Detroit Hockey Now’s Nate Brown concludes his analysis of the “Yzerplan” as it applies to Detroit’s draft picks by writing an exhaustive analysis of Yzerman’s 12 last drafts, and comparing his selections as Tampa Bay’s general manager from 2010-2018 with his selections as the Red Wings’ GM from 2019-2022.
I’m going to disagree ever-so-slightly with his conclusion:
After spending nearly a decade in Tampa where the Lightning would spend the latter half of the decade in the conference finals and the Stanley Cup Final, Yzerman flipped the script when he arrived in Detroit in terms of drafting. Instead of going heavy in the junior leagues north of the border, he’s continued to pick from international talent.
Now, there could be a number of reasons for this. When beginning his career as a manager, Yzerman was heavily involved with the Canadian National Team, winning gold medals in both 2010 and 2014. Seeing that talent up close, perhaps it led to a confirmation bias that the best talent to build around was still coming from Canada.
Second, the scope of how he built in Tampa was different than Detroit. With the Red Wings, he was essentially starting over. Of the building blocks he had in Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman, Yzerman truly only had that elite player in Dylan Larkin. The other “core” members were contributors, but hardly the foundational pieces like Stamkos or Hedman.
Finally, Yzerman ended up trading or not re-signing many of the very players he drafted from the Canadian junior leagues. Drouin comes to mind first, who he dealt for Mikhail Sergachev. While Sergachev was drafted by Windsor in the CHL Import draft, his career began in the MHL, a league Yzerman has chosen from often with both the Lightning and Red Wings.
Continued; I know that Nate has busted his butt attempting to discern how the Yzerman regime has drafted from rounds 1 and 2 to rounds 3 through 7, and he’s compared Yzerman’s draft tendencies to those of Ken Holland.
That’s a lot of work, and I respect the pants out of it. He really worked his tail off looking at the data, crunching the numbers and classified players from drafts from 2014-22 for the Red Wings and 2014-18 for the Lightning. That’s a shit-ton of work. You’ve got to tip your hat to that sort of thorough analysis.
All of that being said…
Drafting players a collaborative endeavor which involves the GM, his Director of Amateur Scouting, and the various area scouts and directors of regional scouting, The direction of making player evaluations and then choosing players moves upward from scouts to Director of Amateur Scouting to GM.
The Lightning definitely drafted players from the Canadian Hockey League’s respective Major Junior hockey leagues (the QMJHL, OHL and WHL) as compared to the Red Wings, who seem to use the Swedish SHL and European leagues like Michiganders use I-75 as as pipeline to “Up North,” which is to say regularly and frequently.
The difference between the Red Wings and Lightning don’t boil down to just swinging for the fences for a different kind of unfinished, project prospect versus players at a high level of development at the time of their respective draft classes, in no small part due to the Bolts’ draft positions as compared to Detroit’s.
There’s no doubt that he also inherited a cupboard of prospects that was not elite in nature when he came to Detroit, too.
As such, the Red Wings desperately needed to invest in European and NCAA hockey-bound prospects because their rights remain Detroit’s for longer periods of time (usually 3 to up to 4 seasons, sometimes up to even 5 seasons) as compared to CHL prospects, who remain property of their NHL rights-holders for 2 years.
All of that being said…
I have to come back to my “thesis statement” that drafting is a collaborative endeavor between a general manager, his director of amateur scouting and his area scouts/directors of regional scouting.
Tampa’s scouts had a very different mission, but they were different people, too, with different strengths, weaknesses, and different areas of emphasis–as well as different biases toward certain types of prospects.
For example, in Detroit, it’s well-established that the Red Wings’ scouting strengths come from European scouts working under Hakan Andersson, with the Wings relying a little less on their North American college hockey and major junior scouts, who make the observations as to the strengths and weaknesses of potential draft targets (i.e. players).
Complicating all of the above is the fact that the Wings transferred their scouting department from Tyler Wright’s tenure as the Director of Amateur Scouting to that of Kris Draper and company in 2019, and the team made some marked changes to the constituent parts of their scouting staff as a result.
Add in the strengths, weaknesses and areas of emphasis (as well as biases) of a very, very different scouting staff than those that the Lightning employed.
Top the structure of the pyramid of scouts which Yzerman employs with Kris Draper’s status as the decision-maker in terms of building the incredibly-important list of draft targets which serves as the team’s “master plan” for each draft…
And you get a GM who signs off on the Director of Amateur Scouting’s decisions as to who the Wings will pick, as determined by the master list compiling the observations of the area scouts and directors of regional scouting.
So it’s a partnership, a collaboration, a sort of pyramid inside a pyramid of personnel who constitute the team’s department of hockey operations.
You’re going to get different results with different people constituting your department of hockey operations. You’re going to get different results with different areas of emphasis in terms of looking for certain kinds of prospects. And yes, as Nate states at the start of his article, the GM’s own connections and tendencies are going to shape the execution of the master plan.
Which means that the pyramid inside a pyramid of “hockey ops” personnel takes a geometry which shifts based upon who’s the general manager.
Wrapping this late-night, early-morning ramble up in a bow:
The data (i.e. draft picks) speaks. For certain. But the data analysis also depends on the shape of the constituent parts of the machine that makes decisions as to what data to create.
Steve Yzerman employed one set of parts of his draft computer in Tampa. He’s got another set of parts of his draft computer in Detroit. That’s going to produce different data, because the limitations of your hardware affect your software, and your software produces certain data points.
It’s all about the collaboration between the GM and the assets at his disposal with which to assess players and make drafting decisions.
Alter your team’s needs and points of emphasis on top of it all, and you get very, very different data from team to team, even under the same GM.
It’s all connected, man.
