The St. Louis Blues and Boston Bruins have a lot of people to thank for reaching the 2019 Stanley Cup Final, and both organizations can probably start with their scouting and player development staffs.
When looking at the construction of both rosters they share a common trait in how they were built.
That trait is that neither team has a player on their roster that they selected with one of the first three picks in the NHL draft. Not a single one. The highest pick that either team used on a player was the Blues’ selection of defender Alex Pietrangelo with the No. 4 overall pick all the way back in 2008.
Their next highest selection after him: 14th overall.
It is worth pointing out that the Blues did have the No. 1 overall pick in 2006 (13 years ago!), which they used to select defender Erik Johnson. But Johnson was traded after just three seasons with the team for a package of players that included Kevin Shattenkirk and Chris Stewart. Neither player from that trade remains on the roster today. If you wanted to follow the trade tree from there, Shattenkirk was eventually traded to the Capitals two years ago as a pending free agent for a collection of assets that included a first-round pick. The Blues then used that pick as part of a larger trade for Brayden Schenn.
But that is really digging deep and they had to give up a lot of other assets to get Schenn.
[NBC 2019 STANLEY CUP PLAYOFF HUB]
The Bruins, meanwhile, do not have a single player anywhere on their roster that was selected higher than 14th in any draft.
They did select Tyler Seguin No. 2 overall in 2010 (after acquiring that pick as part of the Phil Kessel trade with Toronto Maple Leafs) but he was traded after the 2012-13 season and they literally have nothing remaining in their entire organization to show for that trade. Today, it is as if that trade never even happened.
This is all pretty unheard of in recent NHL history as each of the past 10 Stanley Cup winners has had at least one top-three pick (a pick that they used on the player) playing on their roster.
The most recent one that did not have such a player was the 2007-08 Detroit Red Wings.
Here is a quick look at every Stanley Cup winner dating back to the 1994-95 season and how many of them had at least one top-three selection on their roster.
Not only do almost all of them have a top-three pick, those players were among the best, most important, and most valuable players on their rosters.
Couple of things worth noting on the teams that had “none.”
- The 2006-07 Ducks did not have a top-three pick of their own, but they did eventually acquire the Hall of Fame defense pairing of Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer, both of whom were top-three picks.
- The 1997-98, 1998-99, and 2001-02 Detroit Red Wings also had no top-three selections of their own (Steve Yzerman at No. 4 overall was their highest pick) but did have Brendan Shanahan who had previously been a No. 2 overall pick by the New Jersey Devils.
So even though those teams didn’t have the luxury of making such a pick themselves, they still had top-three pick talents on their roster. If the Blues end up winning this series they would fall into this category as they have defender Jay Bouwmeester (No. 3 overall pick by the Florida Panthers in 2002) on their roster.
The only teams during that stretch that won the Stanley Cup without having a single player that was ever selected that high were the aforementioned Red Wings team in 2008, as well as the 1995-96 and 2000-01 Colorado Avalanche teams.
There is a reason why bad teams, and especially fans of bad teams, want to finish near the bottom of the standings and desperately hope for some luck in the draft lottery. You need superstar players to win, and the best and easiest way to get a superstar player is to get them at the top of the draft. That is where you get the true franchise-changing players, and that is especially valuable in the salary cap era where you get them under team control for so many years and so cheaply and below market value in the first few years of their career.
It was a little easier to win without those high picks in the pre-cap era because teams could, in theory, do what Detroit and Colorado did and acquire pretty much anyone they wanted as long as they wanted to spend the money. It is a little tougher to assemble that much talent today from outside your organization.
The Bruins are an especially interesting case because, again, the only top-15 picks on their roster are Charlie McAvoy (No. 14 overall in 2016) and Jake DeBrusk (No. 14 overall in 2015). Some of their best players were selected far later than you would expect franchise players to be drafted. Patrice Bergeron was a second-round pick in 2003. David Krejci was a second-round pick in 2004. Brad Marchand was a third-round pick in 2006. David Pastrnak was picked No. 25 overall in 2014. They also do not have a single player on their roster that was selected higher than 14th by any other team. They simply have zero top picks on their roster.
This probably is not a model that is going to be easily duplicated by anyone else, because not every team is going to be fortunate enough to find that many draft steals in such a short period of time. But the Bruins (and Blues) have made it work and found a way to take a slightly different path to the Stanley Cup Final.
Blues-Bruins Game 2 is Wednesday night at 8 p.m. ET from TD Garden on NBCSN and the NBC Sports app.
MORE BRUINS-BLUES GAME 2:
• Robert Thomas sidelined for Blues
• Three keys for Game 2 of Stanley Cup Final
• Blues expect to be a lot better
• Unflappable Binnington won’t be affected by Stanley Cup spotlight
—
Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.
