.
Washington State outlook
After the launch of the Vegas Golden Knights during the 2017-18 season, Nevada saw a huge spike in player memberships, but that did not happen until the following season.
However, it is unrealistic to expect the kind of explosive growth Nevada saw for a couple reasons. First, the Golden Knights had a magical inaugural season that ended with a trip to the Stanley Cup Final. That injected a new hockey market with excitement and enthusiasm that would propel kids and adults to try the sport out for themselves. The Kraken did expose the sport to many new families, which will inspire people to try it out next season, but a playoff run would have invigorated the fan base even more. Such a run likely would have led to a more massive increase in membership rates for Washington State.
Additionally, Nevada had a very low number of USA Hockey player memberships before the Golden Knights joined the league, enabling that region to grow its numbers at an unprecedented rate. To put it in a business perspective, Nevada had an untapped customer base. Washington State, on the other hand, had a significant number of hockey players in the area before the Kraken arrived.
There is little doubt that we will continue to see an increase in participation in Washington State, as the Kraken continue to grow the sport directly with “Try Hockey For Free” events and focused programming. But there will also be an organic impact, as the team improves on the ice, that will excite more and more families to take up hockey.
If you have any questions about the data or the analysis, please drop us a line on twitter or in the comments section.
For Seattle hockey fans, things haven’t gone their way recently. The Seattle Thunderbirds are now down 3-1 in the WHL Championship Series after losing two straight at home this week to the Edmonton Oil Kings, and Kraken goalie Chris Driedger tore his ACL playing in the IIHF World Championship.
On this episode, the Sound Of Hockey Podcast breaks down those WHL games and discusses what options the Kraken have to backfill Driedger’s position.
KENT – The Seattle Thunderbirds were three and a half seconds away from a chance of tying their best-of-seven WHL Championship Series against the Edmonton Oil Kings Wednesday night at the accesso ShoWare Center at two games apiece. The game was tied at 2-2 and one clear of the puck would have sent Game 4 into overtime, but Seattle couldn’t get it out of their zone.
Instead, Edmonton kept the puck in and Oil Kings defenseman Logan Dowhaniuk flung the puck towards the Seattle net. It somehow found its way through bodies to send Edmonton to a stunning 3-2 Game 4 win over Seattle, disappointing the 4,468 in attendance.
The Oil Kings now lead the series three games to one.
The Thunderbirds may have played their best game of the series, scoring twice on the power play and outshooting Edmonton by a 38-25 margin, but couldn’t get another puck past Oil Kings goalie Sebastian Cossa.
“That’s playoff hockey sometimes, you don’t always get what you deserve,” Thunderbirds coach Matt O’Dette said. “There’s obviously things that we could have done better in the game to come out on top. But we worked, we came to play. Disappointing ending, but we did a lot of good things tonight.”
Edmonton was paced by a pair of scores from Josh Williams, 32 saves from Cossa, and is one win away from its third WHL Championship and a trip to the Memorial Cup.
Jared Davidson and Lucas Ciona scored for Seattle while goalie Thomas Milic kicked away 20 Oil Kings shots.
“I thought we played a good hockey game,” O’Dette said. “We needed to respond after last night to play a better game. We did clean up a lot of areas that we needed to clean up. It’s a heartbreaker, there’s no other way to say it. I mean, it’s a heartbreaking ending and we have no time to dwell on it. We have to be able to regroup and get ready for the next game.”
Game 5 will be played back in Edmonton on Saturday.
Wednesday’s game got off to a rocky start. Seattle defenseman Tyrel Bauer was given a five-minute major after a hit on Edmonton’s Brendan Kuny, who was carried off on a stretcher early in the contenst. Bauer’s penalty carried with it an automatic game misconduct.
In what was likely Bauer’s final game at the ShoWare Center – he is a signed prospect of the Winnipeg Jets and eligible to play in the American Hockey League next season – ended after five minutes of play.
“[The ref] said they had no choice because the player was injured,” O’Dette said of the call. “I thought it was incidental contact. Kind of two guys colliding that maybe didn’t see each other. I thought Bauer was heading back to the front of the net to defend. Obviously, you never want to see a player hurt like that. I hope he’s okay.”
After the game, Oil Kings coach Brad Lauer said that Kuny had been released from a local hospital and would recover.
Seattle survived the five minutes, but Reid Schaefer was called for boarding just before the major penalty ended, giving Edmonton two more minutes of a power play, but the Thunderbirds were able to kill that off as well.
