2 research outputs found
Drafting Defensemen's Effect on National Hockey League Outcomes
Any draft in the league’s “salary cap era” (2005– Present) would go differently with
hindsight & with knowledge of the ultimate realized value of players. This study aimed to
explore whether National Hockey League (NHL) teams that choose to draft defensemen in the
first and second round of the draft more often will perform better as a team. The study
investigated data from 12 seasons 2007-08—2018-19 in the National Hockey League with 30
teams per year. The study incorporated several independent control variables and conducted an
OLS regression on defensive draft investments’ ability to predict regular season winning
percentage. The OLS model was a generally good fit with an adjusted R
2 of .632 (F(15, 344) =
42.04; p<.001). The results indicate that defensemen selected in the draft’s first two rounds are
responsible for a tangible effect on NHL team outcomes. It was found that the number of Draft
Selections had a statistically significant relationship with regular-season winning percentage
(p=.006) and each additional defenseman drafted in those rounds corresponded to a 0.7%
improvement in a team’s season winning percentage (p<.001). Additionally, for every standard
deviation increase in the use of non-drafted defensemen (free agents or transfer minutes), you
would expect to see a reduction in team winning percentage of 4.6% (p=.003). A logit regression
was also used to analyze the same variables’ ability to predict a playoff berth (Model fit:
χ
2
(15,360) = 205.22, p<.001). While traditional performance factors of Offense Quality and
Goalie Quality were significant predictors of playoff qualification (p<.001), the defensive draft
variables were not significant. Offensively-minded defensemen also did not present a statistically
significant effect on winning percentage or playoff berths for NHL clubs in either mode