Analyzing the Value of First Round Draft Picks

I recently wrote my second article over at Puck Prospectus.  In this week’s piece, I analyzed the value of first round draft picks; more specifically, the value of selecting in the middle third of the first round of the NHL Entry Draft, as compared to the latter third of the first round.

Is the 21st selection that much less valuable than the 13th selection? If teams routinely have one player at number 12 on their board, and he is a second rounder on someone else’s board, should teams place that much more value on a middle first round pick than a late first round pick? To analyze these questions, we will evaluate the numbers from the 1994 NHL Entry Draft through to the 2004 NHL Entry Draft. We won’t include the first ten picks of these drafts, as top ten picks are generally a sure thing and rarely don’t turn into at least productive NHL players.

Read the entire article here.