NHL Draft History

Each row is one pick: the club that made it (after trades, with the original owner when the pick changed hands), the player, his position and amateur team, his final NHL Central Scouting rank in his category, and his NHL regular-season career so far. Career numbers are summed from our game data, which starts in 2017-18, so they are complete for every class shown here.

Judge a class slowly. Most first-round forwards need three to five years after their draft to reach the NHL, defencemen longer, and goalies longer still. A class only two or three years old will look thin: games played mostly measures how close a player is to the NHL, not how good he will be.

For fantasy keeper and dynasty leagues, the useful signals are draft position, an early NHL debut and a scoring rate once there. The Central Scouting rank shows where independent scouts had a player before teams picked; picks far above or below that rank are where teams disagreed with the consensus.