What the fuck is a draft?

I'm not normally a big fan of Hockey's Future. It's a (valuable, I suppose) resource that a lot of people in the online hockey community swear by, but I've just never been into it. I could get into various reasons, but let's be honest, they're irrelevant and you don't care. You want the goods! And, thanks to this post at Japer's Rink, I found an interesting little experiment that HF has been conducting recently. It takes a look at the 2002 NHL Entry Draft five years after the fact:

We have measured success in selecting by using NHL games player, because it is
fair to all types of players, flashy goal scorers to defensive defensemen.
Overall, NHL teams have gotten an average of 22.5 NHL games per pick out of the
2002 draft class, which is not far from the averages for 2000 and 2001, each
after five years. The Toronto Maple
Leafs have gotten the most value out of the 2002 NHL Entry Draft thus far,
averaging 59 NHL games per pick. They accomplished this despite making
their first selection at 24th overall. The Chicago
Blackhawks came in fourth among teams, despite not picking until 21st
overall.

The above 'blockquote' (silly Web lingo) is from this article, whereas the link above (the highlighted word 'experiment' takes you to the Toronto-specific page.

Basically, 2002 brought Alexander Steen, Matt Stajan, Ian White, and Staffan Kronwall to the blue and white. It also brought Jarkko Immonen (and, for that matter, a handful of what HF had decided are 'busts'), but hey, he's a Ranger now, so he's not the point. The point is that it appears that the Leafs had a very good draft. I know. I'm as shocked as you.

Maybe a little bit more of that magic, eh guys? God knows that this team needs it.