Are you smarter than an NHL GM (2020 Entry Draft edition)

Every year, a handful of RHL GMs get their balls out and scream out loud they know better than 32 NHL GMs and scouting teams. Instead of wisely following the actual NHL draft order to choose their draftees, some madmen will go for the homerun and pick a guy no one ever heard of off the board. 

“Only time will tell” is all we can really say then. Well today’s the day.

Sadly, all RHL entry draft records prior to 2020 were lost in the infamous revolution that saw the era of tyrans Cyan and Swabu come to an end. Under the leadership of charismatic leader maximo Mixture Bill though, we have abundant and well designed archives to explore. 

3 years after the 2020 entry draft, we can now try to answer the question no one wants the answer to : Are we smarter than actual NHL GMs ?

For this analysis, we’ll compare the pro stats of the players selected in the 7th round of the 2020 Entry Draft held October 7th 2020. Here are the 31 lucky nominees :

of those 31 7th rounders :

• 12 were left undrafted that year in the RHL 
• 1 was an undraftable overager per RHL rules
• 6 were drafted in the 6 first rounds of the RHL draft

As for the ones who were considered over actual drafted NHL players by RHL GMs, the 13 messiahs were : 

Almost all (11 of 13) of those picks were made by GMs still running in this league. Here comes Judgement Day.

Methodology

First, we'll agree that the jury is still out for many of those players. Guys at 22 can't all be labeled as total busts yet because they have yet to play a North American pro hockey game. A dozen guys are still active in NCAA and many more in Euro leagues and could one day come over and become NHLers.

Best we could figure out to point fingers as of now are the following : 

• Has the player ever been signed an NHL ELC Contract
• Has the player played ECHL, AHL or NHL games
• Is the player under contract for next season in an ECHL, AHL, NHL team

The results

NHL 7th rounders

Of all the players mentioned so far in this article, only 3 played any NHL games at this point :

• Devon Levi is the most notable to everyone and was picked in the late 6th round that year by Avs GM Blix. You could call him genius for that. Unfortunately you could also call him dumb for trading Levi a year later in a trade i’ll make a pleasure to remind everyone of once again
  
  Devon Levi + 6th for Adam Werner + 3rd. And no, the jury is not still out for G Adam Werner, he left for Sweden after a pale AHL career, end of story.
   
• Adam Raska and Ben McCartney were both left standing in the crowd at the 2020 RHL Entry draft. They have the more successful NHL careers so far along with Levi. So we all suck for that.
   
• As for the others, a few names are still of interest. Highly touted small russian forward Alexander Pashin was drafted in the very early 5th round by ODeezy has been “loaned” back in the KHL after an underwhelming AHL debut last year. Rsyzygy also reached way down with Oskar Magnusson and Ronan Seeley drafting them respectively at #147 (-60) and #168 (-40). Magnusson is still doing his thing in Sweden while Ronan Seeley signed his ELC and is looking good in the AHL so far.

of the 31 2020 NHL 7th rounder :

• 8 signed an ELC contract
• 7 are still under contract in America for next season
• total 38 ECHL games played
• total 655 AHL games played
• total 17 NHL games played

That’s an average : 

1.23 ECHL games played. 21.13 AHL games played. 0.55 NHL games played. 25.81% ELC success rate.

RHL Off the board picks

Of the 13 dice rolls by our beloved RHL GMs, 5 names don't have zeros all over the board. Not a bad rate honestly.

• Ethan Cardwell, drafted #186 by Rsyzygy ended up being drafted in the NHL at #121 in the 2021 Entry Draft. He signed his ELC with the Sharks and is looking to play with the Barracuda next year.
• Christopher Merisier-Ortiz, drafted #192 by BRRR has yet to sign an NHL deal but racked up 98 ECHL games and 23 AHL games within the Penguins organization and is set to play for the Habs affiliate Rocket de Laval next year.
• Pavel Gogolev, drafted #194 by ODeezy signed an ELC with the Toronto Maple Leafs, and got everyone a little excited with 60 ECHL games and 47 AHL games but is heading back to mother russia next year
• James Hardie, drafted #198 by unknow Bruins GM, managed to play 2 ECHL games last year, and it's unclear what's next for him. Seems unlikely at this point he'll ever score higher in Google than his famous fiber ciment counterpart.
• Jérémie Biakabutuka, drafted #206 by BRRR, and nephew of former NFL Running Back Tshimanga Biakabutuka, never got drafted but played 3 AHL games with Grand Rapids last season and signed an ELC this summer with the St. Louis Blues. He's actually the one who inspired this article because i dumped him at some point along with Chris Ortiz to then Kraken GM LordStanley in a 12 assets for nothing deal. 
• other notables : 
  Dmitri Rashevsky drafted #149 by MixtureBill still shows no sign of leaving the KHL, but he got drafted in 2021 by the Jets in the 5th round at #146.
  Theo Rochette drafted drafted #197 by ODeezy put up crazy numbers during his QJMHL career and captained the Quebec Remparts to a Memorial Cup win last season but still ended up settling for Switerland after all. Tough break.

That’s an average : 

12.31 ECHL games played. 5.54 AHL games played. 0 NHL games played. 23.08% ELC success rate.

The verdict : too early too call, to be continued next year perhaps.