Seattle’s penalty kill was quick on pucks and got clears while the Oil Kings could not get set up.
“Seven minutes straight on the kill is never ideal,” Seattle’s Jared Davidson said. “They found a way to get ‘er going and shut them down. It was awesome, awesome to see.”
The Thunderbirds then went on a power play of their own and cashed in when Calgary Flames prospect Ciona scored his eighth of the postseason to make it 1-0 at 16:08 of the first period.
Edmonton squared the game at 3:37 of the second period on a goal by Josh Williams who slid a rebound past Milic.
Williams would score again to make it 2-1 at 5:50 when he circled and fired a wrist shot.
Seattle tied the game at 12:58 on a perfect wrister from Davidson who scored his 13th goal of the postseason. The Thunderbirds ended the night 2-for-5 on the power play. The one power play on which they didn’t convert but needed to the most came with 2:40 left in the game when Justin Sourdif was called for a trip. The Thunderbirds couldn’t find one more goal, setting up the late-game heroics for Edmonton.
“I think we were getting to the net a little bit better,” Davidson said. “We were getting those second and third chances when they were sitting there, and we were taking away Cossa’s eyes a little bit better today.”
Seattle has been down 3-1 in the postseason once before, against Portland in the second round. They were able to find a way and fight back, winning twice on the road. They’re going to need to find that motivation one final time.
“We’ve been here before, so we just got to take it one step at a time, one game.” Lucas Ciona said.
Notes
> Seattle played without overager Henrik Rybinski who was hurt during Game 1 of the series.
> Likewise, the Oil Kings were without star Dylan Guenther who apparently was injured during Tuesday’s Game 3.
> It was the last game at the accesso ShoWare Center for Rybinski, Lucas Svejkovsky, and Ryan Gottfried, who are too old to return to the WHL next season.
KENT – In front of a sold-out accesso ShoWare Center, Edmonton Oil Kings goalie Sebastian Cossa tamed the crowd and made 21 saves in a 4-0 win against the Seattle Thunderbirds to take a 2-1 series lead in the WHL Championship Series.
Former Thunderbird defenseman Simon Kubicek had a goal and an assist in his first game back in Kent since being traded in June of 2021. It was the fourth post-season shutout for Cossa, and the Oil Kings also had goals from Kaiden Guhle and Jakub Demek.
“We played well for 60 minutes,” Oil Kings coach Brad Lauer said. “I thought we did the things we needed to do, made the changes that we needed to make at the start of the game, and I thought our guys really did a good job of executing.”
Thomas Milic made 33 saves, and the Thunderbirds lost a second game in a row and find themselves behind for the first time in the series. Seattle will host Game 4 at the ShoWare Center Wednesday in a near must-win game
“I thought that the first half of the game was good for us and we were doing some good things,” Thunderbirds coach Matt O’Dette said. “It’s pretty tight checking, not a lot of chances either way. I thought the turning point was the goal right after our power play. That was a momentum swing for them, and we sagged a little bit after that and couldn’t mount enough push in the third period.”
The goal in question came at 17:02 in the second period with the game scoreless. Seattle had just missed on a power-play chance when Demek received a pass from Kubicek and streaked behind the Seattle defense to beat Milic with a backhand and made it 1-0.
In a tight-checking game with room and space hard to come by, Edmonton rode the momentum of Demek’s goal along with a stifling forecheck that has given the Thunderbirds fits all series long.
“They’re a good forechecking team,” O’Dette said. “Their D are up in the forecheck. I thought execution wise, we could execute it better and just making clean plays and ticker tape passes. That started to fall off as the game went on.”
Cossa was there for whenever the Thunderbirds were able to work the puck down ice and on the penalty kill. The Thunderbirds ended up 0-for-3 on the power play. It was the fourth shutout of the playoffs and 11th this season for the Detroit Red Wings 2021 first-round NHL Draft Pick.
“Good job by our boys,” Cossa said. “Our defense did a good job of getting pucks quick to our forwards and boxing outside to do the job.”
After the third straight first period where neither club scored, the visitors outshot Seattle 14-8 in the second period and began to tilt the ice.
Demek opened the scoring minutes after Milic made an outstanding save on a two-on-none breakaway attempt. Kubicek scored on a one-timer on the power play at 4:10 of the third period after receiving a cross-ice pass in the left circle.
Kaiden Guhle made it 3-0 at 11:47. He had time and space in the high slot and beat Milic with a wrister. Carter Souch scored on the empty net at 19:19 to complete the 4-0 score.
