NHL Intel’s Draft Grading Scale

Grade: A 

•  exceptional draft, featured three or more value selections, chose four or more legitimate NHL caliber prospects.  

Grade: B 

• above average draft, featured two or more value selections, chose three or more legitimate NHL caliber prospects. 

Grade: C 

• average draft, featured one or more value selections, chose two or more legitimate NHL caliber prospects. 

Grade: D 

• below average draft, featured one or less value selections, chose fewer than two legitimate NHL caliber prospects. 

Grade: F 

• significantly below average draft, failure in scouting, hockey, and in life.  

Five Definitions, Terms, and Explanations 

1. 30 Teams, 30 Grades – each team will have it’s own page.  NHL Intel will review each team’s picks, offer analysis, and assign a letter grade.  Please feel free to bookmark your team’s page and come back in two or three years to make fun of our predictions that go terribly wrong. 

    

2. Value Selection – a value selection is a player selected after the draft slot he was projected or rated to be drafted in.  An example from this year’s draft would be Jordan Schroeder.  Schroeder was ranked No. 5 among North American skaters and projected to go in the top-15, but fell to Vancouver at No. 22 so he is a value selection.  

    

3. Legitimate NHL caliber prospect - a legitimate NHL caliber prospect is a player who we believe will make it to the NHL one day.  Obviously every player selected in this weekend’s draft is now an NHL prospect.  Players from each of the seven rounds will make it to the NHL, but many of the players will never play in the NHL.  This is a subjective view obviously, but a first or second round pick is generally more of a legitimate prospect than a sixth or seventh round pick.  

    

4. Draft Grades – we understand that no one can fully measure and grade a draft a few days after it’s completed.  It will be years before we know which players were good picks, which were busts, and which teams make good decisions.  This exercise is simply to summarize how each team did and offer an opinion in the form of a letter grade.  We understand our supposed value pick Jordan Schroeder could be a bust, while a supposed reach pick like Calvin de Haan could turn into an All-Star defenseman.  For now, however, we are assigning a grade based on the pre-draft rankings and the current perceived value of each player.  Obviously some of these prospects will begin separating themselves from the pack next fall and our viewpoints will change.  Our draft grades are simply to provide some analysis of the current value of these prospects. 

    

5. We Don’t Hate Your Team –  just because we didn’t like your team’s draft as much as you did doesn’t mean that we hate your favorite team.  It also doesn’t mean that the players your team drafted won’t make it to the NHL and have successful careers.  We are merely offering an opinion.  We wish good things for the National Hockey League and in turn wish good things for each of its 30 clubs.  The issue is only one team wins the Stanley Cup each year and every team makes regrettable decisions at some point either on Draft Day, in free agency, or in the trade market.  It’s a cycle and every team goes through it.  We really don’t hate your team even if we gave them a bad draft grade.