Islanders expected value added from 2020 draft at bottom of league

Thanks to a big trade at the 2020 trade deadline, the New York Islanders are expected to leave the 2020 draft with very little value added to their franchise.

The cost of adding Jean-Gabriel Pageau to the New York Islanders lineup at the 2020 NHL trade deadline was a 2020 first-round pick, a 2020 second-round pick, and a 2022 third-round pick.

That first-rounder was top-three protected incase the Islanders fell out of the playoffs and somehow moved up into the top three at the draft thanks to the lottery. That 2022 third-round pick would only go to the Senators if the Islanders won the cup in 2020.

So because of the Pageau trade, the Islanders won’t make a pick at the 2020 draft until the third round. Based on expected value added from their remaining draft picks, starting at the third round, the Islanders could have one of the worst 2020 draft classes in the league.

Expected Value Added

There’s an interesting paper written by Michael Schuckers for St. Lawrence University titled: What’s an NHL Draft Pick Worth? A Value Pick Chart for the National Hockey League.

The purpose of the paper was to find a way to calculate the combination of picks to equal the value of another pick. For example; what combination of picks would represent the same value as a first overall pick?

While that question is incredibly interesting and valuable (and something I’ll revisit in other posts), the study could also be used to examine how much value added a franchise could receive from their picks at the draft.

Sean Tierney of ChartingHockey.ca made a handy visualization for the expected value added for every team in the league based on their picks at the 2020 draft. And the Islanders, as you can probably imagine, aren’t expected to do well.

The Islanders sit just above the Pittsburgh Penguins at 30 of 31 teams.

It’s not to say that the trade for Pageau wasn’t worth giving up the picks. Cementing the 3C spot is going to pay dividends for the Islanders over the course of JG’s six-year deal. Giving up valuable picks was worth it both in the short-term and in the long-term.

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Look, this isn’t new information. What this visualization and paper provide are two things; (1) it’s very clear that Islanders fans should not be going into the 2020 draft with any false hope that we’ll walk away with a good grade and (2) you can now follow along with trades at the draft to see who got the best deal immediately! So that’s something, right?