The Rookie Draft

[Rob]

I'm not so sure on this point...

I know personally being a team that is in the hunt for a playoff position, this year in the Supp draft I passed on the NHL draft's picks 10+ in the 1st round in favour of players who were decent in the AHL and I was hoping that would make an impact in the NHL this year.... Versus waiting for that 18-year old for 2-3 years to become a fantasy asset.

Older AHL/college/junior players I took a gamble on who definitely have a lower ceiling than the 2016 NHL draftees, but who might contribute a lot sooner than those 2016 NHL draftees. (By "older" I mean 20-23 years old versus 18 years old).

To be honest it is still a strategy I would use for the next couple years while my team is competitive. I don't see a point in my stashing a player who might be in the NHL in 2-4 years putting up 1.5 fanpts per game, when I could have that same player putting up 1.4 fanpts per game this season or next for me kind of thing.

I think you're making Shooter's point.

[Rob]

I don't have a problem with this, personally, as the FA pool is very thin (look at it today).

That, and people in the 3rd round of our draft are scrounging for the most part, or just taking the next available NHL draftee who is a 3rd or 4th rounder.

This is the 3rd round from this year's draft:

Round 3
1) D Nikita Tryamkin
2) RW Seth Griffith
3) G Tyler Parsons
4) G Garret Sparks
5) RW Anton Rodin
6) G Mantas Armalis
7) G Wouter Peeters
8) MISSED
9) G Jared Coreau
10) C Jonathan Dahlen
11) G Evan Smith
12) D Jack Dougherty
13) G Igor Shesterkin
14) LW Kirill Kaprizov
15) RW Tobias Lindberg
16) C Tyler Graovac
17) D Jacob Larsson
18) C Maxim Letunov
19) D Joe Hicketts
20) LW Dmytro Timashov

How many of those players realistically are going to be on a fantasy roster in 2-3 years still? There's a lot of C-level fantasy talent mixed with a lot of hit or miss players with the percentage being like 5% hit, 95% miss.

Tryamkin was a nice pick, but how fantasy relevant will he be? Your Larsson is a nice prospect, but again, how fantasy relevant will he be.
He would be available to be drafted in the next Supp draft in all likelihood, but would he be? Not sure.
I took complete fliers on Griffith and Rodin. They've worked out splendidly for me so far
Given that we get 3 new prospects a year for free, I see a lot of these players being dropped off full minor league rosters as the new draftees come in.

So, again to get back to you point, these are the 20 players that would get pushed out if we were to change something with the draft. I'm not sure we would be missing a lot...

2016 is hard to judge, but I think we can start to judge 2013 pretty well. 

Round 3
1) PASSED
2) C Rocco Grimaldi
3) RW Mark Stone
4) D Matt Bartkowski
5) G Reto Berra
6) SKIPPED
7) C Jacob de la Rose
8) G Sami Aittokallio
9) G Philippe Desrosiers
10) RW Matej Stransky
11) D Frank Corrado
12) LW Anthony Camara
13) RW Josh Nichols
14) G Jaroslav Janus
15) LW Matt Puempel
16) C Johan Larsson
17) G Connor Hellebuyck
18) D Shea Theodore
19) G Juuse Saros
20) LW Pat Maroon

Now just look at those late St Louis picks and you'll probably understand Bob's perspective... hahaha

[shooter47]

I don't have a problem with this, personally, as the FA pool is very thin (look at it today).

That, and people in the 3rd round of our draft are scrounging for the most part, or just taking the next available NHL draftee who is a 3rd or 4th rounder.

This is the 3rd round from this year's draft:

Round 3
1) D Nikita Tryamkin
2) RW Seth Griffith
3) G Tyler Parsons
4) G Garret Sparks
5) RW Anton Rodin
6) G Mantas Armalis
7) G Wouter Peeters
8) MISSED
9) G Jared Coreau
10) C Jonathan Dahlen
11) G Evan Smith
12) D Jack Dougherty
13) G Igor Shesterkin
14) LW Kirill Kaprizov
15) RW Tobias Lindberg
16) C Tyler Graovac
17) D Jacob Larsson
18) C Maxim Letunov
19) D Joe Hicketts
20) LW Dmytro Timashov

How many of those players realistically are going to be on a fantasy roster in 2-3 years still? There's a lot of C-level fantasy talent mixed with a lot of hit or miss players with the percentage being like 5% hit, 95% miss.

