I've been running a bunch of data analysis on previous drafts. This first article will highlight the overall strength of the past drafts. I have not included 2018, 2019 or 2020 as there simply isn't enough data. Even 2017 doesn't quite have enough to give it a fair comparision, as you will see.

The chart below highlights the overall strength of each of the past drafts from 2007 to 2017.

The left axis and the blue bars represent the total NHL games played by all players drafted into the BRHL in the draft, averaged over each season since their draft (and actually including the NHL year prior to their draft). For example, for the 2007 draft, if you take all games played by the drafted players in the 2006-2007 through 2019-2020 NHL seasons, you will find there is an average of 2758 games played per year by players from that draft class.

The right axis and the orange dots represent the total NHL points produced by all players drafted into the BRHL in the draft, averaged over each season since their draft (and actually including the NHL year prior to their draft). For example, for the 2007 draft, if you take all points produced by the drafted players in the 2006-2007 through 2019-2020 NHL seasons, you will find there is an average of 1111 points produced per year by players from that draft class.

It's interesting to see that the 2008 draft was quite weak, whereas the 2010, 2012 and 2013 were fairly strong. The 2017 draft is impeded by the recency, so I wouldn't put much stock in those numbers just yet.

Also interesting are the 2015 and 2016 drafts where there is strong production point wise, for a lesser amount of games played. This is courtesy of Pastrnak and Drai from 2015 and McDavid from 2016, I think.

Anyway, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Next up will be a series of articles which will highlight the performance of each GM. We can really see who is the best (and worst at drafting).