The NHL Draft acts as the proverbial reset of the NHL calendar. Teams re-evaluate the direction of their organizations, make roster decisions, and welcome a new crop of drafted prospect into the fold. Irrespective of pick position, each team’s goal is to select players most likely to play in the NHL and to sustain success. Most players arrive to the NHL in their early 20s, which leaves teams having to interpolate what a player will be 4-5 years out. This project attempts to address this difficult task of non-linear player projections. The goal is to build a model for NHL success/value using a player’s development — specifically using all current/historical scoring data to estimate the performance of a player in subsequent seasons and the possible leagues the player is expected to be in.
Draft Pick Value
When the Trade Market and Draft Market intersect and how to exploit them
Image Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons
The biggest incentive for teams to employ analytics is exploiting market inefficiencies. Whenever you can exploit an inefficiency in a market it gives your team a comparative advantage over the others. In other words, you raise your team’s chances of being a successful club.
I took a look at previous work from Eric Tulsky and Michael Schuckers on draft pick value and used them to show how one may use statistical analysis to take advantage of market inefficiencies.
Let’s take a look.
Hockey Graphs 