This is the draft experiment wrap up for the Defense Emphasis draft. If you’re unfamiliar with the premise, go back and read the original post: the great draft experiment.

This team was drafted with an emphasis on drafting a strong defense group rather than stocking up on other positions. The ironic thing though is that since it held the #2 overall pick, Crosby was grabbed (after Ovechkin at #1) rather than taking a d-man straight up because of the quality of the first pick. After the first round though, several strong d-men were taken, and it turned out to be a pretty decent situation by season’s end, where this team ended up taking 1st place.

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The first row is the ranking in each category (this is a roto league) and the second row is the total year-to-date accumulation for each category.

This defense emphasis team did well in pretty much every single category across the board in its respective league, notching an overall score of 102 in the standings. The only category it was NOT in the top 3 for was PIM, which it was 4th for. Every other category was pretty much at the top of the league with respect to the other teams.

Final Roster:

To start off, the defense group is definitely the best crew in the league. Gonchar, Boyle, Green, Rafalski, no other foursome can even come close to matching their production in this particular league. Boyle, the #1 on D for two other draft experiment teams, was only a quarter of the D crop on this team. Green had a fantastic season and there’s not much more you can say about that. The group was rounded out by Rafalski and Gonchar. When Gonchar is your #4 D-man, you know the blue line is strong.

At the end of the season, #2 overall pick Crosby was still around and going strong. His partner at center though was David Krejci who was picked up as a free agent late in the season after Horcoff and Arnott were both dropped as the year went on. Just goes to show you that there are so many strong centers out there that it’s not as important to focus on trying to draft C’s. In fact, if not for having the #2 pick overall where Crosby was probably the best pick at the slot, a C would not have been drafted on this squad until several rounds later.

At the wings, Simon Gagne was the big producer at left. David Booth was a midseason free agent pick-up, and what a pick-up he was; he had a very nice season this season and is relatively underrated. Brad Boyes and Dustin Brown were the right wingers and although both had somewhat disappointing seasons in terms of pre-season expectations, they still got the job done chipping in offensively and in other categories. Dan Carcillo was grabbed late in the season to try and improve the PIM rank in the standings, and even though PIMs aren’t a big deal just by themselves, Carcillo’s contribution down the stretch probably cemented first place for this team, when PIMs were its weakest category all year long.

In net Pekka Rinne was the biggest surprise. He was picked up early and it was a quality transaction for sure. Rinne was great once he took over for Dan Ellis. Cam Ward was the first goalie taken in the draft by this team at 71st overall and then shortly after him Huet was grabbed right after him at 74th overall in the 7th round. Huet and Ward weren’t so great at the beginning of the season and as the year went on a couple other goalies were shuffled in and out to help them out.

Drafted Players Retention

This defense emphasis team ended up with only 14 transactions on the year. That’s not that much so the goal of keeping transactions to a minimum was largely successful. However, the true point of keeping transactions to a minimum is really to try and retain as many players as possible coming out of the draft, which would in turn imply that the draft was a success; obviously not an exact science by any means, but it’s not a terrible starting point. There were actually several key players that were added and dropped over the course of the season. The most important pick-up of the season was Pekka Rinne, easily, who was grabbed in January and then carried the goalie group for the rest of the way. Rinne was definitely one of the bigger reasons for this team doing as well as it did. In fact, if not for Rinne and the other goalies like Cam Ward stepping up, it’s possible that key points in the standings would not have been grabbed as the season progressed.

Obviously the first few picks were all retained, with Crosby and all the top drafted D still being there at the end of the season. Special circumstances with Gonchar, but he still was there at the end, so he’ll be included in this group in terms of retention. The first seven players taken for this team’s draft are still around at the end of the year, which is a very good start. Some trouble starts to crop up when it comes to the middle tier guys, though, and injuries were certainly a factor here.

The eighth round pick, Alex Tanguay, had to be sacrificed because he was out so long. Erik Cole was pretty much a busted pick this season as he was terrible in Edmonton. By the time Cole was traded to Carolina and righted his ship, he was already a free agent. Bouchard was another injury casualty.

The next two picks were Brown and Gagne in the 11th and 12th rounds respectively. Gagne’s o-rank was rather weak in the Yahoo! system at the beginning of the year so he was a pretty big steal. He could’ve easily gone in the first 5 rounds had his rank been properly assigned. After Gagne, the last four picks did not make it to the end of the year. One Martin Gerber was dropped right away, easily the worst pick of the draft for this team. Overall, 9 out of 16 players were kept through to the end of the year, which is decent.

Technically, even though the number of transactions was not that high at all, there was actually a lot of player movement, key player movement, in fact. However, the underlying rationale that a strong defensive core would offset forward weaknesses actually turned out to be true in this particular scenario. Several forwards were shuffled in and out but yet the strength of the D held up production overall to a good average no matter who the forwards are. Obviously Sidney Crosby helped out in this regard too. So although the second half of the draft was somewhat weak in terms of player retention, the top half–where it counts the most–was pretty solid, which makes the draft a relative success.

Again, the rationale for grabbing a bunch of elite D rather than forwards, who would technically produce more in an absolute production sense, is due to the fact that there is much more depth at all the forward positions. With this one team having four of the top 10 d-men out there, it’s very hard for other teams to have the same type of depth at D, and thus they will have weak production there. At the same time, you would argue that the forward production would be weak since aside from Crosby, no other really true superstar forwards were drafted, but the truth is that it is a lot easier to get good production from middle-tier (or even worse) forwards than it is to try and squeeze out elite D production from weak defensemen. It’s simply a positional depth issue; there are much fewer good D than there are forwards that can produce at a decent clip. In a roto league, it’s best to attempt to maximize production per slot. Taking a bunch of strong D in an h2h league may not be as strong as it is in roto, simply because the formats require different strategies overall.

The initial assumption was that the strong D would be able to offset the relative weakness at forward and it turned out to be largely true. As mentioned in the previous paragraphs, it’s that much easier to pick up a streaking forward who may be having a breakout season than it is to grab a D-man like that. Some young guys who ended up having good seasons are the two Davids on this team, Krejci and Booth. Neither team was drafted that high (if at all) but they still ended up having great seasons. The only bump in the road was Gonchar, who had to be sacrificed upon news of his long term injury, but luckily he was still available a little bit before he came back so he was snatched back up quickly.

There is still one more draft experiment wrap up to come, the goalie emphasis team, which also took 1st place. Then afterwards, there will be a couple more posts, comparing and contrasting the teams against each other and their leagues. Check out the original post: The Great Draft Experiment and also the main page with links to all the teams: http://saucerpass.com/draft-experiment/