I've crunched the data on each BRHL draft from 2007 to 2017 to see who is truly the best drafter in the BRHL (and who's the worst). For each draft class I used actual NHL games played and Points per season for each drafted player to come up with a model for expected games played and points based on draft position for each draft year. Each pick was then evaluated as +/- relative to the expected values for the pick position. I then aggregated the +/- for each GM and applied a few other model corrections to account for things like the overall number of picks made by the GM.

 

Using the above methodology, I was able to rank all GMs by averaging their +/- over their entire draft history. I also broke down each GMs history year-by-year to see how they were trending, and to look for outliers that may have a large effect on their ranking.

 

#17: Junya K: -2.04GP & +0.03Pts

Kato comes in with the first positive relative score. He has drafted well from a points perspective (Pasta, anyone?), but less so from a GP perspective. Interesting...

 

Highlights and Lowlights:

Criteria	Relative	Player	Pick
Best GP	13.08	David Pawstanock	7
Worst GP	-17.96	Nikita Scherbak	28
Best Pts	32.23	David Pawstanock	7
Worst Pts	-10.55	Nikita Scherbak	28

Bruins > Habs?? You should know better than to draft a Hab. Am I right Larry? Either way, Junya has not made many picks (18 total). Pasta and Werenski are both solid picks, but both drafted very high, so not a huge positive relative score. Shestyorkin will help out his score eventually when he gets a few seasons under his belt.

 

Year-by-year performance:

As mentioned, not a ton of history here. Quite a few picks in 2015, and only one real hit so far with Pasta. Shesty will eventually come along, but for the time beaing. Not ideal. As for 2016, Kato had only one pick - Werenski. Not bad.

 

#16: Joe B: -2.00GP & -0.02Pts

Lots of picks through 2014, 2015 and 2016 of his rebuild. Joe hit on enough of them to come out with a great future, but he still drafted slightly below average.

 

Highlights and Lowlights:

Criteria	Relative	Player	Pick
Best GP	30.71	Artturi Lehkonen	58
Worst GP	-39.30	Samuel Morin	15
Best Pts	26.09	Connor McDavid	1
Worst Pts	-26.09	Ivan Provorov	4

Joe has made quite a few picks through 4 drafts. He has had some good picks (his first three in 2014 were Drouin (4), Horvat (11) and Wennberg (13)) but he has had some bad ones too (his next 7 were basically all busts - picks 15, 21, 28, 38, 45, 50, 55). He also picked Lehkonen 58th in 2014. Interesting Lehkonen is a good pick from a games played perspective, but not as much from a points perspective. Opposite is true for McDavid, who has a shit ton of point, but has missed games with injury. Another solid pick was Cirelli in the 3rd round of 2016 draft. Provorov is an interesting case, as he was a high draft defenseman, which my grading system won't look fondly upon from a points perspective unfortunately...

 

Year-by-year performance:

As mentioned, Joe's drafts have mostly been average. This despite drafting both Conner McDavid and Austin Matthews lol. The thing with these guys, is they don't help out Joe's ranking that much, as they are 1st OV picks and expected to contribute at a high level. Joe hasn't had that many late round hits compared to the number of picks he has had, and this is ultimately what holds him back.