The worst NHL draft years by one team in the salary cap era

Credit: Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports

Earlier this week, I did a deep dive into some of the best draft years by one team in the salary cap era. I focused on the cap era due to the importance of accumulating talent that you not only don’t have to give up assets for, but that you can also keep extremely cost-controlled on their entry-level deals for their first few seasons and somewhat controlled for the remainder of their restricted free agent eligibility, all coming during their prime years. Not surprisingly, all eight of those teams on the list benefitted from those drafts and went on runs to at least the Conference Finals since those drafts, all either with those players selected or assets acquired for those players, and three of them went on to win Stanley Cups.

However, it can go the other way as well. Sometimes a team can have a draft year so bad that they generate almost no value or depth from it, and while it may not be the sole reason that the team struggles more than they should have, it certainly won’t help their cause. Not getting cheap depth through the draft means you have to overpay for it on the trade market or in free agency, and more often than not, you’re acquiring a player that is past their prime.

With that, I decided to look at some of the worst draft years by one team in the salary cap era, with some seeing teams getting not even a full 82-game season’s worth of games out of the all the players involved, and some seeing the team whiff on all of their picks. Of course, I’m not going to be looking at any of the recent drafts because there’s still some leeway for the players to be developed, so this will mostly just be from the first 10 years of the salary cap era.

Calgary Flames, 2006

Players with NHL Experience: Leland Irving (1-26th)
Total NHL Games Played: 13
Success Rate: 1/8

Whenever I think of Leland Irving, I think of playing Be a GM mode’s in EA Sports’ NHL games in the early 2010’s, and he’d be one of the young goalies you’d nab on a rebuilding team to be that elite goalie for years to come. That didn’t happen here, as Irving only managed to get into 13 NHL games in his career, with a 3-4-4 record and a .902 save percentage during that time, before spending the rest of it in Europe outside of a couple AHL stints with the Iowa Wild and San Diego Gulls. That was all the Flames got from this draft, with their remaining seven draft picks never touching the NHL. Sure, Irving was their only pick in the first two rounds, but going one-for-eight and getting 13 total games from a draft is how you guarantee being mediocre for a while, much like the Flames were from 2010 to 2014.

New York Islanders, 2007

Players with NHL Experience: Mark Katic (3-62nd)
Total NHL Games Played: 11
Success Rate: 1/5

The Islanders made an appearance on my best draft years by one team list for their work in 2009, and I also alluded to how well they did in 2008 as well. However, 2007 was a lot more forgettable. They were a bit behind the 8-ball without their first round pick, which they dealt to bring in Ryan Smyth from the Edmonton Oilers, but they didn’t do themselves any favors with the rest of their picks. They ended up with just 11 games out of this group, all coming from defenseman Mark Katic in the 2010-11 season, but he would play just one more season of hockey in the AHL before departing for Europe.

Vancouver Canucks, 2007

Players with NHL Experience: N/A
Total NHL Games Played: 0
Success Rate: 0/6

One of two instances in the salary cap era that a team has failed to draft any players that went on to play NHL games, the Canucks had a rough go in 2007. Their first round pick Patrick White was one of five players selected in the first round to not play a single game, and the rest of their picks in this draft continued that trend. Four of the six picks came in the fifth round or later, so I’ll cut them a bit of slack, but it’s really hard to not have a single player make it to the big leagues. Not even having them be middling enough in the AHL to crack the lineup for a game or two in injury relief is impressive. They couldn’t even make it work with Charles-Antoine Messier! Vancouver and Messier should be a match made in heaven… oh, right.

Montreal Canadiens, 2008

Players with NHL Experience: N/A
Total NHL Games Played: 0
Success Rate: 0/5

The Canadiens are another team that made an appearance on my best draft years by one team list with their 2007 draft, selecting Ryan McDonagh, Max Pacioretty, and P.K. Subban with their first three picks to collect some elite talent. It’s a good thing they did too, because they got nothing from their draft the following season. They didn’t have a first round pick due to trading it to the Flames as part of the return for Alex Tanguay, so it’s not like they had a lot going for them in the draft, but not getting a single game out of any of their five picks basically washed away any advantage they gained from 2007. 15 years later, second round pick Danny Kristo is the only one playing hockey at all, playing in the United Kingdom and Slovakia in 2022-23.

