We are only a few days out from the 2026 NHL draft now and excitement is mounting. There really is nothing like the anticipation of waiting for your team to pick the player you want, researching all the prospects, and praying your guy doesn’t get taken before your team’s pick. Not to mention the drama when a player falls in the draft, and the hope that your draft pick will be the next Connor McDavid.
I personally understand the excitement 100%, but I also believe that while draft picks are exciting and full of promise, they are also a big question mark. In the end there are only about 600 spots for players in the NHL and nearly half that many kids are drafted every single year. Unfortunately that means that quite a few players don’t get their shot in the show.
The excitement of a draft pick, in my opinion, has overrun the uncertainty of the pick though. It says quite a bit about humans frankly— hope is stronger in us than caution, and I think that’s a good thing. However I believe it has led us over value draft picks. A first-round draft pick buys quite a lot, and at the end of this article, you might be confused as to why.
Looking at the Vegas model
A lot of what a team should do is dictated by the situation they are in. I like to think of the league standings as three separate zones. The playoff mainstays are 1–10 in the standings, the bumper zone are teams 11–27, and the tanks are 28–32. The playoff mainstays are happy—they’re in the playoffs every year; the tanks are happy—they are likely to get a good to great player; the teams in the bumper zone should be very unhappy. They didn’t make, or were quickly eliminated from, the playoffs, and they are most likely going to get a mid player.
Now you can split the bumper zone into three smaller sections, the “draft lottery hopefuls” (23–27), the “playoff hopefuls” (11–21), and the “truly hopeless” (17–25). The heart of the problem here is that there is significant overlap between the sections and it is difficult for a GM to know exactly which section they are in. They may bounce back and forth in this zone for an indeterminate number of years. Giving fans hope when they make the playoffs one year, then again when they get the sixth overall pick another year, but never actually exiting the “truly hopeless” zone.
If you make the playoffs two years in a row but are bounced quickly, aggressively trade your way into the playoff mainstays. If you miss the playoffs two years in a row and are not in the bottom five, aggressively trade for picks and get into the bottom five. Choose one or the other and commit to it. Otherwise you will be perpetually mediocre.
A team like the Vegas Golden Knights is the best example of aggressive trading into the playoff mainstays. They were good right from their draft but then they traded aggressively to stay a playoff mainstay. Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner, Mark Stone, Tomas Hertl, Ivan Barbashev, Noah Hanifin, and Rasmus Andersson were all traded for. They gave up three first-round prospects, and four first-round picks away to do it.
The value of draft picks based on pick number
I believe teams value first-round picks too highly and I have graphs to prove it. Here is a graph that shows the percentage of player drafted in the first round from 2000–2015 that have played more than 400 NHL games, which equates to about five years. The players are split by the pick they were chosen within the first round. Note I did not include goalies in this graph.
After pick seven it starts to get a bit dicey as to whether or not you will get a player who will play for more than five years. Here is a more compelling argument though. This is a graph of the players drafted from 2000 to 2023 who have played more than 50 NHL games and score more than 0.5 points per game:
After pick number 5, you are more likely to get a player who scores fewer than 41 points a year than more than 41 points.
Looking at this graph, you might say “well just because a player is not scoring a ton doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable.” I couldn’t agree more. A player like Jordan Martinook springs to mind. He doesn’t score a lot of points, but he brings a lot of intangibles to the table. He also appears to be a great glue/morale guy. Martinook also played a huge role in getting the Carolina Hurricanes the Stanley Cup this year.
My first objection is that, while you might still get a helpful player in the first round, the first round is viewed (especially within the context of being part of a trade) as the place to get a game changer. However, realistically, the top five is the only place that you have decent odds of getting a game changer.
My second objection is evidenced by this next graph:
This is the same graph, but now showing the percentage of players who average greater than 0.25 PPG by pick in the first round, again greater than 50 GP. As you can see, you are safe to bet on getting a player who scores more than 0.25 PPG in the first round. Looking at the difference between this graph and the last, it is easy to see that you are most likely to get a player who scores between 0.25 PPG and 0.5 PPG in the first round. In a full NHL season, 0.25–0.5 PPG is 21–41 points though. So not exactly who you are hoping for in the first round. You might get Jordan Martinook, but you might get Nail Yakupov, either way you aren’t getting point scorer.
Is a pick worth it over a current player?
That doesn’t change the fact that draft picks are extremely valuable. An NHL GM in the salary cap era is like going to McDonalds, but you only have $10 to spend. What do you spend your precious limited funds on? “Should I burn a big chunk of my money on a Big Mac? But that’s only one single thing, is it worth it? If I get a burger then I can’t get fries AND chicken McNuggets, and how could I possibly choose between those two??? Is the ice cream machine working? It’s so hot what if it melts before I can eat it? I just don’t know if I can take that risk when there are nuggets on the line.”
It’s an absolute nightmare.
A draft pick is like McDonalds having a promotion and asking you to choose a mystery item for free. It’s completely free value. No matter what you get from McDonalds for free, the problem is that it might be a plain bottom bun that an employee stepped on 17 times. But still you might as well pick, you don’t have to eat it.
This last graph shows the players who have played more than 50 NHL games and score more than 0.75 PPG, which is a pretty good player:
It’s kind of depressing frankly. The only pick that you are statistically likely to get a player like that is the 1st overall pick.
So, in the end, if you have the chance to trade for a young player, maybe somebody who has played in the NHL for two or three years, who shows promise, who puts up good numbers, a known quantity. You are probably better off to trade your first-round pick for that player.
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