Most team scouts will offer you a simple bottom line regarding the thousands of hours they put into picking seven players on draft day: they end up working incredibly hard to make educated guesses about 18-year-olds who may or may not grow up into men who have the desire, drive, physical and mental assets necessary to invest themselves in the 24-7-365.25 lifestyle that is working one's ass off to become a professional hockey player. As most scouts will suggest, drafting is just the start of a process of player development that doesn't pan out for every player drafted, and if they can get 1 or 2 NHL players out of every draft, they're very happy.

The Toronto Star's Kevin McGran reports that a business professor who thoroughly analyzed the drating patterns of NHL teams found that honest scouts are telling the truth about that guessing game:

It’s all a bit much to Peter Tingling, a business professor at Simon Fraser University in B.C. who has analyzed years of NHL drafts looking for insight into how decisions are made.

His conclusion:

“It’s all guesswork,” asserts the professor. “Our research says nobody is particularly good at making (draft) decisions. There are people who have the reputation of having made great decisions. There’s this myth of Detroit as a great late-round chooser.

“I would tell you it’s a bit of a myth. They do a great job (scouting) in Europe, not so good in North America. But what Detroit is absolutely tremendous at is retaining and developing players. At some point, drafting well is useless if you can’t develop and retain (the players), as many teams know.”

Continued