How Many 20 Goal Scorers Has Your Team Drafted After the 1st Round Since 1997?

I was motivated to write this article after reading yet another doom and gloom article over at Oilersnation re: the Oiler’s record of drafting 20 goal scorers after the 1st round.

Now, it’s not that I didn’t believe the Oilers were poor in the category of drafting 20-goal scorers after the 1st round but I felt compelled to see how many other teams were JUST AS POOR or worse than the Oilers over the last two decades.

The post over at ON goes back as far as 20 years and I think it’s fair we do the same here.

So here is each team’s record of drafting a player who goes on to score 20 goals for their team since the 1997 draft.

Anaheim (1): Matt Beleskey
Arizona (0): ZERO
Boston (4): Milan Lucic, Brad Marchand, David Krejci, Patrice Bergergon
Buffalo (4): Derek Roy, Jason Pominville, Ales Kotalik, Maxim Afinigenov
Calgary (3): Johnny Gaudreau, Micheal Ferland, Matthew Lombardi
Carolina (4): Sebastien Aho, Victor Rask, Erik Cole, Shane Willis
Chicago (5): Brandon Saad, Andrew Shaw, Troy Brouwer, Tyler Arnason, Kyle Calder
Colorado (4): Ryan O’Reilly, Paul Stastny, David Jones, Marek Svatos
Columbus (1): Cam Atkinson
Dallas (2): Jamie Benn, James Neal
Detroit (7): Tomas Tatar, Gustav Nyquist, Justin Abdelkader, Johan Franzen, Valtteri Filppula, Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk
Edmonton (3): Mike Comrie, Shawn Horcoff, Jarett Stoll
Florida (3): Vincent: Trocheck, David Booth, Kristian Huselius
Los Angeles (2): Tyler Toffoli, Mike Cammalleri
Minnesota (1): Jason Zucker
Montreal (4): Brendan Gallagher, Tomas Plekanec, Mike Ribeiro, Michael Ryder
Nashville (5): Viktor Arvidsson, Craig Smith, Patric Hornqvist, Shea Weber, Denis Arkhipov
New Jersey (3): Adam Henrique, Scott Gomez, Brian Gionta
NY Isles (3): Anders Lee, Blake Comeau, Frans Nielsen
NY Rangers (5): Derek Stepan, Brandon Dubinsky, Ryan Callahan, Petr Prucha, Mike York
Ottawa (6): Mark Stone, Mike Hoffman, Zack Smith, Antoine Vermette, Mike Fisher, Magnus Arvedson
Philadelphia (0): ZERO
Pittsburgh (2): Tyler Kennedy, Ryan Malone
San Jose (3): Joe Pavelski, Ryan Clowe, Jonathan Cheechoo
St.Louis (2): David Backes, Lee Stempniak
Tampa Bay (4): Brayden Point, Ondrej Palat, Nikita Kucherov, Brad Richards
Toronto (3): Connor Brown, Nikolay Kulemin, Alexei Ponikarovsky
Vancouver (2): Mason Raymond, Jannik Hansen
Washington (1): Matt Pettinger
Winnipeg/Atlanta (0): ZERO

Shocking isn’t it? You’d think some teams would have more than they do but a lot of clubs develop goal scorers for other teams. ‘Tis the nature of the biz.

So I guess it’s safe to say that drafting and developing a 20-goal scorer after the 1st round of the draft isn’t as easy as Reid Wilkins and Baggedmilk have it cracked up to be. I’d say the Oilers are right in the thick of it if we’re being honest. But should this really be a surprise to anybody. The drop off in talent from the 1st round to the 2nd is pretty large is it not?

Is it a problem that the Oilers have only managed to draft and develop three 20-goal scorers for their own club coming out of the 2nd round or later?

I don’t think it is “a problem” per se. It’d be nice to have more, of course. But look at the teams above like Pittsburgh for example. Two Cups in the last two years and I don’t see one player from those rosters who scored 20 goals that was drafted after the 1st round. I have seen them trade their way to complimentary scoring over the years though.

If you can’t draft and develop players that are able to contribute at the NHL level then you’ll be stuck trying to build your roster through trades and free agency, something that never works in a cap world.

There is a whole lot of truth to this quote from the article at Oilersnation but it’s not 100% truth.

I’ll get folks on Twitter saying that the Oilers should get good players and keep them. I agree but did the Colorado Avalanche simply go out and get good players this summer? I recall them dealing one of their better players in Matt Duchene. Before that was Ryan O’Reilly. Was last season a complete aberration for the Avs? Could this season be just that for the Oilers?

Should the Oilers have done a better job drafting over the last 20 years? I think it’s safe to say the answer is, yes but what team is truly happy with their draft record in that time? Is it really hard to do? F’n rights it is. Should we take this opportunity to shit all over the Oilers some more? Probably not.

I’ll say this though, I haven’t been more optimistic about a group of prospects coming in for quite a while. Kailer Yamamoto, Stuart Skinner, Ostap Safin, Kirill Maksimov, Tyler Benson, Dylan Wells, Aapeli Rasanen, Ethan Bear, Caleb Jones, William Lagesson, and possibly Tyler Vesel are all going to be joining the Oilers’ AHL club in Bakersfield in the next couple of seasons. All of those players apart from Yamamoto are 2nd round picks and later plus they’re trending UP!

Under Peter Chiarelli, the Oilers’ prospect cupboard is being re-stocked at a rate much faster than previous regimes and I believe this is another reason that he should be given the opportunity to carry out his 5-yr plan. He’s mopping up the mess that was left for him all whilst re-building this franchise.

In all honesty, I think an exercise like this one is almost pointless because of the findings for one but also it really is just nitpicking. To add to that, since Chiarelli joined the club, he’s axed most of the amateur scouts. So this is a near-brand new team re-building the pipeline for the Oilers and is it fair to compare that to the previous scouting teams?

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Beer League Hero Written by:

I'm the Beer League Hero! I am from Camrose, Alberta but I make my home in Taipei City, Taiwan. I've been through the ups and downs and the highs and the Lowes, the Bonsignores and the McDavids, the Sathers and the Eakins but I'll never leave my Oilers, no matter what! They're with me until the end and then some. GO OILERS GO!

One Comment

  1. Guest
    February 19, 2018

    What about undrafted free agents? Why wouldn’t they be counted here as well?

    Jeff Halpern was a 20 goal scorer for the Caps.

Comments are closed.