First Round Draft Pick Trading

The official NHL record of drafts only tracks the pick history since 2000. You can find all the details of prior drafts elsewhere, but when I discovered that the official and easy to access data only went back 26 years, I was okay with leaving it at that.

As anyone who pays even the slightest attention to the NHL knows, there are endless discussions about the prospect of exciting pick trades leading up to the draft. The reality is much less dynamic.

The basic numbers first:

First-round picks traded by season

The caveat here is that traded means someone other than the original owner of the pick used it. There are a few cases of picks changing hands several times and ending up back with the originating team. They aren't included here.

Is that a trend to more pick trades? Maybe is my answer. It's been over 10 years since the low of five in 2014, but the highest value is in 2008. However, there isn't a percentage under 30 in the last six years. Blip or trend, we have to wait to find out.

First-round picks traded by pick number

Naturally, most trades are not for high-value picks. Yet another lesson in why the very term "first-round" is an exercise in misleading first yourself and then others. Lottery protection on picks is one reason why high picks don't get traded very often, but that's not a perfect method of prevention. The big driver of pick trades, though is teams that are good and therefore have low-quality picks adding players via trade.

One interesting note, is that most of this data comes from a time when there were only 30 picks in the first round. And it's long been known that pick 30 gets traded less than the high 20s do. That effect has not yet shown up in pick 32, but it may in time.

It sure looks like there is a mental barrier at pick 10 – partly driven by how lottery protection clauses are often written, but that's also a human failing. Teams can likely get pick 11 or 12 in trade easier than 10, and they should try for those, not the magic number that corresponds to how high you can count on your fingers.

I was surprised to see no strong difference in the top five vs the top 10, but these numbers are small, so it's difficult to see any pattern. Let's meet back here in 2126 when we have more data...

Top-10 and top-5 picks by season

There's all sorts of stories to be told about what looks like a change in attitude to trading top-five picks after the lockout. But it pays to remember that the difference maxes out at three, so this is a cloud not a real bunny by my guess. But this does, I think, emphasize that top-10 pick trades are generally rare. Only 11% of the top-10 in the past 26 years have been traded which is a simple average of just over one per year.

2013 is when the draft lottery changed from the original format where a single lottery allowed one winner to move up no more than four spots, to a system where the winner got the first-overall pick regardless of their original position. If there's a rules-based influence here, it's that.

Who traded these top picks? If you'd like to go back in time beyond 2000, then I have the source for you, complete with the traditional Leafs-fan baiting from this author:

Down Goes Brown: 10 trades involving top-10 NHL Draft picks

ConnectedSean McIndoe

It stops at 2016, though, and he used a different criteria. He was focused only on trades for players that happened between the draft lottery and the draft. So it's a compilation of who knowingly traded a good pick. There are very few.

The ones from this article that are in my charts since 2000 are (in heavily simplified form):

• 2000 Kevin Weekes in a deal that netted a fifth overall for the Islanders from Tampa
• 2001 Alexei Yashin in a deal that netted the Senators a second overall from the Islanders
• 2002 Ruslan Fedotenko in deal that netted the Lightning the fourth overall from the Flyers

Now that makes the story of those trades at the top a little different to the mere appearance of a statistical anomaly. But this is not a social history of ass-covering in the NHL...

• 2011 - Jeff Carter in a deal that got the Flyers the eighth overall from Columbus
• 2012 - Jordan Staal in a deal at the draft netted the Penguins an eighth overall from the Hurricanes
• 2013 - Cory Schneider in a deal the got the Canucks a ninth overall from New Jersey (this was a Mike Gillis deal)

I'll carry this on using the excellent resource linked in the post that still exists. Unlike the careers of most of those players. I'll just do all the trades that aren't straight pick swaps.

• The 2014 traded pick was from a deal the prior year, so doesn't meet the above criteria, but was Ottawa sending off what became the 10th overall in a deal for Bobby Ryan.
• 2017 - Antti Raanta in a deal that netted the Rangers the seventh overall from the Coyotes (this was a John Chayka trade at the draft).
• The 2019 traded pick was for Matt Duchene in a deal that got the Avalanche the fourth overall from Ottawa. This deal had actually taken place in 2017, and was for a 2018 top-10 protected pick. That pick was the fourth overall, so Ottawa chose to use it and give the 2019 pick to the Avalanche.
• The 2020 traded pick was Erik Karlsson to the Sharks for what became the third overall that year for Ottawa. The deal dated from 2018.
• 2021 - Oliver Ekman-Larsson in a deal that netted the Coyotes the ninth overall from Vancouver. (The Coyotes own pick at 11th overall had been forfeited in punishment for Chayka's violation of NHL rules. This was Bill Armstrong's deal.)
• In a deal done the prior year, Columbus had traded Seth Jones to Chicago for what became the sixth overall in 2022. It was only top-two protected.
• In a deal done at the draft in 2022, Chicago got Ottawa's seventh overall for Alex DeBrincat.

Since 2022 we have had three drafts with no traded picks of any kind in the top 10. Will that continue, or is this the year for a big deal?