The value of a New York Islanders 3rd round pick
If the Isles held a trade deadline fire sale, what might it have yieled?
What is the value of a 3rd-round pick to the New York Islanders?
LowAttendance has been pondering this since the conclusion of the trade deadline. In the lead up, some fans seemed to think it was a foregone conclusion Cal Clutterbuck would be traded.
Cal’s value was a mid-round pick, possibly a 3rd-rounder, according to some trades proposed. As a pending Unrestricted Free Agent (UFA), why not unload everything not tied down and plan for the future?
As we now know, Clutterbuck didn’t get traded. A few days after the trade deadline, it was announced Clutterbuck was out for the season - any trades the Isles might have been entertaining would have been nixed by this as Cal would have immediately failed the physical.
But let’s pretend that some fans had their way and Clutterbuck did join another team. In this arbitrary exercise we’ll say the Isles got that 3rd-round pick. How valuable is that?
(Just before we go on, the point of this article isn’t to mock anyone’s trades. Hockey is meant to be about entertainment and I don’t want to remove that from anyone. Really, it was just a curiosity to see what might have happened if the Isles did collect some assets.)
Garth Snow
The first stop is to consider the Garth Snow era. Snow’s era is helpful because it was lengthy (12 years) and also concluded long enough ago that some of his more recent 3rd-rounders are old enough to be a realistic NHL option.
Snow took over as GM in July 2006, just after the 2006 draft, so his first draft was in 2007 and his last was in 2017. Indeed, the first draft pick he handed in was a 3rd-rounder - the team drafted defenseman Mark Katic.
Katic ended up playing 11 games for the Islanders and recorded 1 assist. Those were the only games he played in the NHL. According to HockeyDB he is still playing, currently in Mannheim, Germany.
Over Snow’s tenure he made 15 picks in the 3rd-round. Here’s the list that have played more than 100 games for the Islanders: Adam Pelech.
Ilya Sorokin was a 3rd-round pick and almost certainly will play 100 games but hasn’t made it that far yet. If you include Sorokin, it means from Snow’s tenure, only 13% of 3rd-round picks ever made an impact for the Islanders.
Anders Nillson, Andrei Pedan and Katic are the only other 3rd-round picks to play a single NHL game that were drafted by Snow. Nillson played 23 games for the Islanders but has played 161 career games in the NHL. Pedan played 13 NHL games but they were with Vancouver. If you hadn’t already done the math in your head, that’s a strike of 33% to play just a single NHL game for any team, let alone the team that drafted you.
Back to 1996
Even if we go back another 11 drafts to 1996 when the Islanders took Zdeno Chara, it is only Frans Nielsen, Mattias Weinhandl and, of course, Chara to ever play more than 100 NHL games after being selected in the 3rd-round.
Weinhandl only played 182 NHL games (mostly with the Islanders) before moving back to Europe.
Chara had tremendous success as a player, though thanks to Mike Milburry, with other teams.
Nielsen is the lone player who had the kind of success GMs hope for when they make a 3rd-round pick. He played 606 games across 8 seasons with the Islanders, tallying 349 points at a 0.57 points per game pace. As a UFA, he ended up signing with the Detroit Red Wings and continued to play 925 NHL games.
So how valuable is a 3rd-round pick?
From 1996 to 2017, the Islanders organisation made 24 picks in the 3rd-round. In 21 years, only 5 players selected (Chara, Weinhandl, Nielsen, Pelech and Sorokin*) ever played 100 NHL games. That’s a 21% ‘success’ rate.
Of course, ‘success’ is an interesting term - Chara’s impact was with other teams and Weinhandl’s was minimal in the greater scheme of things.
Of the other 19 players taken in the 3rd-round, 15 never even played an NHL game (that’s 62.5%). Of those who did, the highest number of games played was 13 games by Andrei Pedan, and as we discussed earlier, those were with Vancouver not with the Islanders.
If we return to the present, at time of writing, the Islanders still have their 3rd-round pick in this year’s draft. If we follow the (admittedly grossly simplified and arbitrary) data points above, there is a 62.5% chance that whoever the Islanders take never plays a single NHL game.
Taking it one step further, there is a (nearly) 4 in 5 chance that the pick will end up never really having a ‘successful’ NHL career of even 100 games.
