Fabs and flops: How each NHL team has done in Round 1 of the draft

Yes, Montreal Canadiens' fans, it's just as terrible as you thought. Meanwhile, there are some scouts in Washington and St. Louis who might want to ask for a raise

Charlie McAvoy (left) and Tony DeAngelo were two excellent picks in the middle of the first round.

When the Montreal Canadiens included Ryan Poehling as part of the package to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Jeff Petry trade, it concluded a decade of terrible first-round drafting and developing. Not only do not a single one of the 10 players they chose in the first rounds in the 10 drafts between 2009 and 2018 play for them, only one of them is accomplishing much of anything at the NHL level these days.

The Washington Capitals, meanwhile, can puff their chests out over how they’ve performed. With first-round picks including Evgeny Kuznetsov, Filip Forsberg, Tom Wilson, Andre Burakovsky, Jakub Vrana and Ilya Samsonov, the Capitals have drawn more from lower draft positions than any other team in the NHL. And the St. Louis Blues are not far behind. So it should come as no surprise that the Capitals and Blues won the Stanley Cup in 2018 and ’19, respectively.

Listed below are the rankings for each NHL team – not including the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Kraken, for obvious reasons – of the performance in the first round in the 10 drafts from 2009 through 2018. I chose that time period because those are the players who should be the most important contributors to a team’s success now.

A couple of things to remember:

• This ranking is for first-round performance only.

• Where a team was choosing in these drafts was a very important consideration. One of the reasons Washington ranks so highly is that its average draft position was 22nd overall, which tied it with the Anaheim Ducks and Chicago Blackhawks for the lowest in the league.

• Another key consideration is how the players have done as NHL players, whether they’re still playing with their original teams or not. What they have done with their teams is still a consideration, which contributed to the Philadelphia Flyers’ ranking. Guys tend to stay there after they get drafted. And the Capitals’ scouting staff should not be penalized for the fact that then-GM George McPhee traded Filip Forsberg to the Nashville Predators for Martin Erat and Michael Latta before Forsberg had ever played an NHL game.

• The average number of games and points produced in the NHL is more a reflection of drafting. The average number of games and points with the original team is more a reflection of developing.