Visualising the NHL success of Calgary Flames draft picks

The Calgary Flames have had a love-hate relationship with the NHL Draft. Of course, the team has drafted bonafide NHL superstars like Matthew Tkachuk, Sean Monahan, and the late Johnny Gaudreau. One common theme right off the bat is that it’s been a while since the Flames have found a franchise player through the draft.

With the team ushering in a new era with the hopes of the Flames being true Stanley Cup contenders by the time the new Scotia Place arena opens, building through the draft is as crucial as ever. So far, it’s looking like the 2024 draft class has the potential to be one of the best classes of recent memory for the Flames, but how have things looked for the team in past drafts?

Calgary Flames drafting success rate

There is no shortage of metrics to evaluate draft success, especially in the NHL. One of the simplest ways is to look at total NHL games played, which at its core just indicates whether the draft produced NHL players.

As of November 10, 2024, the sum total of games played by Flames draft picks from 2009 is 7,498. How does it all look when broken down by year and draft round? Let’s take a look.

Flames NHL draft data visualisation

To explore the games played metric, I decided to use a waffle plot to see how draft classes have performed against one another over the years. Data from Hockey-Reference.com was used to see how those 7,498 games were spread out over the classes.

I used R to create a waffle chart to show every single game played by Flames draft picks since 2009. Every bar represents a draft class, and within each bar, games are plotted in groups of 10 and coloured based on the draft round. Each row therefore shows 10 NHL games and the cumulative total for the entire draft class makes up the bar.

First-round draft picks should have the bulk of NHL games played, but the Flames have had misses in the first round as well as successes in later rounds, making for a unique overall plot. Let’s break things down in more detail.

Reading into the draft waffle chart

There’s lots to get into just from the chart. Note that some of the finer details like the actual games played can be found in the table included at the end of the article, but the insights are derived from the chart itself.

The 2011 class leads in game played

The Flames saw the most games played from their 2011 class. This year was of course highlighted by Gaudreau with 763 career games, but three other players surpassed the 100-game threshold. First-round pick Sven Baertschi ended up with 292 games, Markus Granlund racked up 335 as a second-rounder, and Laurent Brossoit appeared in 140 games as a journeyman backup goalie. Even Tyler Wotherspoon played 30 games to round out the class, making for NHL games played for everyone drafted in 2011.

Years without first-rounders

The Flames didn’t pick in the first round in 2010, 2015, 2018, and 2022. In 2010, the Flames found an NHLer in Micheal Ferland (335 GP), selected in the fifth found. Three NHL players came out of the 2015 class, as Rasmus Andersson (470 GP) and Oliver Kylington (207 GP) were selected in the second round, while Andrew Mangiapane (431 GP) was a sixth-round pick.

The draft class of 2018 was poised to be a complete dud, but last season finally saw the NHL arrival of Martin Pospisil (78 GP). Had he not made it, the Flames would have had zero NHL players coming out of that year.

While it’s too early to gauge the 2022 draft class, it’s currently the only year with zero NHL games as Samuel Honzek (5 GP) suited up in Flames games this year as the first player out of the 2023 class to get experience in the NHL. Only three players were selected in 2022 and they were Topi Ronni, Parker Bell, and Cade Littler.

A worrying trend with a lack of recent success

Last but not least, the chart shows a worrying trend. After 2017, there is a huge drop in NHL experience. From the 2018 through 2023 draft classes, only 279 NHL games have been played across eight players. That number will of course grow with the trio of Martin Pospisil, Connor Zary, and now Matt Coronato being NHLers, but it’s been slim pickings for draft success in recent years.

As mentioned earlier, the 2024 class could be poised to be a home run year in developing NHLers, but that is not guaranteed and only time will tell how that group pans out.

Hoping for Flames draft success

The Flames could use a little luck in the draft. From the elusive top-three pick that they’ve never been privy to, to the questionable selections made in the Brad Treliving era, the Flames really need to see things change in their drafting and player development over the coming years. The 2024 NHL Draft was a good start. Let’s hope this continues.

What else would you like to see plotted from the Flames draft picks? Let us know in the comments!

Raw data

Here is the data used to create the chart. Only players with at least one NHL game are included.

Year	Round	Player	Games Played
2009	1	Tim Erixon	93
2009	6	Joni Ortio	37
2010	3	Max Reinhart	23
2010	4	John Ramage	2
2010	4	Bill Arnold	1
2010	5	Micheal Ferland	335
2010	7	Patrick Holland	5
2011	1	Sven Baertschi	292
2011	2	Markus Granlund	335
2011	2	Tyler Wotherspoon	30
2011	4	John Gaudreau	763
2011	6	Laurent Brossoit	140
2012	1	Mark Jankowski	366
2012	2	Patrick Sieloff	2
2012	3	Jon Gillies	35
2012	4	Brett Kulak	513
2013	1	Sean Monahan	778
2013	1	Emile Poirier	8
2013	1	Morgan Klimchuk	1
2013	7	John Gilmour	37
2014	1	Samuel Bennett	630
2015	2	Rasmus Andersson	470
2015	2	Oliver Kylington	205
2015	6	Andrew Mangiapane	431
2016	1	Matthew Tkachuk	600
2016	2	Dillon Dube	325
2016	3	Adam Fox	370
2016	6	Matthew Phillips	34
2017	1	Juuso Valimaki	241
2017	4	Adam Ruzicka	117
2018	4	Martin Pospisil	78
2019	1	Jakob Pelletier	37
2019	7	Dustin Wolf	25
2020	1	Connor Zary	78
2020	2	Yan Kuznetsov	1
2020	7	Ilya Solovyov	10
2021	1	Matthew Coronato	45
2023	1	Samuel Honzek	5