Why Quebec players are projected so low in the DRAFTe model
If you went through what the DRAFTe model thinks of the 2022 NHL Entry Draft, you might have noticed that no name from the LHJMQ (Quebec Major junior league) appear in the first two rounds.
As part of the big Canadian CHL Junior circuit with the OHL and WHL, it certainly raises questions. Is it a bad year for the “Q”? Does the model hate the league?
Well, a bit of both, but not on purpose.
The Q is on a bad trend
Our reference sample goes from the draft 2008 to the draft 2017. Fifteen years on which we built the probabilities of players to reach the NHL, based on how good they were in what league.
Over those fifteen years, just 185 18 years old were drafted from Quebec, compared to 303 in the WHL and 378 in the OHL. It’s ok, you can have fewer players drafted but a good track record of success, like the European senior leagues (SHL, Liiga, Czech, KHL, etc.).
But their success rate ended up being very low. Here are the percentage of players that reached 100 NHL games (harmonized for visibility), and Quebec is almost behind everywhere.
The best Quebec forwards became NHLers 56% of the time, compared to 74% in the WHL and 88% in the OHL. Even more baffling, just 29% of the top Quebec defensemen became NHLers, compared to 58% in the WHL and 71% in Ontario.
Another worrying sign is that there’s a much lesser natural link between how well you did in the Quebec league during your Draft year and your future success. In the OHL, the probabilities of making the NHL are almost naturally increasing every tenth of percentile, with a common tighter group in the lower levels. Same for the WHL, though the top 30 percentiles of defensemen are almost on the same level.
But, in Quebec, we had to group tenth of percentiles together more often as numbers were going up and down, especially for defensemen where the top 50 percentile defensemen all reached the NHL on average 28% of the time. Not only the elite players in the LHJMQ did not end up in the NHL with a high level of regularity, but being good in the LHJMQ seems a very volatile and more artificial indicator of future success than for other leagues.
The second part of our model looks at how good players ended up being in the NHL, comparing their Draft Year Win Shares to their career average Win Shares in the NHL. And same for points per game on their Draft Year and NHL career average.
On points alone, Quebec is third, but side by side with the WHL and close to the OHL. However, the LHJMQ Win Shares NHLe is dramatically lower. If the OHL and WHL have a very similar NHLe on Win Shares and Points, players from Quebec had a much lower overall impact in the NHL, twice lower than the OHL. And it is not just underachievement in the NHL but also certainly an overperformance in the LHJMQ due to an easier surroundong, leading to a bigger drop in performance once in the big league.
To wrap it up, it’s probably easier to be the top guy in the LHJMQ than in other junior leagues, which implies a tougher adjustment in the NHL.
Now you get why the model is not very kind on players from Quebec, with their low probability of reaching the NHL and a projected lower impact.
Unless you are indeed very very good, as DRAFTe starts with your own Win Shares on draft year.
It is not just the model
In 2018, the first year the model can be used on, Filip Zadina was still 10th on our list. Noah Dobson was 26th (and drafted 12th). Zavgorodny was a big bet from the model and is now in the KHL. Fortier was 28th in the model and Tampa picked him at 59th, Nicolas Beaudin was 29th and drafted 27th, Veleno 31st and picked 30th. Finally Philipp Kurashev was 67th in the model and Chicago snatched him at 120th. So in most cases, the model was actually kinder to LHJMQ players than NHL teams.
Same in 2019, where the model had 5 players in the top30, when just 2 LHJMQ players were actually picked in the first round, including Samuel Poulin that we only had 48th, and finally made it to the AHL this season.
Funny note, Xavier Simoneau (a 5’7 forward) was 33rd in the model in 2019. He was picked by Montreal in… 2021 and was 3rd this season on pts/gm in the Q.
So no, it’s not just the model “hating” LHJMQ players. Not only NHL teams don’t seem to trust them much (also 5 first round picks in 2020 and 4 in 2021), but the players don’t prove them wrong either.
As you can see, from 2018, only 3 players reached 100 NHL games, when Veleno has 71 and the next guy just 19 games. From 2019, only Jordan Spence played any game in the big league yet.
In the OHL, 5 players from the 2018 draft have above 80 NHL games and 6 have already played in the NHL from the 2019 draft.
The WHL had a bad year in 2018 with just Ty Smith playing in the NHL right but Byram, Cozens, Dach and Krebs are playing from the 2019 draft.
What about 2022
On top of everything else, the LHJMQ 2022 batch simply lacks any potential star players.
Remember that the model is using the same weights for 2022 than 2018, so it is only a matter of player’s performance.
Jordan Dumais is the first name on the board, ranked 65th. His performance this season puts him at the 70th percentile historically among LHJMQ forwards, which gives him a 37% chance of making the NHL. Points alone would place him 18th though.
Isaac Menard and Marc-André Gaudet are around the 115th pick and Tristan Luneau, often seen as a borderline first round is 120th, with a performance ranking him at the 60th percentile historically.
Conclusion
So, the LHJMQ has given reason to doubt its value this past 15 years, especially compared to other North American junior leagues. A few players drafted since 2018 might raise the standards in a few years, after making a dent in the NHL, but this 2022 cohort seems simply too weak to beat already low odds. Hopefully some will surprise us.
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