Risk Aversion

One of the key elements in the recent success of the Edmonton Oilers at the draft table: reducing risk.

Back in the olden days, the Edmonton Oilers treated the first round like a crapshoot. Jesse Niinimaki was taken in the middle of round one despite being ranked #50 on the European list (making him a probable 4th rder). After the draft, we were told that the organization had heard New Jersey planned to take him so they were forced into the selection. A cynic might suggest that a team like NJD (run by honest Lou) might make up stuff and leak the rumor in hopes that someone bought it.

The problem with this kind of thing is that if your reach pick (that’s what I call them, reach picks) falls down the stairs or hurts his arm or finds women, God, liquor or ganja then you’re s.o.l. I believe Kevin Prendergast lost his job because of Niinimaki, the Pouliot/Jacques 2003 draft and the Alex Plante 2007 selection. All of them had their careers impacted by injury. Doesn’t matter. It’s on the scouting team and their leader (KP) is no longer employed as a scouting director.

The Oilers made some changes during the latter portion of last decade, and one of those changes involved elevating Stu (Magnificent Bastard) MacGregor to the position of scouting director. MacGregor has been in the position for the last three drafts and this weekend will be number four.

MBS is risk averse. His selections of Taylor Hall, Magnum PS and Jordan Eberle were all in the range of expectation, and he’s rarely gone outside the norm during the first 75 picks (Abney, Hesketh being examples). His 2010 second round is already being compared to KP’s 2002 (Stoll, Greene and JDD) after the club plucked Tyler Pitlick, Martin Marincin and Curtis Hamilton in the second round a year ago.

A list like Bob McKenzie’s is a very valuable tool for the organization that can get past it’s own ego and recognize that these are in fact the consensus best player’s available. In fact, if a player is rated highly and your scouts are telling you to stay away, wouldn’t you like a very good reason for it? Wouldn’t you hope that scout had a really good reason? 

You could take Bob McKenzie’s top 60 to the draft, follow it exactly and come out on top of some teams on draft weekend. Scouting can help, but it can also hinder. What if you "saw him good" on the way day he was "beyond his best?" Should one of your scouts get stubborn on a fellow (say, Kenta Nilsson on Alexei Mikhnov) then you end up with a Traktor boy instead of an NHL player.

Here is Bob McKenzie’s top 60 list. I’d guess that Oilers picks 1, 19, 31 and maybe 61 could be on that list, and there are probably a couple more Edmonton selections on the NHL combine invite list.