Edmonton Oilers’ Best Draft Year – 2015

The Edmonton Oilers have had tremendous success at the Entry Draft, just not consistently. Six of the seven Oilers Hockey Hall of Fame players were original draftees by the team in its early years. In 1979, they drafted Kevin Lowe (#21), Mark Messier (#48), and Glenn Anderson (#69); in 1980, Paul Coffey (#6) and Jari Kurri (#69); and in 1981, Grant Fuhr (#8).

The greatest Oiler Hall of Famer, Wayne Gretzky, of course, was never drafted, having jumped directly to the renegade World Hockey Association (WHA) in 1978 at a time when the WHA was signing underage players who weren’t eligible for the NHL’s draft. When the WHA merged with the NHL in 1979, Gretzky slid over, protected by the Edmonton Oilers in the league-merger rules, bypassing the entry draft completely.

The Best “Draft” Versus the Best “Drafting”

While it will be a few years until we find out how well the Oilers scouting staff did with their recent picks, we can debate which year the Oilers scouting staff did their best work. By this, I don’t mean which draft class they got the best players. I mean the years the Oilers got the best overall value for the rounds their draft picks were made in. I’m not talking about the best “draft,” but the best “drafting.”

To illustrate the point, let’s compare the draft number and team statistics of two Hall of Fame defencemen, Chris Pronger and Nicklas Lidstrom. For our purposes, because we are judging the value the drafting team got in drafting the player, we will consider only the years they played with their original drafting team.

Chris Pronger

Pronger was drafted second overall in 1993 by the Hartford Whalers. He played only two seasons for the Whalers, scoring 44 points in 124 games before being traded to the St. Louis Blues for Brendan Shanahan. In both seasons, the Whalers lost in the first round of the playoffs. He won no awards during that time.

Nicklas Lidstrom

Lidstrom was drafted #53 by the Detroit Red Wings in 1989. He played two decades for the Red Wings, scoring 1,142 points in 1,564 games. From 1991, when he started playing for the Red Wings, until 2011, when he retired, the team made the playoffs every year except for the 2004-05 lockout season. He helped the Red Wings to four Stanley Cups, scoring 183 points in 263 playoff games. While with the Red Wings, Lidstrom won the James Norris best defenceman trophy seven times and the Conn Smythe for playoff MVP once.

There’s a legitimate debate over whether Pronger or Lidstrom is the better player, but picking Lidstrom 53^rd gave more value than picking Pronger second overall. It was better “drafting.”

2015: The Oilers Best “Drafting” Year?

Both 1979 and 1980 are usually identified as the Oilers’ best draft years. It is hard to argue with picks like Lowe, Messier, Anderson, Coffey, and Kurri.

Despite this, the long-term value of 2015 has largely been removed for Edmonton. With the trades of Bear, Jones, and Marino, the franchise will no longer benefit from their smart picks on defense. There was a possibility where two to three of their top-six defensemen came from this one class, which would have been a remarkable outcome.

Now all they have left is McDavid, which in his own right is a franchise-altering player, but can’t carry this draft class to Edmonton’s history books alone.