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[Daniel 565]

VHLM Dispersal Draft Grades S45: Final Report Card for Every Team

Bern Royals

When your team possesses more than a third of the picks in the first two rounds it's not easy to have a bad draft.

Best and worst: Bern added two real franchise cornerstones in Zach Parechkin and Ryan Price, and Jayden Fasth being picked at 33th overall could a could be a real steal. however Jordan Maverick being selected 4th overall was a bit of a reach, especially when Arcturus Mengsk was still on the board.

Overall grade: B+

First two picks were no-brainers and they picked well in later rounds, however, passing on Mengsk doesn't feel seem like a wise move.

Brampton Blades

Brampton came in with a good number of picks and will be pleased with what they were able to do with them

Best and worst: Tough to say. Didn't really do anything spectacular at either end, but Saul Hackett is an elite talent, and Zach Voss looks like a great addition at 28th overall.

Overall grade: A

A solid day at the draft table for the Blades that should set them up nicely for the coming season.

Bratislava Watchmen

The Watchmen came into the draft possessing just later round picks so getting top-end talent was always going to be an uphill struggle.

Best and worst: Michael Burch seems like a good acquisition from the third round, and Filip Lundqvist is a respectable pickup. But, when you only have three picks going into a draft, you can't afford to waste any, even in the last round. Manhole Siegfried is a straight up bad pick, especially when all three players taken after him will without a doubt surpass him.

Overall grade: C+

Had little to work with coming into proceedings but could have done better.

Moscow Red Wolves

Like Bern, Moscow possessed a huge quantity of the early round picks and seemed to use them wisely.

Best and worst: Arcturus Mengsk fell into their lap at 5th and Shawn Muller is a home-run pick. Could have done better than Pierre Luc-Lefrançois in the last round but made the right selection every other time.

Overall grade: A+

You couldn't really ask for a better draft.

Oslo Storm

Another team that came into the draft with just three late round picks, so were never going to be able to make real waves

Best and worst: Super Cock (yeah, I know), Kane Hamilton and Stumppell Aurinkoinen Jr. seem like ok selections but none are particularly inspired. Average at best.

Overall grade: C

Nothing to see here. Keep on reading.

Ottawa Lynx

The Lynx are in the middle of a long rebuild, making in vital that they have a big day.

Best and worst: Lucas Zhukenov is a can't miss selection and should bolster their blue line for this season. There were better prospects available than Aidan Rozel in the final round but it can be forgiven with some of the other prospects they picked up.

Overall grade: B+

The Lynx are definitely a better team coming out of this draft, although it remains to be seen if they're ready to be considered contenders.

Saskatoon Wild

The champion Wild had just one pick in the first two rounds and weren't afraid to go bold with their choices.

Best and worst: The Wild went off the board to pick up the biggest reach of the first two rounds in Jonathan Killeen, however, he's already being called a steal by some. Chose the three best players they could with each pick, especially Niels Skovgaard with the 24th overall pick. No real bad choices to write about.

Overall grade: A

We'll soon find out if Saskatoon can replicate last season's success, however, they made the right choice every time they could here and added some real top end talent throughout.

Yukon Rush

Going into any draft with just two picks in the last two rounds is not a recipe for major success.

Best and worst: Lars Siktanc was a good pick and Brandon Lapham Jr. could have some potential. However, having such little to works with means this draft could never be considered a success.

Overall grade: C

Didn't neccessarily do anything wrong on the day but the lack of valuable assets acquired means it would be unfair to rate it any higher.

Edited September 5, 2015 by dankoa

[Daniel 565]

Down On The Farm: Statistics and the VHLM

 

#2: The Power Play

 

As we get deeper into the VHLM season and it starts to become more clear what we can expect from each team this year, I thought it would be a good idea to take another look at some of the statistics going on behind the scenes. In this week's edition, I thought it would be interesting to investigate how important a good power play unit is to a winning team, and conversely, whether teams that are typically struggling to win games are more likely to be less effective at scoring goals with a man advantage.

 

Firstly, I'm going to compare a team's overall position to the Power Play Percentage (the number of Power Play chances they scored on). Based solely on a common sense idea of how the two correlate, a team's PP% should correlate fairly nicely to their position in the league, ie. the best team in the league should have one of the best Power Play units. I've collected all the data below.

 

 

As you can see, for the most part it is as we expected, however, there are a few noticeably odd figures. The best team in the league, the Moscow Red Wolves are currently being out-performed on the power play by the 3rd best team, the Bern Royals, but probably more shocking is the fact that, although they're having a good season overall, Oslo are having a pretty awful time of it on the power play. They've scored just 12 goals on 70 attempts, which leaves them with a paltry PP% of 17.14; the second worst in the league. This probably says a lot about Oslo's ability to score in even strength situations, but it does strike me as odd that they've been as successful as they have been thus far when they seem to be so poor at scoring with a man advantage. 

 

Another interesting point is the huge gap between the 7th placed team, the Bratislava Watchmen, and the 8th placed team, the Yukon Rush, in terms of power play production. While Bratislava's season is going pretty horribly in general, they hold a PP% of 17.28%, which doesn't seem to be anything great until you see that Yukon's PP% is a horrifically bad 6.35. For whatever reason, the Rush appear to be having the season from hell this year, and their power play unit doesn't seem to be doing anything much to lighten the load, scoring 4 goals on the 63 chances they've had. Normally I'd recommend they try and address the issue but in Yukon's case it seems they've got so many issues to deal with that this one's of particularly low importance. 

 

Thanks for reading guys, hopefully you enjoyed it. I'm going to try to make this a semi-regular column, so if you have any ideas for stats of any sort I could write about, I'd love to hear some of your ideas!