“We have to flush this game, the turnaround is less than 24 hours,” O’Dette said. “We have no time to feel sorry for ourselves. Regroup, obviously make some adjustments and watch the video. But we’ve been a resilient team all year, and it’s another opportunity to show that again.”
Heading into the July, 2022 NHL Entry Draft, the Seattle Kraken have twelve draft picks, including a high first-round pick (No. 4 overall) and four second-round picks. This stockpile of picks, and the trades that acquired them, prompted me to revisit a longstanding curiosity: What is a draft pick “worth”?
A trade-data-driven approach
Over the years, there have been many studies quantifying the value of NHL Draft picks. Most of these studies have looked at the performance or longevity of the players taken at the various draft positions in order to reverse engineer a composite “expected value” for each pick.
For example, Michael Shucker created a model in 2011 that calculated pick value based on the odds of playing 200 NHL games. Dom Luszczyszyn at The Athletic created a draft pick model in 2020 based on a draft player’s Game Score Value Added (GSVA), a hockey analytic he pioneered. (Read more about GSVA here.)
This is not what I did. My approach says nothing about the projected quality of players selected in a particular draft position–at least not directly.
Instead I tried to get to how teams have–by their actions–actually valued draft picks. To do this, I looked at the pick-for-pick trades made by NHL teams in recent drafts with the goal of understanding how teams have actually stacked up the value of one pick versus another.
Say the Kraken trade the No. 35 pick in 2022 for the Nos. 44 and 76 picks in 2022. Is that a fair deal or not? Setting aside the actual players drafted, the historical trade data should help us understand whether or not the swapped picks balance out.
The trade value chart
Without further ado, here is my trade value chart:
To read this chart, find the value associated with the pick(s) targeted for a trade up or down (or involved in a known trade). If a trade returns more “points” to a team than it is giving up in exchange, then the team has obtained a good deal and vice versa.
Returning to our example, if the Seattle Kraken traded the No. 35 pick (116.07 points) for the No. 44 pick (78.37 points) and No. 76 pick (24.79 points), you could conclude that, while the trade is certainly in the neighborhood of “fair,” the Kraken lost a bit of value in the deal because they gave up 116.07 points of draft value but only received 103.16 points in return. Of course, this does not mean the deal is bad, necessarily, if the Kraken draft the better players. It just means that NHL teams value what they gave up more than what they received.
My first impression of the chart? Moving up in the NHL Draft is expensive. Graphically, the trade value chart looks like this:
How does this trade value chart compare with player-value-based approaches?
After building a model based on trades teams have actually made, it is natural to consider how it compares with the value-driven draft models already out there. Is there any market inefficiency between how teams actually behave and how they should behave?
I have not yet truly dug into this question since I think it would be a rewarding topic for its own separate article, but, preliminarily, I did compare the trade value chart against Luszczyszyn’s GSVA model. I normalized the values on our chart so that the total draft pick value as implied by trade data and the total draft pick value as indicated by drafted player GSVA would match.
While the curves are similar, there are notable divergences. Near the top of the draft, the trade value of a pick has exceeded the projected GSVA of the players actually selected. The gap is most significant at the first overall pick and steadily decreases until the values converge at approximately the 35th pick. In other words, the data suggests that a team is likely to produce surplus player value if it trades down out of the first round–even if it makes just an “average” trade as indicated by the market.
This dynamic flips thereafter. Particularly in the second and third rounds, the trade market apparently undervalues these draft picks, at least as indicated by drafted player GSVA.
Which pick is most undervalued by the market? The 64th overall. In this range–the late second round and into the third round–a team may be able to generate surplus value even by making just a “fair” trade moving up.
Eric Tulsky engaged in a similar project for Broad Street Hockey on the NHL Draft back in 2013, looking at trades from 2006-12. While the trade data and approach I employed were different–and I could not exactly replicate his results–the end draft pick values were actually not so far off, which suggests to me that there has not been a paradigm shift in team trade behavior over the last decade.
Methodology
If you’re interested in digging in more on the methodology behind developing this trade value chart, some limitations of my approach, and the performance of the model, click here to view an appendix to this article.
This is a very listener-centric episode of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast, as John, Andy, and Darren spend a significant portion of the show interacting with Mailbag questions and five-star reviews. Hilarity ensues, as does some thoughtful debate.
Meanwhile, the Seattle Thunderbirds have advanced to the WHL Championship Series, which gets plenty of attention, and the Stanley Cup Playoffs are down to just four teams remaining.
