19
Let's see; that was 37 days in a row in which Mats Sundin said he wanted to stay and play for the Toronto Maple Leafs … but I wonder if he really means it.
I hope somebody asks him again today — just to be sure.
THE CURSE OF NINTH PLACE: On Thursday night, for the umpteenth time since Cliff Fletcher pilfered him out of the Quebec Nordiques organization, Sundin did what he's paid to do — he helped his team earn a point in the standings (this time, by scoring a goal, off his skate, in the dying seconds of a game against the Carolina Hurricances). The Hurricanes went on to win in overtime, but Toronto earned a point anyway, moving them into a 13th-place tie with the slumping Florida Panthers in the Eastern Conference standings.
But the good news was that both of the conference bottom-dwellers, the Los Angeles Kings and the Tampa Bay Lightning won their games, making the thrilling race at the bottom of the NHL standings even tighter. As of Friday morning, the surging Kings — once almost guaranteed to earn the best odds of winning the draft lottery — had closed to within two points of Tampa. The Leafs were only four points out of last overall, which made you wonder — would that bonus point, earned against the Hurricanes, negatively affect their chances for a high draft choice, what with the races as close among the cellar-dwellers as it is for an actual playoff spot.
The one thing that Leaf Nation has learned to their chagrin over the past two years is the curse of the ninth-place finish — that capacity to fall just short of the playoffs, thus missing out on a chance for a first-round, but not cashing in on a blue-chip prospect at the draft table.
How important is that ability to draft first overall, but especially in the top three? Significant, if you base it on this year's scoring race. As of Friday, five of the NHL's top-10 scorers were players chosen first overall in their respective entry drafts (that'd be Alex Ovechkin, Vincent Lecavalier, Ilya Kovalchuk, Sidney Crosby and Joe Thornton) — and a sixth, Jason Spezza went second overall behind Kovalchuk.
If you expand it to the top 20, you'd also find another No. 1 overall — Sundin himself — plus two more No. 2s (Evgeni Malkin and Dany Heatley) and two No. 3s (Marian Gaborik and Henrik Sedin). There are some lower first-rounders sprinkled in the mix (Jarome Iginla, Ryan Getzlaf, Mike Richards); some good/lucky picks mid-to-late round picks (Daniel Alfredsson, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg); and even one player, Martin St. Louis, who wasn't drafted at all. But the evidence is compelling and mostly self-evident — teams with high picks in good entry drafts generally earn a dividend for their general and overwhelming incompetence in any given year.
And the opposite is also true: There tends to be a dramatic fall-off in the calibre of prospect that those close-but-no-cigar ninth-place finishers tend to select at the draft. An examination of 10 years of drafting in that slot yields some interesting data. Of the 20 draft slots available (10 per conference) to that teams that just fell one place short of the playoffs, six teams traded away their picks, including the 2007 Leafs who finished ninth in back-to-back years. Last year's pick went to the Sharks in the Vesa Toskala deal; in '06, the Leafs took Jiri Tlusty 13th overall in a year when Erik Johnson, Jordan Staal and Jonathan Toews went one-two-three.
It's too early to pass judgment on the results of the '06 and '07 drafts (and '05 was rejected, on the grounds that there were no ninth-place finishers in a season cancelled by the lockout). Of the players chosen by ninth-place finishers over the past 10 years dating back to '97, the best is either Ales Hemsky or Christopher Higgins — and the Edmonton Oilers were involved in both transactions. On the first, 'the 01 draft, the Oilers traded up six places (with the Boston Bruins) to grab Hemsky; the next year they traded down one place with the Montreal Canadiens, who took Higgins (Edmonton then opted for the immortal Jesse Nittymaki with its choice). For the Oilers it was one exceptionally smart move; followed by one complete gaffe; and the moral of the story seems to be pick as high as you can in any given draft, no matter how many extra later-round choices a team dangles in front of you.
In Pictures:
