A specific phrase of five words can sometimes shut down the discussion about the NHL draft, and amateur procurement as a whole.
Mostly, it's used as a placeholder for someone's contribution of why they'd choose a certain player out of a group, which is half of what you've got to bring to the table for draft talk.
One can survey the group, and end up with an answer from each and every member, but only have been given half of a full effort from many of them:
Ask a question like, for example, who should the Oilers select in the first round of the 2019 draft. You know what you'll get, a lot of the time?
Pick the best player available.
In a situation where we're watching live - that very day in June - and have the precise pool of names available to us as the Oilers are called to the microphone, this could be accompanied by an actual name: Pick the best player available, Player X.
The problem with this is, nobody has ever not picked what they believe to be the best player available.
If you've employed the phrase before(you'd join my past self), what I've just said sounds pretty stupid.
Because the BPA argument only arose in the first place from scouting directors and general managers missing on "better" players by valuing attributes that the critic doesn't value, most commonly passing over more offensively talented players for ones who they perceive to have a better attitude, defensive game, and work ethic, with each of those traits being intertwined. Or, or also, placing a ratio between positional value and making the case that the amplified value of a centre over a winger ends in the centre outvaluing the winger, despite an initial talent deficit.
Trouble is, that's not a process of not picking the best player available and instead selecting a player with those traits, it's a process of thinking those traits makes them the best player available.
In defensive and offensive differences, what they're arguing is that a player who will drive less goals for, but also less goals against will in the end be creating greater differences between goals for and against than a player with simply a higher goals for number. This must logically be the better player, because thegame is decided by goals and goals against.
In attitude and personality differences, what's being argued is that between two raw talents, the better work ethic will outpace the better talent, and as they develop and eventually turn into men, playing in the NHL, the better worker will have honed himself into a more valuable player.
In positional value differences, this manifests itself in population differences of competent NHLers at different positions.
Imagine, for a moment, that one of the brilliant analytical minds in the game today actually and successfully developed a Goals Against Replacement metric that was 100% predictive and valid. Please don't drag me yet, this is a thought exercise.
Trouble is, that's not a process of not picking the best player available and instead selecting a player with those traits, it's a process of thinking those traits makes them the best player available.
In defensive and offensive differences, what they're arguing is that a player who will drive less goals for, but also less goals against will in the end be creating greater differences between goals for and against than a player with simply a higher goals for number. This must logically be the better player, because thegame is decided by goals and goals against.
In attitude and personality differences, what's being argued is that between two raw talents, the better work ethic will outpace the better talent, and as they develop and eventually turn into men, playing in the NHL, the better worker will have honed himself into a more valuable player.
In positional value differences, this manifests itself in population differences of competent NHLers at different positions.
Imagine, for a moment, that one of the brilliant analytical minds in the game today actually and successfully developed a Goals Against Replacement metric that was 100% predictive and valid. Please don't drag me yet, this is a thought exercise.
Imagine this was so, and accompany this vision with a populational difference in different positions much like there is today. During the NHL draft, the Oilers take to the podium with the following players available:
- Lucas Larsson, RHD, 5 GAR
- Carson Crookshank, LHD, 10 GAR
Then, take that Lucas Larsson will be one of the highest GAR right-handed defenceman in the league, with the average top pairing RHD outputting 2 GAR, and the population of top pairing RHD is all over the place relative to the top-pairing average. But the average top pairing LHD outputs 10 GAR, and they all closely populate the top-pairing average.
Therefore having a good RHD, and replacing a bad one with a good one, is a more valuable change in player personnel, results in a better goalshare, and the RHD is the net more valuable player.
…
Now, the problem with this is it's generally not what happens in reality. As I've mentioned, the pick best player available argument's genesis arose as an antithesis to the scourge of overvaluing position, non-hockey attributes, and defensive contributions, resulting in fans watching their team pass over talent for their guy. The draft is profiled more publicly than ever before, with more and more fans of a team looking at a lottery position by midseason doing their due diligence, watching highlights and looking up scoring data. This, coupled with the historical phenomenon of picking by pure scoring rates outperforming traditional scouting, especially when it comes to forwards, gives fans ever-increasing confidence to criticize - often fairly - their teams draft during the moments it unfolds, and placing their hopes even before that that the team will pick the player they like the best.
What those team's mistakes actually are, is drafting out lower tiers before the current one has been exhausted.
I'm very confident in the concept of tiers in prospects because of two reasons:
- The parallel with the highest league. In every method of evaluation for players, everyone agrees that the further away that you get from the very best players, the more players there are directly adjacent to each other in value. Replacing Connor McDavid with any other player makes your hockey team worse. But, with each player lesser than that on this team, each individual has a larger group of players around the league that they could be swapped for with negligible effect, provided they play the same position/are the same age. Swap Leo Komarov for Justin Abdelkader and nothing really happens to your team.
- It's a very popular method for configuring your draft board. Scott Wheeler and Corey Pronman are draft voices I listen to all year long, both of their modus operandi involve the implementation of tiers. I'm confident that, even if other prospect experts simply send out a numbered ranking, they would also have them broken up into tiers in their head. When speaking about drafts a big further into the future than a few months away, what's often said about players is that they're a first rounder, or a second rounder, or a mid rounder, indirectly reinforcing this concept.
In a way, the only real difference between most draft boards that follow similar philosophies is when one analyst has a player in one tier and the opposing analyst has the same player in another tier.
So when an entire tier of prospects who are of similar value (and the last thing one does in their draft board is the specific ordering of players in the same tier, because it's the most arbitrary and subjective of any of the processes) are available when a team is to make their selection, and no one from a higher tier remains, there is no real best player. You see this effect when a player gets taken out of their exact spot at the top end of the draft - say Kotkaniemi at 3rd this past June - no draft experts that I follow criticized Montreal for picking slightly out of turn; they took the best player available because they believe in a differential between the intrinsic value of the two positions played by similar prospects to make the player they selected more valuable.
Naturally, then, if multiple teams do this in a row, eventually a player drops out of their tier and it becomes no contest, select that player.
Which teams are afforded this luxury, though?
Teams who have depth at every position in the NHL; having no immediate need positionally?
Well, no, because their pipeline is likely barren from graduating so many of their NHL-potential prospects to the NHL. They'll need to then start from scratch, and acquire players at the premium positions first.
Is it teams that have no depth at any position in the NHL, and are rebuilding?
No, because they'll need to order their selections based off of development timings and build out of the back-end, as (almost) every rebuilding team tends to try to do.
What about teams who have star-potential prospects at every position?
I'd argue that doesn't exist, because stars hit the league early so you can never really be on top of all positions in that way. As soon as you plug one hole, another appears after a player jumps straight from junior hockey to the NHL, or does so after just one extra year, one extra draft for the team to add prospects.
I think, more than any other situation, it's a team whose pipeline deficits are in the exact areas that there's a general surplus around the league.
It's a team that could use left handed defensemen(perhaps smaller ones), and/or wingers with skill at the expense of size or two-way ability that can most often pick players who are the best available player at the time of their selection, guys who have fallen out of their talent tier.
Sound like anyone in particular?
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