Draft Analysis: S70 or S72?

[Patrik Tallinder 1,087]

Hello everyone, welcome to my first draft analysis article! As you may or may not know, I followed the last three drafts very closely in my Draft Profiles series. While reflecting on the most recent S72 draft, I found a connection to the first draft I ever covered. That connection was that the top 2 picks went to the same team. In S70, Edwin THE Encarnacion and Mikko Lahtinen were selected with the respective first and second overall picks by the Calgary Wranglers. This time around, SS Hornet and Robin Winter were both picked by the HC Davos Dynamo with those same picks.

 

Imagine this. You’ve begun a brand new VHL franchise, and you have no other players yet. You have the choice to build around one duo; there is Lahtinen and Encarnacion, or Hornet and Winter. But what’s interesting about this hypothetical is that time has been rewinded for all of them, restoring their TPE and age to the moment they were drafted. Now that we’ve removed as many biases as we can, let’s take a look at what’s on the table here.

 

Shoutout to @Tagger and @enigmatic for the graphics I used to make this.

 

Edwin THE Encarnacion // D // 371 TPE

 

Mikko Lahtinen // C // 350 TPE

 

 

Another shoutout to @zepheter for the one on the left. Couldn’t find one for Hornet, unfortunately.

 

SS Hornet // C // 379 TPE

 

Robin Winter // LW // 325 TPE

 

 

Previous Players

While this isn’t an accurate indicator of what this player will be, it is never a bad idea to have a background check on the user. Let’s look at how much TPE they earned with their last player.

 

Tagger - Edwin Preencarnacion: 1064 TPE

 

Beketov - Matt Thompson: 1571 TPE HOF

 

McWolf - Joseph McWolf: 1434 TPE

 

Sonnet - Alexander Pepper: 1390 TPE

 

It’s worth noting that TPE inflation could have been different at their peaks, but I can’t say I have any knowledge on that.

 

 

 

Draft Season

Edwin THE Encarnacion had a fantastic draft season, in which he put up 122 points (3rd amongst defensemen) in the regular season, and added a league-leading 24 postseason points. His efforts were key for a nearly unbeatable Saskatoon team, en route to a Founder’s Cup victory.

 

Mikko Lahtinen was traded early in the season, and headed to that same Saskatoon team. He posted 44 goals and 93 points on the season, with 83 coming from his time with the Wild. Lahtinen’s faceoff percentage was second in the league amongst the players with more than 25 faceoffs taken, which was impressive for such a young center. His 18 points also helped the team reach their S69 championship.

 

SS Hornet and Robin Winter unfortunately didn’t play on a Founder’s Cup winning team. Hornet made it to the second round with the Aces, tallying 4 goals and 17 points in 12 games. This came after a season of an identical 41 goals and assists, totaling 82 points.

 

Robin Winter had a remarkable draft season, with 57 goals and 120 points to show for it. Minnesota would go on to have a first round exit, but to no fault of Winter, who posted a point-per-game on the series.

 

 

 

TPE Earning

Now, we move on to the most important category, TPE earning. First, we’ll look at capped TPE. Obviously, as these guys are all top 2 picks, they’re bound to miss out on very little of it. The only one to not earn the maximum amount of capped TPE available to them was Mikko Lahtinen, who only missed out on 2. 

 

With that out of the way, it’s time to look at the uncapped side of things. This really puts into perspective the differing opportunities they had to earn TPE. First off, the time frame here isn’t the same. The S70 duo had 14 full weeks to earn TPE before their draft, while the S72 duo was finishing up their 13th week when they were drafted. Now that it’s been more than a week since the draft, we can see what they would have earned in that 14th week. 20 TPE must be subtracted since they wouldn’t have the training camp or VHLM graduation bonus, but that still adds a respective 19 and 30 TPE to Hornet and Winter. With this, their total TPE becomes 404 and 358, better than Encarnacion and Lahtinen.

 

Another opportunity the S70 players had was the VHL’s 12 days of Christmas giveaway. This totaled up to 15 uncapped TPE, which is a significant advantage over the S72 duo. Back then, donations could include an extra 5-6 TPE (though it should be mentioned that this was not used by Lahtinen), and they had two trivia payouts as well. With how the S72 guys still put up close to the same TPE totals as the S70 two, I would definitely give them the edge in TPE earning, given the lesser opportunities they had.
 

 

Other Factors

I’m not here to say one of these pairs of great players are better than the other. I leaned heavily towards the S72 guys in the last section, and I’m going to do the opposite here. I’m just trying to lay out all the information for you to make the most accurate vote. So here is the biggest factor I haven’t covered yet: position. Hornet and Winter are both forwards, being a center and a left winger to be exact. Encarnacion and Lahtinen cover two bases that are essential to a successful team; Lahtinen is a future #1 center, and Encarnacion is a future #1 defenseman. If you were in the hypothetical situation where you were building a team from scratch, that’s something that could greatly benefit your team. 

 

Jobs could also be a factor down the line. The most significant case here is Lahtinen, whose jobs are being a commish and simmer guarantee him 10 capped TPE each week. It likely isn’t a huge advantage, given that the others are almost always going to be capping out anyways, but it gives him a much lower chance to dip in TPE production long term.
 

 

Thank you for reading this, it has been fun to cover. I ask that you be as unbiased as possible in your vote, and I hope I was unbiased enough in my explanation. 

[McWolf 3,115]

I think it's fair to say that the couple of TPE that might end up coming between the four of us isn't as important as our respective build, our fit in the lineup and the randomness of STHS.

 

Interesting read though, it'll be a fun comparative for as long as the four players are with the team that drafted them.

[mediocrepony 1,216]