Drafted Captains - A New Trend?

[doniceage]

by Russ_Cohen

47% of the captains in the NHL were drafted by that franchise. Here’s the current list:

Hurricanes – Eric Staal
Blackhawks – Jonathan Toews
Flyers – Mike Richards


http://www.sportsology.info/node/14947

[Pacific]

I think it's largely a case of teams hanging on to good character guys - get someone who can play and is good off the ice and they seem happy to commit to them.

[30ranfordfan]

Interesting article, but I'm saying Russ Cohen didn't do any homework. He noticed that many Captains in the NHL were drafted by their teams, so he wrote an article about it. Growing trend? I suppose it's relative to what season you're using for your base.

I don't know what year he used (last season? 3 seasons ago?) to compare the current list of Captains to. I can only assume it wasn't the origional 6 era - becuase I'd be willing to bet with the lack of player movement back then..... 5 of 6 teams at any given time had a home grown player as Captain.

Anyway.... that still leaves a lot of time (68-69 until last year) to pick a "base" year. I picked one at randon.... the 1989-90 season.

I had to look at Wikipedia Pages for each of the 21 teams to get the info, but here's what I found:

New Jersey: Kirk Muller
Islanders: Brent Sutter
Penguins: Mario Lemeiux
Flyers: Dave Poulin / Ron Sutter
Oilers: Mark Messier
Bruins: Ray Bourque
Canadiens: Guy Carbonneau / Chris Chelios
Whalers: Ron Francis
Nordiques: Peter Stastny
North Stars: Curt Giles
Red Wings: Steve Yzerman

All used 'home grown' Captains.

The Canucks use Deron Quinn, Doug Lidster and Trevor Linden as Captains that year.... Lidster and Linden were home grown.

The Jets used Dale Hawerchuck, Thomas Steen, and Randy Carlyle. Hawerchuck and Steen were home grown.

For those two teams..... I gave 2/3 points (instead of 1). Thought that was the fairest way to do it.

The result? 11 of 21 teams used home grown Captains.... and two more did 2/3 of the time. My numbers say that's 58.667%.

Maybe Home Grown Captians are a declining trend?

[cnshockey]

I really hope Brown loses captaincy and it is given two one of two drafted kings who truly deserve it...Drew "GOD" Doughty or Wayne "the Night Train" Simmonds aka Simmer aka Sim-dawg

[doniceage]

30ranfordfan

I will drop Russ a line to see if he wants to respond. A good response.

Don

[30ranfordfan]

I'd love to hear one :)

I dunno. I was just surprised that it was the case in less than 50% of teams. Usually your Captain is a guy that's been around for a while, so by default I would have expected a higher percentage. Maybe that number really slipped over the last few years, and it is starting to rebound?

I used only 1 season, so it's also quite likely that I picked one where it was abnormally high.

[policeradio556]

I really hope Brown loses captaincy and it is given two one of two drafted kings who truly deserve it...Drew "GOD" Doughty or Wayne "the Night Train" Simmonds aka Simmer aka Sim-dawg

Give it time... I see Drew Doughty as the next captain but he needs maybe another 2years... If nothing else for the experience factor