Tryamkin was a nice pick, but how fantasy relevant will he be? Your Larsson is a nice prospect, but again, how fantasy relevant will he be.
He would be available to be drafted in the next Supp draft in all likelihood, but would he be? Not sure.
I took complete fliers on Griffith and Rodin. They've worked out splendidly for me so far
Given that we get 3 new prospects a year for free, I see a lot of these players being dropped off full minor league rosters as the new draftees come in.

So, again to get back to you point, these are the 20 players that would get pushed out if we were to change something with the draft. I'm not sure we would be missing a lot...

There were only 2 players selected in the 3rd round of our supplemental draft this year that were picked from this years draft rookies. That would be Tyler Parsons (2nd round goalie) and Wouter Peeters (3rd Round Goalie). So your statement that people are just picking the next 3rd or 4th round draftee is completely inaccurate.

Its a little early to judge the 3rd round from this years draft isn't it? We do have drafts from 2 and 3 years ago that we can look at though to see how many players picked in this round will still be on rosters.

2013 Supplemental Draft:

Round 3
1) PASSED
2) C Rocco Grimaldi  Calgary Dropped Grimaldi, He was selected again in the 2014 draft by St. Louis and eventually dropped.
3) RW Mark Stone      Still with Edmonton and ranked as the 32nd best RW
4) D Matt Bartkowski     Currently an FA
5) G Reto Berra        Currently on Anaheims Roster
6) SKIPPED
7) C Jacob de la Rose     Currently an FA
8) G Sami Aittokallio     Currently an FA 
9) G Philippe Desrosiers     Currently in Edmonton's Minors
10) RW Matej Stransky     Currently an FA
11) D Frank Corrado     Currently In Anaheim Minors
12) LW Anthony Camara     Currently an FA
13) RW Josh Nichols     Currently an FA
14) G Jaroslav Janus     Currently an FA
15) LW Matt Puempel     Currently on Anaheims Roster
16) C Johan Larsson     Currently on Buffalo's Roster
17) G Connor Hellebuyck     Currently on St. Louis Roster
18) D Shea Theodore     Currently Edmonton's Roster
19) G Juuse Saros     Currently on St. Louis Roster 15th Ranked Goalie
20) LW Pat Maroon     Currently on Carolina Roster as 19th Ranked LW

10/18 are still on a teams roster after 3 years. This was actually a pretty good third round in the first supplemental draft and has produced a couple of good wingers and a starting NHL Goalie. There are still a couple of highly regarded prospects as well that could make this look even better in the future.

2014 Supplemental Draft:

Round 3
1) LW Nicolas Deslauriers     Currently on Vancouver's roster
2) PASS
3) LW Adam Lowry     Currently on Arizona's Roster
4) RW Oliver Bjorkstrand     Currently on Detroit's Roster
5) C Rocco Grimaldi      Currently an FA
6) C Joakim Nordstrom     Currently an FA
7) G Brandon Halverson     Currently in Arizona's Minors
8) C Victor Rask     Currently on Toronto's Roster
9) PASS
10) from G Brent Moran     Currently on Philadelphia's Minors
11) D Christian Folin     Currently on Carolina's Roster
12) G Ville Husso     Currently in Edmonton's Minors
13) PASS
14) F Pavel Buchnevich     Currently on Detroit's Roster
15) C Ryan Spooner     Currently on Colorado's Roster
16) D Alexey Marchenko     Currently on Arizona's Roster
17) LW Vladislav Kamenev     Currently in Carolina's Minors
18) LW Kenny Agostino     Currently in Colorado's Minors
19) D Mike Matheson     Currently on St. Louis Roster
20) D Alex Petrovic     Currently on Detroit's Roster

15/17 are still on a roster after 2 years. This years 3rd round doesn't have as much star power as the 2013 3rd round but there are some solid young players across the board. In a year from now some of these players might advance to the same level as Stone and Maroon...

