Quoting: gretzkyghosts
First the top chart was developed by analyzing the trades that GM's had made on draft day, long before the NHL was making draft charts.
The other charts use the players performance years after the draft to give the value to each round.
Obviously Nail Yakupov taken 1st OA and Brayden Point taken 79th OA tend to make it difficult to give a value to each round.
But in general looking at past draft day trades, the charts hold up.
To answer your question, last year before the draft I posted Buffalo trading the first over all to Columbus for the 5th,12th and 25th, Columbus fans and Buffalo fans railed against it
If I were the GM of the Sabres knowing I needed more NHL players, I would have done the 3 for 1 trade.
So, I would want the 4th OA for the 9th and 41st OA, but not for the 9th and 28th.
On the other hand since the premise of this post was to quantity over quality, moving back 5 spots and getting an early second may be very appealing as well.
Appreciate the reasoned response and will throw this at you.
Am assuming you'll agree with the following:
--generally speaking the top of the draft is where you most readily find impact prospects
--dependent upon the draft, impact players can stretch down from say 3/4 to 9/10 or farther (see 2003 and 2015 drafts in particular)
--each draft is different when it comes to tiers and quality depth
The issue is the value at No. 16 and it varies wildly from year to year. Going back to 2007 (the last year the Sabres won a playoff round) here are the tiers of 16-overall picks (plus a quick overview of the top-half of each draft):
Elite
--Vladimir Taresenko, 2010 (impactful to No. 4 with a gem or two between there and 16)
--Matthew Barzal, 2015 (quality in nearly every spot down to 10)
Top-level
--Tom Wilson, 2012 (unique in that there was a meh top-10 but very nice players from 11-19)
Strong journeyman
--Nick Leddy, 2009 (impressive top-7, meh down to 19)
--Nikita Zadorov, 2013 (Excellent top-4, very, very good players from 5-9, quality sprinkled thereafter)
Lower-end/borderline NHL'ers
--Joel Armia, 2011 (strong top-9, mostly misses throughout rest of first round)
--Joe Colbourne, 2008 (top-heavy through four, two quality picks at 9 and 15)
--Sonny Milano, 2014 (top-heavy through three, with a couple of gems through 15)
--Colton Gilles, 2007 (P. Kane up top, some very, very good players down to 16)
Jury's still out
--Jakob Chychrun, 2016 (Chychrun looks great, excellent four of top seven, otherwise average with only one gem down to 16)
--Jusso Valimaki, 2017 (very impressive top-five save for No. 2, solid to 16 with one gem at 13)
--Martin Kraut, 2018 (most in top four shaping up nicely with a kicker at 7, lots of potential down to 16)
--Alex Newhook, 2019 (1, 6 and 9 look to be impact players, the rest way too early to tell)
The above stretched out over 13 drafts.
--Two players at No. 16 are considered elite and while Tarasenko came from a somewhat typical draft class, Barzal was part of a class that might be second only to 2003 this century.
--One player, Tom Wilson, is an impact player but not elite and he came from a very unique draft class
--Two players are very strong journeymen with Leddy coming from a very good draft class (especially top-7) and Zadorov in an above average draft class
--Four players are lower-end/borderline NHL'ers. Armia came from a very strong, top-nine draft class, Colbourn and Milano from more typical draft classes while Gilles was in a very weak one
The jury's still out on four with Chychrun looking very good right now. He came from a top-heavy class. Valimaki and Kraut had classes with a strong top-4 and top-5, respectively, while impact players in Newhook's class were more spread out.
Am of the opinion that this is a top-five heavy draft with average quality through 16 (at least). Sure, there will be some gems available as there almost always are, but odds of landing one between 6 and 16 aren't the greatest. Therefore, going with a more sure-fire thing is my bet.
thx for reeding