Got a question emailed to me tonight from someone who was wondering about why teams often pass on later-round picks in the bantam draft. Some teams usually start to pass around the 9th or 10th rounds and very few teams are still picking by the last round, the 15th. The person wanted to know why teams would pass on some picks and give up a chance to get a prospect. I thought it was a good question to answer here instead of via email, because there may be others wondering as well.
The answer is that teams are restricted in the number of players they can pick by the number of open spots they have on their Protected Player List (PPL). Every player you draft must be added to your PPL and the PPL has a maximum size of 50 players.
Prior to the draft the WHL deletes all graduating overagers (that's the 1992-born players this year) from team PPLs. That creates three open spots on every team's list, assuming they previously had the maximum three overagers on their list.
All of the following season's incoming overagers (that's the 1993-born players this year) get moved off the team's main PPL and onto a separate list, the Overage list. They remain on that list over the summer, until the following season's overage cutdown deadline in October when they must be moved back. Moving them off the list at the draft though creates more openings to add drafted players - but of course the number of openings it creates depends on the number of 19 year olds you had on your list. The more 19 year olds you had, the more players get moved to the Overage list and create openings to add drafted players.
Once you have filled all the spots created by these two moves, the only way to keep drafting players is to start deleting other players from your list. This usually happens in the later rounds for most teams and that's when they have to start weighing whether the '98 kid they can draft in the 10th round is a better prospect than the current 50th-best prospect (a '97, '96, '95, etc) on their PPL. When the answer to that question is "No", that's when teams will start passing on their remaining picks. Of course I am over-simplifying the thought process here but you get the idea.
One of the "catches" in this process is that the teams with the most draft picks are sometimes the teams that have traded their 19 year olds for those picks. Thus they don't have a lot of spaces created by the Overage list shuffle, but they still need to find places to put all these players they're going to draft. As an example this year, Vancouver has EIGHT picks in the first three rounds of the draft alone. But, they only had three 19 year olds on their list before (Tvrdon, Franson, Kieser), and so with those three plus their three graduated overagers, they have only opened up six spots on their list. They'd be out of open spots by early in the third round. So you can be sure the Giants staff have identified a number of "lesser" prospects on their list who will be dropped to make room for more draft picks.
Conversely, a team like Saskatoon has traded a number of draft picks - they only have six picks through the first ten rounds. But the Blades had FIFTEEN 19 year olds when we last saw them. So they have a ton of open spaces - far more open spaces than they have picks in the entire draft actually. So it's quite possible the Blades will pick right through the end of the 15th round, simply because they need the prospects and they have the space to do so.
Hope all this makes sense.
4 comments:
I've been told by the Blades play by play that the Blades could end up picking up to 16 players tomorrow. There's no set limit on rounds rite? Just go until every team has passed which makes sense though its likely the Blades could acquire other team's late picks for picks in 2014 or whenever.
I believe the draft is capped at 15 rounds.
But yes, it would not be difficult to acquire more late picks if the Blades wanted to do so. A team that is dropping out after round 10 would probably give you their 11th, 12th, etc round picks in exchange for a 9th or 10th round pick in 2014. Or something like that.
So for teams like Saskatoon, who have a lot of 19 year olds (and thus can pick a lot of players) but who lack a lot of picks in this draft, there are certainly options to acquire more late picks fairly easily and cheaply.
Is there a place to find the PPLs?
Great Post Alan. I thought there were only 10 rounds to the draft since I don't remember seeing the T-birds pick past the 10th. It is great to know how the lists work to create the initial openings you have for the draft and to know that they can take players off their PPL on the fly to make more room if they feel they need it.
@anon 8:33, The only place I've seen PPLs is on Alan's blog, he has a quicklink to each team on the right side of the page. I believe that is the PPL from the start of the season. I really wish the T-birds would put their PPL on their site with who has signed and how they were aquired, I would love that as a fan.
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