Bill Meltzer is the Philadelphia Flyers and Dallas Stars blogger for HockeyBuzz, and does considerable behind-the-scenes work as our site's editorial captain. He is substituting today for Eklund.
Bill's work has been extensively featured on NHL.com, IIHF.com, Flyers.NHL.com and a host of other Web sites and print publications. Along with Thomas Tynander, he is the co-author of Pelle Lindbergh: Behind the White Mask.
Throughout the NHL, there has been an ever-increasing tendency in recent years for teams to lock up most of their starting defensemen in long-term, multi-million dollar contracts before the players can hit the open market as unrestricted free agents (UFAs).
Taken out of the context of what's going on league-wide, many of these deals seem to be overpayments in terms of cap hits and/or length of contract. However, when you realize that there's been a leaguewide hoarding of defensemen, it makes a little more sense.
With the expected large-scale escalation of the NHL salary cap ceiling in the next couple of seasons, this trend is not going to end any time soon. The six-year, $25.5 million Jonathan Ericsson contract extension in Detroit is just a sign of the times.
It does, however, make one wonder how much a player like Dion Phaneuf will command if and when his current team strikes a contract extension agreement to preempt his unrestricted free agency. Phaneuf may have some weaknesses in his game but his strengths are of All-Star caliber, and his corresponding open market price will be sky high. My feeling in his case is that the Toronto side is going to have blink first if he's going to be signed before the end of season (and, by the way, I do think it will ultimately get done).
Nowadays, there is often a dearth of quality blueliners available on the UFA market. Those who are available at the top of the UFA class are often players in their late 30s, frequently injured players or ones who have had past success but have struggled in the last few seasons. While there are sometimes bargains to be had, the overpayments of the better UFA defensemen often exceed the (inflated) cost of preemptively signing a comparable in-house player to a contract extensive.
In a similar context, it is often difficult these days for teams to trade for significant blueline help. It is very much a seller's market, with the exception of problem contract, injured or soon-to-be-UFAs that the seller does not want to bring back.
The salary cap is one limiting issue, especially this season with the lowered ceiling and so many teams dipping into their long-term injured reserve (LTIR) allowance with zero bankable cap space.
Another major limiting factor is old fashioned supply and demand. Defensemen go down with injuries at an alarming rate (which is why many clubs have taken to carrying eight defensemen on the NHL roster). Most teams want to improve their blueline depth among top-four options in their rotation of pairings; in other words, players they can regularly call upon to provide 18 or more minutes of ice time per game.
With demand high and a low supply of viable top-four talents available for trade, the potential sellers are in position to jack up their trade return demands. That's especially true for players who are not impending UFAs at the end of the season. Rental prices on soon-to-be-UFAs are usually a bit lower, depending on the caliber of player and the number of serious suitors.
For all these reasons, it has become more and more important for NHL teams to draft and develop their own talent from within. The annual "draft the best available player or draft by positional need?" debate is going to rage for many years to come.
Generally speaking, defensemen make for riskier first-round Draft picks than forwards. While there are certainly exceptions, NHL defensemen typically take longer to fully develop than forwards. In many cases, it could take as much as five or six years after a defenseman's draft year to have a reasonably complete picture of how much he's going to develop.
Meanwhile, I think it can be fairly said that a true franchise defenseman is the most coveted commodity -- and the hardest to obtain -- in the NHL today.
That creates a conundrum for NHL teams on Draft day.
How much risk should they tolerate with their first round pick, especially if they are picking at or near the top? Are they better off going for a potential first-line forward with a lower downside and, presumably, a faster development cycle to become a mature NHL player? Or should they take a leap of faith and commitment to patience in the effort to nurtur a star junior league or European defenseman along the arduous path to become a bonafide top pairing NHL blueliner? This road often includes backward steps -- sometimes for entire seasons -- before a true breakthrough is attained.
This painstaking decision dramatically played itself out at the 2013 NHL Draft. The Colorado Avalanche announced ahead of time that they were going to bypass defenseman Seth Jones and go with forward Nathan MacKinnon. While this was only mildly surprising, many were shocked when forwards Aleksander Barkov (Florida) and Jonathan Drouin (Tampa Bay) also went off the board before the Nashville Predators -- who have the luxury of developing Jones behind Shea Weber on the depth chart -- selected Jones.
In other words, risk management won out this year. General managers and scouting directors around the NHL are under immense pressure not to screw up with their first-round Draft selections, and that means there's a heavy push to see the pick pay dividends a little sooner.
