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Some interesting stats from the 2011 NHL Entry Draft

2010 NHL Entry Draft - Day 2

during day two of the 2010 NHL Entry Draft at Staples Center on June 26, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.

Bruce Bennett

(Want the full list of seven rounds worth of draft picks? Head over to Draft HQ. If you want PHT’s take on all 30 of Friday’s first round picks, click here. We also took a look at the surprising fall of Seth Ambroz, provided a profile of the first goalie drafted and shared the Carolina Hurricanes’ family-first selections of Keegan Lowe and Brody Sutter.)

With the 2011 Stanley Cup finals behind us, the 2011 NHL Awards done and the 2011 NHL Entry Draft completed, it’s time to move on to other hockey diversions: Hall of Fame debate and the mad scramble that is free agency.

Still, there might be a few of you who want to consume a few extra morsels of draft-related information, so we thought we’d share some of the most interesting bits from NHL.com’s stat-heavy look at the ’11 draft.

Region-related bits

Transfer deals, overseas scouting budgets and differing stereotypes make for some interesting fodder when you look at where the picks come from. One thing that stands out is the lack of Russians who were drafted: only eight were taken in 2011, just like last year. It seems like Swedes are the new Russians as of late.

1 -- Players from British Columbia taken with the No. 1 pick in the draft. Edmonton made Ryan Nugent-Hopkins the first B.C. native ever selected with the first pick.

6 -- Swedish players taken in the opening round of the draft, tying the mark set in 1993 and 2009 for the most ever. Three of them -- Gabriel Landeskog (Colorado), Adam Larsson (New Jersey) and Mika Zibanejad (Ottawa) -- went in the first six picks.

14 -- Countries that had at least one player taken in the Entry Draft. Canada was tops with 79; Denmark, France, Lithuania and Ukraine each had one.


Teams who made the biggest waves and the smallest impactsThe Ottawa Senators probably had the best first round. They drafted three different players on Friday: Mika Zibanejad at No. 6, Stefan Noeson with the 21st pick and Matt Puempel at 24th. If GM Bryan Murray did well with those picks, his previous trades were worth it.

11 -- Picks made by the Chicago Blackhawks, the most by any team. The Hawks had two picks in each of the first three rounds, one each in Rounds 4-6 and two in the seventh round, including the last pick -- Swedish goaltender Johan Mattson. In contrast, Washington’s four picks were the fewest by any team.

117 -- First pick made by the Capitals, the last team to make a selection. The Caps had dealt away their second- and third-round choices prior to the draft, then sent their first-rounder to Chicago on Friday night for forward Troy Brouwer. Washington took Norwegian goaltender Steffen Soburg with its first pick.


Family ties

As we discussed earlier tonight, the Carolina Hurricanes’ draft board could have looked like a family tree on Day 2 after they selected Keegan Lowe and Brody Sutter. Lowe and Sutter weren’t the only legacies in the 2011 draft, though.

4 -- First-round picks whose fathers played in the NHL. The most notable was Connor Murphy, whose father, Gord Murphy, spent 14 years as an NHL defenseman and is now an assistant with Florida.

There is also an obscure stat about three former Edmonton Oilers having sons drafted in the top 100, but you can read John Kreiser’s full list of stat bits to find out more about that.