Pittsburgh Penguins, 2008

Players with NHL Experience: Alexander Pechurskiy (5-150th)
Total NHL Games Played: 1
Success Rate: 1/4

One game. The Penguins only got one game out of the 2008 draft. Not just that, but it was only 36 minutes that goaltender Alexander Pechurskiy managed to play in the NHL, and somehow only a year after he was drafted in the 2009-10 season, which isn’t bad for a fifth round pick. In Pittsburgh’s defense, they were without their first three picks, using them in trades that brought in Marian Hossa, Hal Gill, and Georges Laraque to help their Stanley Cup Final run in 2008, so I don’t think they’re losing too much sleep over this draft. But, by the time these players would have started to hit their stride was in that early 2010’s era where they saw their playoff struggles, so maybe the Crosby era sees more than three Cups if they did a better job of drafting in the late 2000s.

Vancouver Canucks, 2010

Players with NHL Experience: Alex Friesen (6-172nd)
Total NHL Games Played: 1
Success Rate: 1/5

The Canucks become the only team to show up on this list twice, following up a complete whiff in 2007 with the next closest thing in 2010. I wasn’t going to put them on twice initially, but the fact that they went one-for-five only a few years later and only got one game out of it is just too bad to pass up. If it was a player with 40 games, I’d maybe let it slide, but one game between two different drafts this close together is just impressively bad. What’s also somewhat funny is the fact that even though they were without their top three picks, the reason they didn’t have their second was because they dealt it for Steve Bernier, who they then traded two years later along with their first in this draft. It got them Keith Ballard, who played a part in their 2011 Cup Final run, but there’s too many connecting pieces to not enjoy this. While Jim Benning gets a lot of the credit for the demise of what was once a great Canucks team, the 2007 and 2010 drafts are dark horse candidates for that as well, giving them little depth to replace pieces as they got old or expensive. Heck, 2008 and 2009 only saw Cody Hodgson, Kevin Connauton, and Jordan Schroeder out of their draft picks play more than 100 games, and none more than 400, making for a brutal four-year stretch of drafting for this team.

Colorado Avalanche, 2014

Players with NHL Experience: Anton Lindholm (5-144th)
Total NHL Games Played: 66
Success Rate: 1/7

This point of the Avalanche’s rebuild proved to be pivotal to their Stanley Cup success in 2022, especially by landing Nathan MacKinnon first overall in 2013 and Mikko Rantanen 10th overall in 2015. They could have been even better though if they also did anything in between those two drafts. They ended up drafting Connor Bleackley with their first round pick, who is the only first round pick in that draft to not play an NHL game, and he’s spent the past three seasons in the ECHL, so a late bloom isn’t likely either. It doesn’t help that the next two picks after Bleackley were Jared McCann and David Pastrnak. Getting 66 games out of Anton Lindholm, a defenseman drafted in the late fifth round, isn’t too bad, but him being your only thing close to a hit isn’t too great either.

Ottawa Senators, 2014

Players with NHL Experience: Andreas Englund (2-40th)
Total NHL Games Played: 80
Success Rate: 1/5

In 2014, the Senators were in the middle of an inconsistent stretch of competitiveness while Erik Karlsson and Jason Spezza were still on the team before their eventual fall to their current rebuilding state, and a big reason for that was their poor drafting throughout that time. From 2012 to 2016, the only player of note that they got out of their drafts was Thomas Chabot, with Cody Ceci and Curtis Lazar being the only other ones to play games but not quite living up to their draft hype. Nothing summed up that stretch better than the 2014 draft, where their only pick to play games was defenseman Andreas Englund, who’s played 80 games up to this point, although 47 of them came last season with the Avalanche and the Blackhawks. I’ll give them the obligatory slack for not having a first round pick due to the Bobby Ryan trade, but it probably would have been nice to have a couple more players out of this draft. This isn’t even their only draft with one NHLer, as 2007 saw them go one-for-four and get 77 games from Jim O’Brien.

Chicago Blackhawks, 2015

Players with NHL Experience: Dennis Gilbert (3-91st)
Total NHL Games Played: 48
Success Rate: 1/7

Many could argue that this was the beginning of the end of the Blackhawks’ early 2010’s dynasty. One of the biggest keys to the Blackhawks’ success was drafting players that rounded out their depth, and fresh off winning their third Stanley Cup in six seasons, they were going to need it as the cap crunch got tighter. And with that, all they have to show for it is defenseman Dennis Gilbert. He’s played 48 games across four seasons since 2018, but has never been a consistent mainstay, with just two goals, five assists, and seven points. It didn’t help that the Blackhawks didn’t have a first round pick because they dealt it for Antoine Vermette, but he was on the Cup winning team, so you can’t really criticize the trade too much.

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