Other topics this week Charlotte being eliminated from the AHL playoffs and John being enthralled by Tempe, AZ City Council meetings.
Segments this week include Weekly One-Timers, Tweets of the Week, and Three Stars.
This is a very listener-centric episode of the Sound Of Hockey Podcast, as John, Andy, and Darren spend a significant portion of the show interacting with Mailbag questions and five-star reviews. Hilarity ensues, as does some thoughtful debate.
Meanwhile, the Seattle Thunderbirds have advanced to the WHL Championship Series, which gets plenty of attention, and the Stanley Cup Playoffs are down to just four teams remaining.
Other topics this week Charlotte being eliminated from the AHL playoffs and John being enthralled by Tempe, AZ City Council meetings.
Segments this week include Weekly One-Timers, Tweets of the Week, and Three Stars.
When the Seattle Thunderbirds drafted goalie Thomas Milic in the second round of the 2018 Western Hockey League Draft they were hoping they had acquired a big-game goalie, the type of player that didn’t wilt or hide from important games. As they prepare to play the Edmonton Oil Kings in the WHL’s Championship Series, they now know that Milic is that big-game goalie they had hoped for.
The 19-year-old showed up and won big games for Seattle during its current playoff run. Down three games to one in the second round against Portland, Milic won three straight, including two wins where he allowed one goal in each game. In the Western Conference Championship Series against Kamloops, he won the last two games in the series, including a 3-2 win in Game 7.
He’s been so good that the WHL named him Goalie of the Month of May.
He’s the first goalie in WHL history to win two Game 7’s on the road and is 5-0 in big elimination games.
“I love playing in those big games,” Milic said Wednesday. “Part of why I love being in the goal is just being able to have so much influence on big games like that. I think I’m a guy who can be relied on no matter what. Whether it’s a busy game with a lot of shots or a low-shot game where we’re dominant, so whatever it is, I’m the guy.”
Milic hasn’t just been the guy in the big games, he’s played well in general.
His first full season in the WHL yielded 27 wins and a .912 save percentage. He’s stepped it up in the playoffs where his save percentage has jumped up to .926, and he’s allowing just over two goals per game.
“Tommy has been awesome, he’s been a rock back there for us,” Thunderbirds team captain Tyrel Bauer said. “He stepped up and made a lot of big plays when we needed it. We’ve had the belief in Tommy all along and there was no question that he was the guy for this job. He’s earned it and the team’s believed in him. There’s no player I’d rather have back there for us right now.”
Milic was not drafted during the 2021 NHL Draft which was his first year of eligibility. He can still be selected in July’s draft but he’s not worried about that just yet, saying all that is for after the season. He was invited to the Seattle Kraken’s first training camp last year as a free agent but could not attend due to an injury.
In the Thunderbirds playoff run, he’s beaten three NHL prospects head-to-head.
Milic says the opposition has been a motivator.
“It’s hard to ignore sometimes, signed NHL guys and guys that have lots of respect around the league and have lots of accolades under their belt,” he said. “But I think all that really does for me is pushes me to play even harder and hopefully come out on top.”
Playing against Edmonton, he’ll face yet another NHL drafted goalie with accolades in the Oil Kings’ Sebastian Cossa, who was a 2021 first-round pick of the Detroit Red Wings. Milic describes his play as fearless and he’ll need to have that mentality again.
Milic is a ‘smaller’ goalie, listed at 6-feet-0, which is the only possible reason that he was passed on during the NHL Draft. His play this year and particularly in the playoffs may help assuage any reservations NHL teams have of selecting him this July.
Thomas Milic versus the Edmonton Oil Kings
Seattle will need more big games out of Milic over the next week if they hope to win the WHL Championship.
The Oil Kings come into the Championship Series with a 12-1 playoff record and are loaded with offensive talent such as Dylan Guenther (Arizona Coyotes) and Jake Neighbours (St. Louis Blues). Milic says he’s had a little bit of pre-scout on Edmonton’s players but doesn’t think the Thunderbirds need to change much.
“Our physical style of play has been really effective against a lot of other high-end talent that we faced,” he says. “I think we’ll just continue with that and just play our game.”
Milic has been good for Seattle on the road this playoffs, and that’s where they’ll open the series on Friday night. The series shifts back home for Tuesday and Wednesday. The accesso ShoWare Center crowd has embraced Milic and often has chanted his name after big saves. While he’s focused on the game, he hears the chants.
“Absolutely I hear it,” he said. “I can’t help but smile and acknowledge all the fans. For me, they’re special.”
