How Much Help Can the Penguins Reasonably Expect Through the Draft?

While researching my article about Kyle Dubas the other day, I discovered the Penguins currently have 29 picks stockpiled in the next three Entry Drafts, including four first-rounders, four second-rounders and seven third-round picks. Subject to change, of course, especially with the trade deadline approaching.

Truth be told, I feel pretty good about that. I mean, 15 picks in the top three rounds? Surely enough to restock our still semi-depleted talent pool and set us back on the road to respectability, right?

Then I decided to take a peek over my shoulder. Specifically, back to the last time we were in this situation in the early 2000s, post-Jaromír Jágr and pre-Sidney Crosby. In particular, I wanted to see how many players drafted during that era wound up playing for our 2009 Stanley Cup champions.

I decided to start with the 1998 draft because that’s the first year we picked a player (Rob Scuderi) who would play for the ’09 team. I then included the following 11 drafts, up through the one preceding the Cup.

During my sample span, we drafted 99 players.

Eleven would eventually play for the ’09 champs. The list includes Sid (’05) and fellow first-rounders Evgeni Malkin (’04), Marc-André Fleury (’03), Brooks Orpik (’00) and Jordan Staal (’06), second-rounder Alex Goligoski (’04), third-rounder Kris Letang (’05), fourth-rounder Tyler Kennedy (’04), fifth-rounder Scuderi (’98), sixth-rounder Dustin Jeffrey (’07) and last but certainly not least, eighth-rounder “Superstar” Max Talbot (’02).

Let that sink in for a moment.

It’s always been my opinion that Craig Patrick and later Ray Shero drafted extremely well if not brilliantly, and I’m still of that opinion. But one out of nine?

I thought the number would be higher. A lot higher.

Just to frame things a bit, 38 of those 99 players did eventually play at least one game for the Pens. Another nine, including three-time 30-goal man Matt Moulson, All-Star defenseman Jake Muzzin and penalty king Daniel Carcillo made the grade, albeit with other teams.

While Colby Armstrong, Ryan Malone and Ryan Whitney were gone by ’09, they contributed greatly to the team’s transformation from scrubs to champions. To a lesser degree, so did young-gun forwards Erik Christensen and Michel Ouellet. For the sake of my following calculation, I’ll include them along with the 11, which brings the total to 16.

Sixteen divided by 99 equals roughly 16 percent. If I apply that to our 29 pending picks over the next three years, we can reasonably expect to add five players during that span who will be serious contributors.

Yikes.

Something tells me we’re gonna need a lot more help than that.

It underscores the fact that tearing down to the floorboards and rebuilding through the draft is anything but an exact science…or guarantee of future success. Younger doesn’t necessarily mean better. Just ask teams like Anaheim, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Ottawa, San Jose and especially the Sabres, who’ve been thrashing around in the wilderness for it seems like forever despite drafting really well.

If you consider ’98 as the starting point for our previous rebuild, it took eight seasons to emerge as a playoff team and a decade to produce a Cup champion.

I’m not even addressing how over-the-top fortunate we were to draft Crosby and Malkin (to say nothing of Letang in the third-round).

Remarkably, there are a pair of generational wunderkinds, 17-year-old left wing Gavin McKenna and 15-year-old defenseman Landon DuPont (already starring in the WHL) looming just over the draft horizon.

Could we possibly be that lucky again?

Pray the hockey gods answer in the affirmative. If not, it could be a long (long) climb back to respectability.