More than 200 athletes enter the NHL draft each year. However, it is quite difficult for all of them to make it to the NHL afterwards. Hence, fans often wonder about What Percentage of the Draft Picks Makes the NHL.
As we already know, the NHL is the best hockey league in the world, comprising an average of 800 players who feature in it each year.
The possibility of featuring in the league after the draft is low. So, just because you are drafted does not guarantee that you will play at all in the league.
By being drafted, the odds have increased, but there is still a long road ahead for the young players to make it to the NHL.
What percentage of players drafted make it to the NHL? On average, 49% of players who are drafted by an NHL team will make it to the NHL, which means that they play at least one game at the NHL level.
Let’s dig into the above statement for us to get a better idea of how this plays out in the real lives of the NHL draftees trying to make the NHL.
What Does it Mean that a player has made it to the NHL?
It is extremely difficult to make the NHL and I think for the purposes of evaluating how many players make the NHL from the draft, one game is a great number to evaluate it with.
Every player who has played only one, two, or three games in the NHL would have liked to have played more, but they will all answer a proud yes (as they should) if someone asks them if they made the NHL.
So now that we have defined a player as making the NHL who has played at least one game or more, let’s look at the stats.
What percentage of players from each NHL draft have made it to the NHL?
Here is a list of all the NHL Drafts from 2004 to 2020 and what percentage of players from those drafts have made the NHL:
As you can see that after the 2015 season (2016 and beyond) the percentage starts to drop into the 30s, because some of those young players are still in the minors trying to fight their way to the NHL and have not yet played their first game.
Most, if not all, of the players drafted prior to the 2014 draft have either made the NHL or they haven’t.
So in coming up with an average of how many players make the NHL, I went conservative and chose the data from 2004 to 2014 – I believe this will give a good sample size to get an excellent picture.
Now, there are still players who will still have not played their first game who were drafted in 2014, but the few that will are statistically irrelevant in such a large sample size.
So from 2004 to 2014, 49.1% of players who were drafted played at least one game in the NHL.
When is it too late to expect to play in the NHL for a player?
After every new draft, it is common for about 5 or 6 players who are 18 years old to make the NHL. Usually, the first two or three draft picks taken will make it and then a couple of more from the rest of the draft.
It is hard to make the NHL as an 18-year-old, and only the exceptional player will do so.
Players taken in an NHL entry draft are typically 3 to 4 years out from playing their first game, and that is when the bulk of them will get their first taste of NHL action. This would put them between 21 to 22 years of age.
Up until this point, they will continue to develop their games at the junior levels and get their first taste of professional hockey at the minor league level, or one of the European leagues.
When it becomes Hard to Make it to the NHL
If a player has not made the NHL within 5 or 6 years of their draft year, the odds of playing a game in the NHL severely diminish.
Not that it is impossible, but NHL teams do not have a lot of room on their rosters for players who are 25 and older and have not proven they can play in the NHL.
By the age of 25, even at the NHL level, the common thought is the player has developed to the top of their ability and, at that point, you get what you get.
Hence, a player who is in their mid-20s and has not played an NHL game will have the minor league label firmly attached to them. Trust me, that is a hard label to get off once it has been put on.
The one exception to this is for goalies. Goalies are known to take longer to develop since goaltending is the most difficult position to play. It is not uncommon for a goalie to take until their mid-20s to get established in the NHL.
So, if you are an NHL draftee and have not had a game in the NHL within 5 or 6 years of your draft year, you likely will not get that chance.
Most of them know this and will have either made their way to Europe to play in one of their leagues or have gone back to school or started out in a new career.
What percentage of players make it from each round of the draft?
The NHL entry draft is divided into 7 rounds. Each team gets one choice per round (unless they have traded it away to another team).
For most of our sample, there were 30 drafts choices to make each round because Vegas and Seattle were not in the mix.
So of the 30 players drafted in each round, what percentage made the NHL?
The data shows that the scouts and general managers know what they are doing when they are evaluating talent. There is a clear trend that each round becomes more difficult for a player to make the NHL than the round before it.
However, what surprised me again was that 26% of players drafted in the 7th round actually played a game in the NHL. That is not particularly high, but I thought it would have been actually much lower than this.
Conclusion:
So the next time you watch an NHL entry draft, know that only about half of the kids being drafted will actually step onto the ice for an NHL team.
However, if you are only watching the first round of the draft, you can be pretty sure that the player your team selects will at least get a cup of coffee at the top level, but for how long he stays on average in his career, well, that is another story altogether.
Check Out Some Interesting NHL Facts:
1. How Often Do Hockey Sticks Break?
3. What Is A Power Play In Ice Hockey?
4. What Percentage of NHL Players are Canadian?
5. Why do hockey players leave their sticks on the ice?
