NHL Draft

[BC/HE]

Very interesting in seeing which schools were involved. Hockey East by far had the most drafted (25) compared to Big Ten (15) NCHC (14) ECAC (10) and WCHA (1). Atlantic Hockey had none. Maine was the only Hockey East school without a draftee while Michigan State was the only Big Ten school out as well. In the NCHC Colorado College, Nebraska-Omaha and Western Michigan were left out too. Harvard was the clear big winner having 7 of the 10 ECAC picks with only Quinnipiac, Colgate and Clarkson getting 1 selection each. Getting 3 or more selections in the first 4 rounds were North Dakota and Michigan with 4 and Harvard, BU, BC and Minn-Duluth with 3 each. Other than Harvard the biggest surprise may have been Merrimack getting 2 first 4 round picks. While Harvard led the way in picks they clearly were devastated by early departures in the off season but in comparison to league members they were by far the most dominant in NHL picks this year. North Dakota was clearly the other big winner with 6 picks while the rest of the NCHC had only 8 total with 3 going to Minnesota Duluth and Denver and 1 each to St. Cloud and Miami. Hockey East was quite evenly spaced with BU, Northeastern and UMass with 4 selections, BC and Providence with 3 and UNH , Merrimack and UConn with 2 apiece, and UMassLowell with 1.

[Bonin21]

Some of your numbers are wrong. There were 65 total, not 64. BU had 3, not 4. DU had 3, not 2.

[BC/HE]

Some of your numbers are wrong. There were 65 total, not 64. BU had 3, not 4. DU had 3, not 2.

I did miss the 2nd Denver pick in the 4th round as it was just 2 picks after so make their number 3 and the NCHC 14. However this site(USCHO) has BU listed with 4. Hockey East has Shalaine or Shlaine listed as for UConn while here they list him for BU. So either BU still has 4 or only 3 with UConn also as 3. Where is he headed? Off by 1 but the headline here says almost 70, why not 65?

[LordofBrewtown]

So, what is your takeaway/what are we supposed to make of these numbers? By themselves, they lack context. I'm too lazy to do the work to look up myself; but, would be interested in things like:

Is this more/less than historical norms (as % of picks overall)?
Is this more/less in the first round, first 3 rounds, last X rounds (again as a % of picks if we go back in history further)?
Is there more parity (larger spread of teams) for these picks?
Is the conference split about the same as normal?
What do the trends mean for college hockey?
How does the number of picks (broken down by early rounds vs late rounds) correlate to a team's performance? Do first and second round picks correlate highly to team success, or does it have a smaller impact than one might think due to those players likely being early departures? Is the # of later round draft picks a better indicator of team success?


And questions that might be more pertinent to NHL fans:
Do certain teams seem to avoid drafting college hockey players? If so, does that seem to a more or less successful team building strategy? Is there any timing differences/trends that can be noted: maybe Team B seems reluctant to draft college players in the first 2 rounds, but leans more to college players than others in later rounds?

[Split-N]

...Do certain teams seem to avoid drafting college hockey players?...

Put another way, the question would seem to be, are certain NHL teams inherently hostile to NCAA hockey? Opinions welcome.

[Bonin21]

Columbus and Dallas don't draft many