Even when the pick does go on to play 100 NHL games with the Islanders, the value of those games differs wildly. 100 games of Zdeno Chara is worth a lot more than 100 games of Mattias Weinhandl.
If we expand our scope and look at the rest of the league, the sample we’ve picked shows the Islanders have actually overachieved in their success rate of 3rd-rounders.
This analysis shows that only 13% of 3rd-round picks between 2000 to 2009 ever reach the 100 game mark.
This academic paper shows that a 3rd-round pick has a 56.7% chance to play at least one NHL game - for forwards, they have a 17% chance to play more than 200 games, for defenseman it is 14% and for goalies it is only 8%.
The bottom line is 3rd-round picks are a long-shot to even make the team. When they pay off, they pay off in a big way, for example, Adam Pelech. But for every Pelech, there are 4 players who will be forgotten until a blogger randomly dregs up their names to make a point years after they were drafted.
Development time
Even when a 3rd-rounder reaches their ceiling, there is no instant gratification and it isn’t uncommon to have to wait half a decade to see the returns.
Adam Pelech was drafted in 2012. While he played his first NHL game in the 2015-16 season and played 44 games the next season, he didn’t establish himself until the 2017-18 season when Barry Trotz took over as head coach. It took 3 years for him to make the NHL and then another 2 before truly establishing himself.
Ilya Sorokin was taken in 2014 and didn’t play his first game for the Islanders until 2020-21. That’s 6 years after he was drafted.
Pelech and Sorokin have become cornerstone players for the Islanders and well worth the price paid.
But as we saw before, there were 15 other players selected who never even played a single NHL game. Chara made most of his impact elsewhere and Weinhandl had a few seasons and moved on to Europe.
A 3rd-round pick isn’t just a lottery ticket with a 1 in 5 chance of paying off, it is a commitment to slowly developing and moulding a prospect over years.
Even if the Islanders nail their pick later this year, it is entirely plausible that a player selected with a 3rd-round pick in 2022 may not be an established NHL player until 2027.
What value does Clutterbuck bring?
Now, whether re-signing a 34-year old 4th-liner is a better move for the Islanders than just trading him away for a pick I’m not so sure.
(Obviously due to the injury this wouldn’t have happened but let’s just explore this thread for the sake of it).
Certainly, Clutterbuck was a decent contributor for the Islanders. In 59 games this season he scored 6 goals and 9 assists for 15 points. The Islanders’ penalty kill has also been one of the best this season and Clutterbuck was a key member of that.
Does that make him irreplaceable? No, but it also doesn’t make trading him for a long-shot an automatic decision.
You might make the argument that the pick could be packaged up as part of a trade for other picks or players, but if I know the value of a 3rd-round pick, you can be sure that NHL general managers know this too (at least you’d like to think they do).
Maybe you could use it to trade back and get two 4th-rounders - this article from earlier has 4th-rounders at a 11% chance of playing at least 100 NHL games. In this case you’d get two 1 in 10 shots at nailing a pick. The article said 3rd-rounders had a 13% chance of playing 100 games, but our analysis here has the chances slightly higher at 20%. Therefore, it seems unwise to trade back.
Packaging it to trade up in the draft might work, but again, you’d think NHL general managers know that 3rd-round picks are a crapshoot.
Having presented all the facts above, it is also fair to question re-signing a 34-year-old who plays a heavy style after the season where that heavy style clearly was not working.
The Islanders are slow. They struggle moving the puck out of its own defensive end. Unlike past seasons, it can’t get on the forecheck (clearly one of Clutterbuck’s strengths) because they can’t skate the puck to the blue line before dumping it in.
Clutterbuck was far from the worst Islander, but on a team that has the oldest average age in the league (and it has showed), at some point you have to start wondering where the next Clutterbuck will come from.
Following the April 26 win over Washington, Barry Trotz spoke openly about how the season (and previous seasons) wore the team down. It does seem interesting then that Clutterbuck received a two-year extension. It kind of flies in the face of the reality that Trotz has acknowledged.
My own take is that, having examined the chance of a pick paying off, re-signing Clutterbuck is probably a better short term (and likely long-term option) than simply trading him for a mid-round draft pick.