Not Everyone Makes It: prospect attrition and making light of the Senators' recent moves
The term “asset management” is the new buzzphrase being thrown around this city after the Senators’ recent moves.
After placing and subsequently losing Lassi Thomson on waivers Sunday, the Senators followed that transaction up by placing 2019 first-round pick Jacob Bernard-Docker and 2020 second-round pick Egor Sokolov on waivers.
At 23 years of age, thanks to their age and experience level, it was known for quite some time that these players no longer had exemptions from waivers. This is why it is surprising to see some consternation over the lost value these prospects represent — especially since they have not developed enough to establish themselves as credible options to play regular NHL minutes.
There is always going to be frustration in seeing three highly valued picks be used on players who potentially will leave the organization without returning the Senators an asset in return. It is totally understandable, but in saying that, I’m sure management exhausted the trade market before landing on the decision to waive these players. If there was a chance to extract value, I’d like to believe Pierre Dorion would have dutifully exhibited the bare minimum amount of due diligence here. Moreover, these young fringe roster pieces hit the waiver wire every fall as teams cut down their rosters. This is hardly a predicament that is exclusive to the Senators. The Los Angeles Kings just lost 2019 second-rounder Samuel Fagemo to the Nashville Predators and placed 2018 second-rounder Akil Thomas on waivers yesterday.
Prospect attrition is real. Not everyone drafted will appear for an organization and some of them will be busts. In Ottawa’s case, they drafted these players and none of them developed enough for the organization to have confidence in their ability to play meaningful minutes or drive any outside trade interest.
It looks like Max Guenette has won a spot as the team’s seventh defenceman, which is interesting in itself because he is still waiver-exempt. The organization could have kept Bernard-Docker in the fold while returning Guenette to its AHL camp, but perhaps there is a strategy to try and sneak Bernard-Docker through waivers while the rest of the league is cutting down and finalizing their rosters.
The Senators have yet to decide their roster, but if the organization continues to exhibit a preference for putting ineffective veterans in depth roles, it will only compound many of these frustrations. Many fans would prefer to see the organization give players like Bernard-Docker or Sokolov minutes in the hopes that they can offer comparable (or better) value than what players like Parker Kelly, Travis Hamonic and potentially Josh Bailey offer.
Of course, there is no guarantee that any of these prospects can offer a ton of positive value, but there’s a chance!
What recent events have done is highlight some of this organization’s shortcomings. Fans are recognizing that there is a good chance the coaching staff and management will continue to prefer playing sub-replacement level talents in depth roles because of their experience and familiarity with said players. Despite the volume of draft picks that the Senators stockpiled during the rebuilding years, they did not generate enough quality talent to push for depth roles.
Their farm system is one of the thinnest — thanks to the graduation of the team’s best prospects and the stagnated development of others — but, the good news is that this factor is mitigated by the fact the Senators have locked up their talented young core for the foreseeable. Don’t get me wrong, that is not meant to excuse the fact that the organization has inadvertently squandered the abundance of picks that the stockpiled during the rebuilding years. Every organization should be trying to maximize the value of its picks to ensure that inexpensive talent can crack the top of the roster or at least play depth roles. Avoiding having to overpay established veteran talent to fill those last roster spots can complicate a team’s cap situation in a hurry. And, if organizations are not using prospects to fill out their roster, a strong system allows a general manager to be aggressive in the trade market to acquire elite talent to push the team’s competitive level even higher.
After missing the playoffs for six straight years, the Senators are not in a bad spot, but it’s frustrating knowing that they should be situated in an even better spot given the circumstances. Fortunately, as the organization continues to beef up its hockey operations department, it can avoid bad decisions and mitigate some of the unnecessary risks that have been taken. Through Andlauer’s purchase of the club and the hiring of Steve Staios and Sean Tierney, I do have confidence and optimism that they can improve the team’s worth on and off the ice in short order.
Deep Dive Into Ottawa’s Drafting Under Dorion
Ottawa’s draft record has been buoyed by the performance of this team’s top-five selections. In seeing how the events of the last few days have played out, perhaps it is a good time for fans who believe this team’s draft history is strong to pore over the data.
I looked at every NHL draft selection between 2016 and 2022 because I wanted to get a sense of how much value the Senators added with their picks.
For this process, I gathered data using Evolving-Hockey’s ‘goals above replacement’ (GAR) and ‘wins above replacement’ statistical models that create a single number to denote a player’s value to his team over a given period of time. Neither of these stats is a perfect representation of a player’s value, but they aren’t meaningless. The best players often land near the top of the rankings while the worst-performing players land near the bottom of the leaderboards.
After gathering all of the draft data and the accompanying value statistics, I put everything into a spreadsheet. I have copied and pasted this into a public document using Google Docs that anyone can access here. If you want to see how the Senators measure up against the rest of the league, I encourage you to check it out. If you have questions, just put them in the comments below and I’ll try and explain what certain things mean. I’m assuming most of the questions will pertain to what the column headings refer to.
Regardless, here are the key takeaways from the work:
During this seven-year period, the Senators made 48 selections. Thirteen teams have made more during this span.
Of the Senators’ 48 selections, 20 have appeared in NHL games accumulating 86.2 GAR and 14.9 WAR.
Much of the Senators’ draft success is rooted in the fact that 41.67 percent of its selections during this time have appeared in NHL games. Only the Columbus Blue Jackets have had a higher percentage of their picks (50.0 percent) play NHL games.
Ottawa’s 20 selections have combined to produce 86.2 GAR (14th in NHL) and 14.9 WAR (15th in NHL). Of this total, more than 70 percent of their GAR and WAR was generated by their top-five picks — Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stützle and Jake Sanderson. Only three organizations have had a higher percentage of their total draft pick GAR and WAR created by their top-five picks (Columbus, Seattle and Colorado).
Of the value produced outside of top-five selections, Ottawa’s remaining 17 draft picks who have appeared in NHL games have combined to accumulate 21.8 GAR (23rd in NHL) and 3.6 WAR (22nd in NHL).
In terms of value created by picks that played (GAR/WAR Pick Played), the Senators ranked 19th in both metrics. They certainly were not the worst at finding value, but considering where the team picked and the value created mostly by the guys at the top of the draft (where the team should be adding a ton of value), the results are underwhelming — especially in consideration of how many first and second round picks the Senators acquired during this stretch.