Draft Simulation : Pre-Draft Results

Methodology

I simulated the 2026 NHL Draft 6,400 times, with each team having the ability to swap picks with other teams.

I found 32 draft rankings made by various scouts published online, then randomly assigned one ranking to each NHL team for a simulation. Once the simulation was completed, I reassigned the rankings to different teams and repeated the exercise.

My criteria for selecting rankings were:

• At least 64 players ranked
• No mock drafts
• Published on an established website
• Preference given to lists that ranked goaltenders (although I had to settle for two lists that did not)

For trades, I made a formula that takes into consideration:

• The Perri Pick Value, that you can find on Puckpedia
• Perceived value, which adjusts the base value according to the players remaining on a team's particular list. For example, if a team is trying to move up to pick #8, but the player they intend to select is ranked #5 on their list, they value the trade as if they were acquiring the #5 pick. At the same time, the team holding pick #8 still has their #3-ranked player available, they will perceive their pick as being worth the #3 selection, making them less likely to trade down.
• The number of picks a team owns. Teams with fewer than seven picks are more likely to trade down, while teams with more than seven picks are more likely to trade up.

The average simulation lasted 107 picks. The shortest simulation lasted 75 picks, while the longest lasted 164 picks.

Player Results

The Top 15

McKenna and Stenberg are clearly #1 and #2. Reid appears to separate himself enough to be consistently picked at #3. Malhotra, Carels, and Bjork are all comfortably inside the top 10, with Verhoeff and Smits following at #7 and #8 respectively. Rudolph is the odd-man out in this top 10. He’s the only one not getting picked in the top 5, but is still consistently selected in the 9-11 range. Lawrence is the player whose range is all over the place: he commonly lands between 6 and 11, but also has the potential to slide significantly lower.

Rest of the First Round

These are all the players that should get picked in the first round tonight. There appear to be two tiers of players before it gets all over the place. Gustafsson, Cullen and Belchertz are your favorites outside the top 10 and one final tier consisting of Lin, Hemming, Command, Klepov, Villeneuve, and Hermansson dominates the top 20. The last two consistent players are Suvanto and Novotny, who both have a shorter range and seem to get picked around 19 to 24.

Top 50

These are the players you would expect to still be selected Saturday morning.

Watchlist

Finally here are the players who were drafted in more than 65% of simulations. Should be interesting to see where they end up.

191 players were drafted in at least one simulation, but after around 100, the remaining players get drafted significantly less, so the data becomes less informative.

Trade Results

Here's a table showing the most active teams and how likely they are to trade up or down. I've also included what the simulation suggests should be their preferred trade strategy entering the draft.

The Blues have a lot of possibilities to move up in the draft. Here's a table showing which first-round picks they typically need to package in order to reach a specific selection.

Hidden Gems

Another way to analyze the data is by identifying the biases of each ranking list.

The table below shows the rankers used in these simulations and the players each evaluator selected significantly more often than their peers. In a few years, it may prove useful in identifying which scouts consistently uncover diamonds in the rough. The numbers in parentheses are the number of times the player got picked by the ranker and the percentage of times he got picked compared to the other rankers.

Ruck Brothers

What are the chances that the Ruck brothers are drafted by the same team?

In 17% of simulations (1,088 total), both brothers were selected by the same organization.

Twenty-one different teams did it at least once, with the Blues leading the way at 161, followed by Vancouver and Ottawa, with 137 and 136 occurrences respectively.

Craig Button was the "GM" most likely to draft both brothers together, doing so 587 times, followed by Steven Ellis at 306.

Next: Post-Draft Analysis