So, again to get back to you point, these are the 20 players that would get pushed out if we were to change something with the draft. I'm not sure we would be missing a lot...

I really disagree with this. This will decrease the amount of prospects that teams are acquiring on cheap prospect contracts which really helps all the teams in our league. I prefer to keep younger players being acquired thru the supplemental draft and draft keepers instead of thru FA.

[Rob]

Let's expand our minors roster to 15. Gives teams the extra flexibility to let players mature in the minors, but isn't overkill and won't completely dry out our FA prospect pool.

We just did that!  I was against going to 12 out of fear of thinning the draft pool.  But I was outvoted then.  So we may as well add it to the agenda, lol.

1) Potential changes to Keeper structure
2) Adjustments to cap equation
3) Minor league roster size
4) I think there was something else...

[Rob]

Any easy solution, if we were to protect 1st rounders, is to add a round in the Supplemental.

[Capn Cally]

To Shooter's Point:

I see where you're coming from, I just think that increasing the quality of the players for our supp draft pool would be a good thing, or at least we GM's will have a much better idea of if those prospects have a legitimate shot at the NHL soon - that 2013 and 2014 draft, did we really know if those kids were going to develop into solid NHL prospects? Let alone have any impact in fantasy scoring.

Here's the thing though, the way the last round of supp draft benefits GM's is if they really do homework and scour the internet sites that list the prospects. I mean, it's not that hard to find some lists of prospects 300 players long, it's taking the time to go through and see who's been drafted already in our league and who hasn't.
Not everyone has the time to do that - so it is the dedicated GM's (like yourself Shooter), that benefit the most. The guys that are in here for the fun of it and maybe don't take it as serious couldn't be bothered as much.

Again, I do see where you're coming from, and I like having 3rd rounders myself, to take fliers on players that are hit or miss (ie. Anton Rodin).

I just think it would be good to increase the quality of players in the supp draft a little bit more, making draft picks a little more valuable as trade chips.

And as mentioned, ensuring everyone has a chance to acquire an NHL 1st rounder in the supp draft (unless they trade their 1st rounder away)... and also ensuring people can choose that 1st rounder and not be stuck with a great hockey prospect, but bad fantasy prospect - such as a Dman who projects as a shut-down D with no offensive upside at the top level.

To Rob's suggestion:
I think this would be a logical suggestion. I could see some teams skipping the 4th round picks as well here if they've already kept 3 draftees, and then drafted 3 more in the first 3 rounds, so I don't know if it would be a huge deal to do this. I'd be for it.

[Rob]

To Rob's suggestion:
I think this would be a logical suggestion. I could see some teams skipping the 4th round picks as well here if they've already kept 3 draftees, and then drafted 3 more in the first 3 rounds, so I don't know if it would be a huge deal to do this. I'd be for it.

I can't see too many teams keeping all 3 if 1st rounders aren't available to keep.  IMO there's better options even in that last Supp round.

[Anthony]

To Rob's suggestion:
I think this would be a logical suggestion. I could see some teams skipping the 4th round picks as well here if they've already kept 3 draftees, and then drafted 3 more in the first 3 rounds, so I don't know if it would be a huge deal to do this. I'd be for it.

You can potentially look at giving GM's the option of taking a 3rd keeper from their NHL team or a 4th round pick. The pick can be untradable to keep things from getting messy. This way we are still only adding 6 prospects.

[Anthony]

Or just make it 2 keepers from each NHL team and add the 4th round

[Capn Cally]

I can't see too many teams keeping all 3 if 1st rounders aren't available to keep.  IMO there's better options even in that last Supp round.

That's very true.

Myself I'd probably only keep the 2nd rounder given how my minors always seems to be full anyways.

This suggestion wasn't so much about the Supp Draft I think, as it was to help the bottom teams gain a better prospect if they keep their 1st Round Picks.
I mean, it comes down to the Supp Draft with our suggestions, but helping the lower teams have an "easier" time to rebuild by adding a top-valued prospect was the main goal.