Reply To: Player Traits – What do you look for when choosing a player?

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How The Length of the Draft Prevents Success

Alan Bass, Hockeybuzz.com, June 21 2012

When Steve Tambellini convenes his draft table on Friday night, he and his scouting staff will be faced with 378 names, according to NHL Central Scouting’s rankings – and scores more that the NHL’s front office failed to notice. Granted, the choice will not be difficult when it comes to choosing a name (assuming they retain the top overall pick), but when setting their draft board, there are literally millions of possibilities, in terms of determining which player’s name is placed next on the big board.

However, out of an average of seven choices a team has in the draft, most will be lucky if one player eventually makes it to the NHL on a full-time basis. The draft is one of the strangest events in sports – in essence, hundreds of scouts are being paid millions of dollars in order to guess what a 17-year-old kid will look like when he is 25. You rarely see hospitals paying money to guess what kids will ultimately become doctors.

Not to say that the draft is not worthwhile and exciting. But it does bring up a problem with the length of the draft, and something known as the “paradox of choice.” There is a great deal of psychological research on decision-making, and results have consistently found that the more choices someone has, the less likely they are to make a correct decision, and the less satisfied they will be with their ultimate selection.

For example, one study showed that in an employee investment plan, for every 10 mutual funds an employer offered, the rate of participation among employees went down two percent. Another study had two groups of participants select a painting to keep, but one group had a three-day waiting period in which they could change their painting, while the other group had to stick with their decision immediately. Although no one decided to exchange paintings, the group that had the opportunity to do so ultimately was less satisfied with their initial decision. When people are presented with a myriad of choices, many people do not have enough information to make a decision that makes them content.

Okay, so a professional scout and an entire hockey operations department is generally assumed to have more information than necessary in order to make these decisions. But is that, in fact, true? If you look at statistics from 1988 to 1997, after the first three rounds, The probability of selecting a player that plays at least 200 games remains the same – meaning the accuracy of a team’s seventh round selection matches the accuracy of its fourth round selection – which means that it’s easier and more effective to simply flip a coin.

But try telling that logic to Ken Holland and his Detroit staff. Those in the NHL industry often do not realize that the values of second and third round selections are identical, based on the accuracy of their choices, and the values of fourth through seventh round selections are identical as well. However, there seems to be this understanding that hockey operations departments are completely adept at determining which players will become the most successful – forgetting the fact that when they pick one player, they are immediately rejecting hundreds of others.

When people are presented with a plethora of options, they often are less satisfied with their choice than if they had fewer options, because they often think about the numerous other possibilities that they could have conjured, and the regret often subtracts from the decision that was made – even if the decision was, in fact, correct. When you choose something, at the same time you are refusing to choose something else.

Not to go off topic, but take, for example, a fish in a fishbowl. It only has a limited number of possibilities in its habitat. But if you shatter the bowl and give it all the possibilities in the world, you ultimately end up with paralysis – an inability to move.

The length of the draft has been decreased in recent years, and most likely will not be shortened again in the foreseeable future. But if scouts and management can be aware of this paradox and understand the effects that the nature of the draft has on these decisions, they might be able to break this paradox and begin to increase their success.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
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