How Winning Teams Have Picked

Much like yesterday morning's post about how teams finished among forwards, defense and goalie rankings, while being in the money, I thought I would look at the strategy that was (or was not in place) at the Draft itself by the three teams that won the prize in the end. This does not take into account the Waiver Drafts, which happen twice during the year, just the plan that you can read from the first 14 picks of the year.

Year	2008	2009	2010
Round	(picked 15th)	(picked 12th)	(picked 6th)
1st	Forward	Forward	Forward
2nd	Forward	Forward	Forward
3rd	Goalie	Forward	Goalie
4th	Defense	Forward	Defense
5th	Goalie	Forward	Goalie
6th	Defense	Forward	Forward
7th	Forward	Forward	Forward
8th	Defense	Forward	Defense
9th	Defense	Goalie	Defense
10th	Forward	Goalie	Forward
11th	Forward	Defense	Defense
12th	Forward	Defense	Forward
13th	Forward	Defense	Forward
14th	Forward	Defense	Forward

If you take this table above and compare it with the table from yesterday's post, you might be able to see some similarities between where the team finished in each category and how they picked, especially in 2009, where it was the top group of forwards that won the pool and they were all taken right away.

Goaltending is one of the more interesting point spots in the winning formula for the draft, especially since all three teams were in the top four in the pool for goalie points, yet 2009 picked their goalies much later than 2008 and 2010, who were exactly the same, but I think there was a little bit of Waiver Draft magic in there that turned that around too.

It can be said that solid defense can win you this pool, if you don't have phenomenal scoring up front.  Both 2008 and 2010 finished 4th in defense scoring and their four picks are fairly similar, having 4th, 8th and 9th round picks as their defense, only differing from that a little bit otherwise.