Why Taking A Forward At #5 Is The Right Move For The Canucks

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Now that the draft lottery has long passed, and the Canucks are guaranteed to pick fifth overall, all eyes have turned towards the draft, and which player the Canucks will select with their first round pick. 

Ever since the Canucks found themselves in lottery territory, it’s appeared as though Benning has intended to take a forward at that spot. In spite of somewhat contradicting statements in the past, however, Benning indicated yesterday that he believes there is a “clear cut defenseman” that has separated himself from the pack.

While addressing the team’s needs on defence is tempting, selecting a forward at 5 is likely a wise decision. That may seem counter-intuitive, given that based on what we know about prospect graduation, defensemen selected in the first round are more likely to play 200 games in the NHL than their forward counterparts. But one of the limitations of using the 200 game benchmark is that it only tells us what happened, and not why it happened. 

Because defence is a premium position, a defenseman selected in the first round is likely to be given every chance to succeed, and many of those that do manage to reach the 200-game plateau do so based on reputation, or because NHL general managers often overvalue things like size and physicality in defenders. For example, Cam Barker, Jared Cowen, and Luca Sbisa would all be considered successful by pGPS, but you’re unlikely to find someone who’d categorize any of those players as first-round talents. Depending on a team’s draft position, just selecting an NHL player could be considered a success, but since the opportunity to pick in the top 5 doesn’t come along very often, (unless you’re the Edmonton Oilers,) the player the Canucks select at #5 should be held to higher standard of success than just being a warm body at the NHL level.

The common refrain when it comes to prospect analysis has always been that defencemen are more difficult to project. Historically, this statement appears to hold some truth. Here’s a list of the top five defencemen selected over the last ten drafts:

Jack Johnson, Brian Lee, Luc Bourdon, Marc Staal, Erik Johnson, Ty Wishart, Mark Mitera, David Fischer, Bobby Sanguinetti, Thomas Hickey, Karl Alzner, Keaton Ellerby, Ryan McDonagh, Kevin Shattenkirk, Drew Doughty, Alex Pietrangelo, Zach Bogosian, Luke Schenn, Tyler Myers, Victor Hedman, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Jared Cowen, Ryan Ellis, Calvin De Haan, Erik Gudbranson, Dylan McIllrath, Cam Fowler*, Brandon Gormley, Derek Forbort, Adam Larsson, Dougie Hamilton, Jonas Brodin, Duncan Siemens, Ryan Murphy, Ryan Murray (benefit of the doubt?), Griffin Reinhart, Morgan Rielly, Hampus Lindholm, Matthew Dumba, Seth Jones, Darnell Nurse, Rasmus Ristolainen, Samuel Morin, Josh Morrissey, Aaron Ekblad, Haydn Fleury, Julius Honka, Travis Sanheim, Anthony DeAngelo, Noah Hanifin, Ivan Provorov, Zach Werenski, Jakub Zboril, Thomas Chabot. 

For comparison, here are the top 5 forwards from those same ten drafts: 

Sidney Crosby, Bobby Ryan, Gilbert Brule, Jack Skille, Benoit Pouliot, Jordan Staal, Jonathan Toews, Phil Kessel, Nicklas Backstrom, Derick Brassard, Patrick Kane, James Van Riemsdyk, Kyle Turris, Sam Gagner, Jakub Voracek, Steven Stamkos, Nikita Filatov, Colin Wilson, Mikkel Boedker, Josh Bailey, John Tavares, Matt Duchene, Evander Kane, Brayden Schenn, Nazem Kadri, Taylor Hall, Tyler Seguin, Ryan Johansen, Nino Niederreiter, Brett Connolly, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Gabriel Landeskog, Jonathan Huberdeau, Ryan Strome, Mika Zibanejad, Mark Scheifele, Nail Yakupov, Alex Galchenyuk, Filip Forsberg, Mikhail Grigorenko, Radek Faksa, Zemgus Girgensons, Nathan MacKinnon, Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Drouin, Elias Lindholm, Sean Monahan, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Leon Draisaitl, Michael Dal Colle, Jake Virtanen, Connor McDavid, Jack Eichel, Dylan Strome, Mitch Marner, Pavel Zacha. 

It only takes a glance to notice that the former is a much less impressive list. The reason for this likely lies in the difference between how top forwards and top defencemen are evaluated. If you’re drafting a forward with a high pick, you’re likely doing so based on how well they’re able to produce offence. The value of a defender, however, is still measured in large part by their ability to suppress offence. As a result, scouts are more likely to rely solely on their observations, which are subject to large amounts of bias and randomness over the course of a relatively small sample size. Because defensive acumen is considered a more important quality in a defenceman than a forward, a team is less likely to veer away from a defender that failed to produce at an elite clip over his draft-eligible season, in spite of the fact that history shows us that this is unwise. 

But enough about the past, let’s look at this year’s draft, and the top two forwards that may be available when Jim Benning approaches the podium. The first is Cape Breton Screaming Eagles C/LW Pierre-Luc Dubois. The commonly held belief is that if both Tkachuk and Dubois are available when the Canucks make their pick, they will choose Dubois, not only because he’s played centre, and could make suitable replacement for captain Henrik Sedin in the future, but also because he has the well-rounded two-way game Jim Benning covets. 

 

It’s easy to imagine multiple scenarios where Dubois isn’t be available by the time the Canucks make their pick. The first is that Edmonton sees him as a winger, and Peter Chiarelli believes he can address his club’s needs on the back end via trade. Another is that Edmonton trades that pick to a team that’s looking to select Dubois, who is likely fourth on a number of team’s lists. 