In the meantime, the 2012 NHL Draft produced one of the most defense-heavy first-round classes, with a record-tying 13 teams opting for a blueline prospect in the 30-selection opening round. That was as much due to the fact that this Draft class was thin on projected high-ceiling forwards as it was the result of a seemingly deeper-than-average group of promising young defensemen.
Personally speaking, I have always been in favor of the take the best available player regardless of position strategy. I say that fully recognizing that developing defensemen internally grows in importance with each passing year.
First of all, there is no such thing as having too much depth or strength at a particular position within the system. This allows for the team to made trades to plug other holes in the lineup, if need be. Secondly, while some players step into the NHL immediately after the draft, there is more commonly a waiting period of a few years until a draftee is ready for the NHL. It often takes several years beyond that for the player to mature at the top level, by which time the composition of the roster will have significantly changed.
Last but not least, using a first-round pick to draft by positional need for teenaged defensemen and goalies is often ill-advised strategy. I will illustrate why with some research I did on current NHL defensemen and the spot in which they were originally drafted.
After the 2011-12 season, I compiled a list of the top 152 defensemen in the NHL this past season: the list includes Chris Pronger and the now-retired Nicklas Lidström, plus the mathematical equivalent of a top-5 starting defenseman corps for the 30 NHL teams (although not all teams have five players on the actual list).
A little more than one-third of the list is comprised of defensemen who were former first-round picks and their ranks include some of the top defensemen in the league. That's to be expected.
However, as you move down to the nearly two-thirds who were not first-round picks, you will find that just as many of the league’s All-Star and even Norris Trophy caliber defensemen in the NHL were selected after the first round in their draft years.
In fact, a few fairly prominent blueliners in the NHL -- such as Dan Girardi, Dan Boyle and Jason Garrison -- were originally rookie free agents who were never drafted at all. Using a first-round selection to take a lower-ceiling but "safe" blueliner over a higher-ceiling forward is more often than not a recipe to look back at the draft round with regret in the years to come.
The two-pronged conclusion I drew from the exercise was:
1) A team IS more likely to identify a future regular NHL starting defenseman in the first round than any other round, but
2) With the unpredictability and volatility of a teenage defenseman's development cycle, the ranks of future star NHL defensemen are a cross-section of players selected in the early, middle and even late rounds (plus free agent rookies).
I plan to compile an updated list this summer. For now, here is the list of 152 defensemen I compiled from those who played in the NHL in 2011-12. Players are listed by their draft round, overall selection number and draft year. Undrafted defensemen are listed alphabetically by surname.
