Sights on the Second Half: Part Five
As the Wild open the second half of our inaugural Western Hockey League season, we are turning the clock ahead and examining some of the decisions awaiting the team in the coming weeks…we’re breaking the conversation down into six key questions, continuing with question 5:
Q: So how important is the WHL Prospects Draft?
A: In a word, it is vital. There are three basic ways to build a Western Hockey League roster, starting with the WHL Prospects Draft. The first way is to build it through the draft, which is where the bulk of a team’s roster is acquired. The second way is through trades – once a team has enough on its protected list that it feels it has a chance to make a run, or teams want to add players, they can go to the trade market. However, teams who go that route with the intention of adding to their roster are generally giving up assets in the form of draft picks or prospects – either way, these are future players. The next way to do this is by signing free agents. Several free agents are on our current roster, including Brendan Gee, Kurt Rookes and Brayden Pankey.
However, building a competitive roster simply must start with the Prospects Draft. As mentioned previously, only four players on the current Wild roster were signed as free agents, either by Winnipeg or Wenatchee. The other option to build the roster, trading to add to it, simply is not an option until the team’s draft situation improves.
The impact of the CHL Import Draft and the WHL’s U.S. Priority Draft is important, but its impact is fairly limited in scope – only two players are taken in each draft, and Import Draft selections are made only if the team has import slots it can still fill. This year’s Import Draft was the first opportunity for the Wild to put their fingerprints on the roster, and the team did so with the selection of Kenta Isogai and Rodzers Bukarts. Excluding players taken in those two drafts, roughly 85 percent of the players on WHL rosters were taken in the league’s Prospects Draft – only 15 percent of the remaining players not selected in the Import or U.S. Priority Drafts were signed as free agents.
Further, of the league’s top 50 scorers, 41 were selected in the WHL Prospects Draft – more than half of those 41 players were taken in the first round and two-thirds were taken in the first two rounds. Only three of those 41 players were selected past the fifth round. This simply means once again that in order to consistently have competitive talent on the Wild roster, having high-round draft picks is a necessity.
