"Trade the pick!? That would require an ability to do more than sit around and pray for the lottery."

A couple of years ago Scott Cullen of TSN wrote a couple great articles breaking down the value of draft picks. It basically broke down how likely a team was to draft a quality player from certain spots in the draft. Amazingly, even if a team owns one of the first three picks there is only a 60 percent chance that player turns out to be at least a top-6 forward or top-4 defenceman. 60 percent! That's crazy.

Here's a graph I made showing how likely a player is to develop into a top-6 forward or top-6 defenceman based on when they are drafted in the first round. After round one the chances are less than 10 percent.

Likelihood of a first round pick becoming at least a top-6 forward or top-4 defenceman.

He also looked at the chances of a player suiting up for at least 100 games in his career. After the first round even that minimal accomplishment is a pretty difficult feat to achieve. In conclusion: drafting is hard!

Likelihood of a draft pick playing at least 100 games in the NHL.

I've used this data to take a look at when it is best for teams to trade up or down in the draft. You can read more at The Good Point.

Just slightly over 17 years ago Sports Illustrated ran a cover story that proclaimed the NHL was hot, while the NBA was not. Yes, at one point hockey was cool in a mainstream way.

The New York Rangers just won their first Stanley Cup in over 50 years. There were major stars in all the major American markets: Wayne Gretzky in LA, Mark Messier in New York, Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr in Pittsburgh, Jeremy Roenick in Chicago, Steve Yzerman in Detroit, and Cam Neely in Boston. It was a good time for the NHL.

It was such a good time that newly appointed commissioner Gary Bettman continued aggressively expanding the NHL into non-traditional markets. It seemed like a good idea at the time (well, as long as you weren’t Canadian and violently opposed to such things).

What happened next was a decade of decline.