FIRST ROUND (54) Roman Hamrlik – 1/1 1992 Chris Phillips – 1/1 1996 Erik Johnson – 1/1 2006 Chris Pronger – 1/2 1993 Drew Doughty – 1/2 2008 Victor Hedman- 1/2 2009 Brad Stuart – 1/3 1998 Jay Bouwmeester – 1/3 2002 Jack Johnson – 1/3 2005 Zach Bogosian – 1/3 2008 Erik Gudbranson – 1/3 2010 Bryan Allen – 1/4 1998 Rostislav Klesla – 1/4 2000 Joni Pitkanen – 1/4 2002 Alex Pietrangelo – 1/4 2008 Adam Larsson – 1/4 2011 Eric Brewer – 1/5 1997 Ryan Whitney – 1/5 2002 Karl Alzner – 1/5 2007 Luke Schenn – 1/5 2008 Oliver Ekman-Larsson – 1/6 2009 Ryan Suter – 1/7 2003 Braydon Coburn – 1/8 2003 Dion Phaneuf – 1/9 2003 Ladislav Smid – 1/9 2004 Brian Lee – 1/9 2005 Jared Cowen – 1/9 2009 Keaton Ellerby – 1/10 2007 Dan Hamhuis – 1/12 2001 Marc Staal – 1/12 2005 Ryan McDonagh – 1/12 2007 Tyler Myers – 1/12 2008 Cam Fowler – 1/12 2010 Sergei Gonchar— 1/14 1992 Brent Seabrook - 1/14 2003 Kevin Shattenkirk – 1/14 2007 Dmitry Kulikov – 1/14 2009 Erik Karlsson – 1/15 2008 Nick Leddy— 1/16 2009 Barret Jackman – 1/17 1999 Carlo Colaiacovo – 1/17 2001 Jake Gardiner – 1/17 2008 Brooks Orpik – 1/18 2000 Luca Sbisa – 1/19 2008 Brent Burns – 1/20 2003 Michael Del Zotto- 1/20 2008 Anton Volchenkov – 1/21 2000 Mark Stuart— 1/21 2003 Scott Hannan – 1/23 1997 Tim Gleason – 1/23 2001 Andrej Meszaros – 1/23 2004 John Carlson – 1/27 2008 Matt Niskanen – 1/28 2005 Niklas Kronwall – 1/29 2000
SECOND ROUND (22) Slava Voynov – 2/32 2008 Marc-Edouard Vlasic – 2/35 2005 Kevin Klein – 2/37 2003 Justin Faulk – 2/37 2010 Roman Josi – 2/38 2008 Fedor Tyutin – 2/40 2001 Trevor Daley – 2/43 2002 P.K. Subban – 2/43 2007 Jordan Leopold – 2/44 1999 Matt Greene – 2/44 2002 Jeff Petry – 2/45 2006 Matt Carle – 2/47 2003 Henrik Tallinder – 2/49 1997 Shea Weber – 2/49 2003 Travis Hamonic – 2/53 2008 Duncan Keith – 2/54 2002 Adam McQuaid – 2/55 2005 Nicklas Grossmann – 2/56 2004 Johnny Boychuk – 2/61 2002 Alex Goligoski – 2/61 2004 Paul Martin – 2/62 2000 Jamie McBain – 2/63 2006
THIRD ROUND (11) Nicklas Lidstrom – 3/53 1989 Zdeno Chara – 3/56 1996 Kris Letang – 3/62 2005 Sheldon Souray – 3/71 1994 Andrej Sekera – 3/71 2004 Francois Beauchemin – 3/75 1998 Ryan O’Byrne – 3/79 2003 Cody Franson – 3/79 2005 Jay Harrison – 3/82 2001 Aaron Johnson – 3/85 2001 Alex Edler – 3/91 2001
FOURTH ROUND (13) Joe Corvo – 4/83 1997 Toni Lydman – 4/89 1996 Chris Butler – 4/96 2005 Michal Rozival – 4/105 1996 Keith Yandle – 4/105 2005 Christian Ehrhoff – 4/106 2001 Jan Hejda— 4/106 2003 Niklas Hjalmarsson – 4/108 2005 TJ Brodie – 4/114 2008 Lubomir Visnovsky- 4/118 2000 Corey Potter – 4/122 2003 Tom Gilbert – 4/129 2002 Kyle Quincey – 4/132 2003
FIFTH ROUND OR LATER (41) Jaroslav Spacek – 5/117 1998 Rob Scuderi – 5/134 1998 Nikita Nikitin – 5/136 2004 Bryce Salvador – 6/138 1994 Philip Larsen – 5/149 2008 Kevin Bieksa – 5/151 2001 Brett Clark – 6/154 1996 Mark Fayne – 5/155 2005 Brian Campbell – 6/156 1997 James Wisniewski – 5/156 2002 Jared Spurgeon – 6/158 2008 John-Michael Liles – 5/159 2000 Andrew MacDonald – 6/160 2006 Stephane Robidas – 7/164 1995 Dennis Seidenberg – 6/172 2001 Roman Polak – 6/180 2004 Bruno Gervais – 6/182 2003 Marek Zidlicky – 6/176 2001 Pavel Kubina – 7/179 1996 Jason Demers – 7/186 2008 Ian White – 6/191 2002 Filip Kuba – 8/192 1995 Derek Engelland – 6/194 2000 Carl Gunnarsson – 7/194 2007 Willie Mitchell – 8/199 1996 Tomas Kaberle – 8/204 1996 Hal Gill – 8/207 1993 Andrew Ference – 8/208 1997 Anton Stralman – 7/216 2005 Johnny Oduya – 7/221 2001 Sami Salo – 9/239 1996 Tobias Enstrom - 8/239 2003 Douglas Murray – 8/241 1999 Milan Jurcina – 8/241 2001 Dennis Wideman- 8/241 2002 Dustin Byfuglien – 8/245 2003 Kimmo Timonen - 10/250 1993 Shane O’Brien— 8/250 2003 Mark Streit – 9/262 2004 Grant Clitsome – 9/271 2004 Jonathan Ericsson – 9/291 2002
UNDRAFTED (11) Marc-Andre Bergeron Francis Bouillon Dan Boyle Jason Garrison Matt Gilroy Mark Giordano Dan Girardi Josh Gorges Andy Greene Mike Weaver Ryan Wilson