Contrasting Bob McKenzie's List Against the Draft Order
Why does Bob McKenzie’s list out-perform the NHL draft order where it matters most?
One of my favourite quirks from this research so far builds upon the fact that we all know Bob McKenzie’s list is likely to be the closest list to the eventual draft order in any given year. Well, across the eight drafts I have tracked so far, that has been confirmed. What is interesting, is that while Bob comes close to the NHL draft, and they have nearly identical successful track records over the first round, within the top-10 Bob’s list vastly outperforms the NHL Draft order.
How does that work?
Well, it first means that Bob’s list and the NHL draft order have many of the same players within the first round, and over the course of 30-32 picks, that evens out with where they are selected, closer together than any other two lists I have tracked. However, it means that the NHL scouts that Bob surveys are able to much more effectively order the top-end of the list as compared to where NHL management then selects them.
Part of that comes down simply to a ranking vs upside compared to a ranking that takes into account many different other factors in terms of need and “politics”; could be a Russian factor, a legacy draft, or even something that a team didn’t like in an interview.
For example, let’s use the 2023 draft which I haven’t included in my data to this point as it’s too early to tell exactly how most players will develop. Looking at Bob’s list, we’ll cherry pick Matvei Michkov at number five, and David Reinbacher at number eight. In the NHL draft, Reinbacher ended up going earlier at pick number five to Montreal, who was rumoured to be seeking a defenceman while also possibly having internally knocked Michkov down a tier because of some Russian factor. In a redraft today, Michkov would likely still be ranked above Reinbacher based on talent and upside (seeing as we don’t have any career numbers to base this off of).
We’re also seeing this with Ivan Demidov, who recently made an appearance in North America which has provided first-hand viewing for NHL GMs. He may be the consensus number two or three in a draft, and likely will be on Bob’s latest ranking list. However, the expectation is still that he will more likely be selected somewhere from picks four to six.
To contrast that with later in the first round, we see Trevor Connelly with his off-ice and attitude concerns, and Adam Jiricek with his lost season to injury. It just takes one team to pass on a player earlier in the draft to drop them down far enough to start to make a difference in these reviews, while it only takes one team to select a player later in the first round to change the outlook on how a draft could have unfolded and where players end up.
All that really comes down to a quote from one of my previous articles:
“For the NHL, they seem to get in their own way sometimes, especially earlier in the draft.”
Later in the draft the prospects are all fairly equivalent, and there is less pressure for a team to try to fit this prospect into any kind of initial agenda. In the end, take the best player available (BPA), and figure the rest out later. Defaulting back to BPA fills out the back end of the first round with the fallers from earlier, and some late risers that may slightly out-produce any older information on Bob’s list, bringing them back in list.
Bob’s 2024 list is due out in less than a week, and with that I’ll be putting out my double-weighted consensus rankings just in time for the NHL draft.