History suggests there’s a tonne of potential available when you step to the podium ninth — but what else does it tell us?
There are always going to be busts.
But if history tells us anything, it’s that the No. 9 pick in the NHL Draft is generally going to get you a pretty good NHL player.
Even more recently, the likes of Dylan Guenther (2021) and Marco Rossi (2020) look like solid NHLers.
So yes, history suggests there’s a tonne of potential available when you step to the podium ninth.
What else does it tell us, though?
Are there superstars?
It depends how you define the word ‘superstar’, I suppose.
More recently, we listed off some of the standouts from the past decade or so already, but Dougie Hamilton was taken in 2011 by the Boston Bruins and was among the league’s top defencemen for a couple of years and Logan Couture has had a terrific career since being drafted in 2007 by the San Jose Sharks.
Superstars? Not necessarily.
But between 2003 and 2017, every single player selected at No. 9 went on to play 200 games or more in the NHL. So you’re getting good, productive NHLers.
What sort of variance is there?
There are always going to be flops. That’s true of the first overall pick and it’s true of the No. 9.
But if I’m being honest, I expected there to be more misses when I looked back at the history of the No. 9 pick.
Really, since 2000, there are only a couple of picks you’d look at and confidently say ‘that didn’t work out.’
The Flames took Brent Krahn in 2000, and he went on to make only one NHL appearance. Petr Taticek was taken at No. 9 by the Florida Panthers in 2002 and played only three games in the NHL before returning to Europe for a long and productive career.
And then Vitali Kravtsov was drafted ninth by the New York Rangers and then flipped to the Vancouver Canucks before returning to Russia last season to play with Chelyabinsk Traktor in the KHL.
If there’s connective tissue between those three players, it’s going to take a better reporter than me to find it, but the point is that there are more hits than misses.
What position is popular?
This only tells us so much, because every draft is different and the 2024 edition has repeatedly been described as being heavy on defencemen at the top.
But in nine of the past 10 years, teams have taken forwards. The only exception was Sergachev in 2016. That was a nice pick, by the way, as Sergachev has gone on to win two Stanley Cups with the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Recent history says teams tend to favour forwards with the No. 9 pick, but it would be no surprise to see the Flames buck that trend.
How close are the guys selected?
But recent history does suggest that guys drafted at No. 9 generally don’t take that long to start contributing at the NHL level.
Starting with the 2021 Draft and going back over five years, we see that four of the five players taken ninth overall took another year to develop and then made their NHL debuts.
Guenther played 33 games in 2022-23 after being drafted in 2021. Rossi played twice in 2021-22 after being taken ninth in 2020, while Trevor Zegras was selected in that spot the year before and played 24 games in 2020-21. Kravtsov is the exception and didn’t debut until 2020-21 after the Rangers took him ninth in 2018, but Michael Rasmussen, who was picked in 2017, played 62 games in 2018-19.
The point here, largely, is just to say that it’s entirely possible the wait won’t be all that long to see whoever the Flames take at No. 9 wearing a Flaming ‘C’ on their chest.
What about the Flames’ own history?
There really isn’t all that much to be taken from this, but the Flames have picked ninth twice in their history.
They took Krahn with their selection in 2000, and he played one game.
Then, they took Dion Phaneuf there in 2003, and he went on to play more than 1,000 games in the NHL.
Does that tell us much? No, but I suppose if the Flames are looking for a reminder of the importance of getting their pick right, they can look at their own history.