If that’s the case, the Canucks will have a fantastic consolation prize in Matthew Tkachuk. While there are legitimate concerns about whether or not Tkachuk’s offence was inflated by playing with elite OHLers Mitch Marner and Christian Dvorak, he still posses high-end offensive upside and an excellent physical toolkit. 

   

Either player would immediately become the organization’s best prospect the moment they were selected. Both players possess offensive pedigree that hasn’t been seen in a Canucks prospect in some time (Brock Boeser notwithstanding), and each has the potential to be a bona-fide first-line player in the NHL, something every team should be looking to draft. 

When looking at Tkachuk and Dubois through the lens of the prospect Graduation Probabilities System (pGPS), both players appear to be as impressive as their traditional boxcar stats would indicate. Both players have only three statistical matches respectively in the entire system, all of whom went on to play over 200 games in the NHL, for a success rate of 100%. Both players also match statistically with players whose points-per-game output could be generously described as “elite” in today’s NHL (.742 for Tkachuk, and .639 for Dubois.) 

Tkachuk and Dubois are the forwards most likely to be taken in that fifth slot, but there are other players who have worked their way into the conversation, all of whom have very high pGPS rates, including Logan Brown (80%), and Alex Nylander (67.5%), as well as two forwards, Clayton Keller and Tyson Jost, whose seasons were so productive they have no comparables at all.

In contrast, the player many believe will be the first defenceman selected, Olli Juolevi, has a pGPS% of 83.3%, a lower mark than both of Dubois and Tkachuk, and only just slightly north of Logan Brown. 

Sergachyov, Chychrun, and Bean all have success rates north of 70%, but likely still present a greater risk with the fifth pick than either of Tkachuk or Dubois, and even if they do succeed, scouts are torn on their respective upsides. Unlike in previous drafts, the 2016 class is lacking a consensus top defenceman, and it’s arguable whether or not any of Sergachyov, Juolevi, Chychrun, or Bean possess legitimate top-pairing upside. 

If the Canucks want to address their lack of prospect depth at defence, there will likely still be very good players available with the 64th overall pick. JD Burke profiled three defensemen that could be good potential targets in the middle of the draft, and Ryan Biech also took a look at some of the better defensemen from North America and Europe that will be available in the later rounds. 

In all likelihood, there will be a first-round talent defenceman by pGPS available when the canucks pick at 64. If they’re incredibly lucky, perhaps one of Cam Dineen (50%), or Markus Niemelainen ($5.5%), will fall into their lap. If not, one of Chad Krys (33.3%), Adam Fox (50%), Frederic Allard (20%), Dawson Davidson (29.4%) , Dylan Coghlan (23.4%) or Luke Green (22.7%) will most likely be available, any of whom would be fantastic value with the 64th overall pick. If they really want to get fancy, they could also swing for the fences and select Samuel Girard or Sean Day in the hopes that they tap into their high-end upside. 

I thought it might be fun as an exercise to take a look at where today’s high-end players were selected in their respective draft years. I took the top 60 scoring defencemen for the 2015-16 season and placed them in Group A, which could generously be described as “top-pairing defencemen”. Then, I took the top 90 scoring forwards from last season and placed them in Group B, which could generously be described as “first-line forwards”: 

There are some obvious flaws to this methodology. These lists are biased towards offense, something that a defenseman doesn’t necessarily have to bring to the table to play on a top pairing. That being said, the lowest player in group A, Niklas Kronwall, only had to manage 26 points to make the cut, so it’s not like any of these players had to blow the roof off with their offensive production. Overall, most of the league’s good defenders are on this list, even if some are ranked lower than they to ought be. 

Sixty percent of the players in Group B (forwards) were drafted in the first round, and forty percent were top 10 picks. In contrast, the players in group A (defencemen) were comprised of only 46% first round picks, and 23% in the top ten.

This is admittedly fairly soft analysis, but I think we can tentatively draw the conclusion that defencemen are more difficult to project, and that their NHL success is more influenced by random chance. With this in mind, a slight positional bias towards forwards is entirely defensible at the top of the draft. If you have a forward and a defenceman that you believe are of a similar talent level, history suggests the forward may be a safer bet. Because defencemen are more difficult to project, I would advocate a quantity approach to drafting defencemen in the later rounds, in the hopes that you hit on a John Klingberg or a Dustin Byfuglien. 

In Vancouver’s case, prospect depth at forward is often cited as a reason to look at defencemen at the fifth slot. In reality, I’d argue that depth is a bit of a mirage. After Brock Boeser, the team is lacking clear future top-six forwards. Baertschi, Horvat, and Virtanen all have that potential, but are far from locks. There’s also the fact that with McCann and Shinkaruk having recently been shipped off, that offensive prospect depth has been somewhat eroded over the past few months. 

Even if prospect depth at forward is an area of relative strength for the Canucks, it’s not anywhere near the level where it’s acceptable to begin drafting for position, especially if their scouts believe that one of the forwards is truly the best player available at fifth overall.

In essence, this has just been a very long-winded way of saying “take the best player available”, but with two caveats: One, that forwards are generally a safer bet, especially near the top of the draft, and two, that the spread in quality among draft-eligible defencemen is more difficult to measure than it is for forwards. 

This is a market inefficiency that the Canucks would be wise to exploit, and with more and more teams beginning to employ statistical draft models, it’s not one that’s going to exist forever. If the team gets a little clever and creative, they can have their cake and eat it too by drafting a forward in the first round, and addressing their lack of prospect depth at defense in the later rounds. 

At the end of the day, this should be a tap-in. Take one of Pierre-Luc Dubois or Matthew Tkachuk and move on.