WELCOME TO THE BLUE BULLET REPORT

Welcome everyone to the Blue Bullet Report. For the past decade I have been doing NHL draft rankings that can be seen over on the Oilers message board at Hockey’s Future or in the last few years at lowetide.ca. I would never have guessed what started out as a hobby between classes at the U of A, would turn into being a radio guest on Lowetide’s show or having my draft rankings mentioned in Bruce McCurdy’s blog at the Edmonton Journal. The best part is seeing my rankings alongside someone I look up to and admire in Bob McKenzie. He has always been the gold standard when it comes to draft rankings. To compare how I have stacked up over the years, in terms of getting first round selections correct, let us compare myself with two major draft publications in Bob McKenzie and ISS:

YEAR     BB         BM         ISS

2014       27           27            26

2013       24           25           22

2012       23           27           22

2011       25           25            23

2010       25           25           24

2009       27           27           24

2008       25           27           22

2007       24           24           25

2006       22           25         N/A

2005       23           23         N/A

2004       22           25         N/A

Avg       24.27     25.45      23.50

When comparing the number of first round choices from which ISS, Bob McKenzie and I get correct, you can see that Bob McKenzie is the best of the bunch and I am yet to best him. As for ISS, I have been consistently doing better than them, as you have to go all the way back to 2007 for the last time I had less picks in the first round (ISS separates goalies from their rankings so there has been 6 goalies taken in the first round that have not been accounted). I actually did not know how well I have done compared with ISS, so I am giving myself a little pat on the back. Guess I am not half bad at this after all. With that in mind, I wonder if my rankings will take a turn for the better or for the worse in terms of predicting first round choices. The reason I bring this up is that I have decided to continue taking a more stats based approach to the rankings. This would not be a surprise to those who know me, especially my parents and brothers, who would see me on the weekend as a 10-year-old kid spend many hours with the Edmonton Journal NHL stats page (which only came out on a weekly basis). There I would take the stats and prorate the various player with a calculator on pen and paper. I remember even having to take hockey cards so I could get past season statistics. And this may make me sound old (81 born), but kids of today have it so lucky with nhl.com and hockeydb.com, never mind all the advanced stats coming out today. Plus they can do it on excel with computers, those lucky little S.O.B.s. And to those that are older than me and did not have a calculator you can throw it in my face. To the hockey stat geeks that came before me, I salute you.

So what will this blog be about? Well everything and anything that has to do with the NHL entry draft of course, with a slant towards my beloved Edmonton Oilers. Through thick and thin I will be with this team and I wish them the best of luck in the future, but man has it been a rough few years. With that being said, we must look back at the past to better understand the future, so I began a project that has been an investment and a lot of hours but has turned out to be well worth it in the end. This all came about last year as I decided to create what I call a Bullet Score and used it in helping with my rankings. However, I never really had a chance to see if any of the factors I used had any value and when I look back at my 2014 rankings, I believe that I made too many assumptions when coming up with my Bullet Score and needed a better model. It got me thinking as to what is the correlation between a player in his 17-year-old draft season and his best season in the NHL? Is the correlation strong and could we use it to help predict offensive upside based on a player’s junior stats? These were the questions circling in my head as I began what I dubbed the Bullet Project. The grunt work of this long project has been completed and I will be sharing the results in my blog, which I plan to update around every three days. These results have been instrumental in changing how I evaluate the draft so I hope you enjoy coming along for the ride as the next 3 months will be focusing on breaking down the 2015 NHL Draft. For the NHL Draft fans Christmas is coming in June and it is going to be a great one.