Which team won the 2024 QMJHL Draft?
Obviously, they all did.
That’s the answer and that’s probably not the answer you all wanted. But seriously how the hell should we know not even a week after the draft who won it. You can fire up the computers and do all your elite level analytics and projections, but let’s be serious, every QMJHL team won’t know if they succeeded in the 2024 draft a few months or perhaps years down the road. That’s the reality of it.
Do you study the draft? Do you look back and look at every organization’s drafting philosophy? Do you study their draft history over the past four or five seasons. Do you know how many games their drafted players have played in their past three drafts? Do you look at their progression through a championship run and a rebuild? Do you study how much value they place in young players? Do you study and review their developmental techniques?
You see when you look at organizations drafts you have to consider how they evaluate, appreciate and develop talent.
You also have to consider the teams coaching staff and their philosophy.
General Managers and Head Scouts try to find the best players, but ultimately, they also try to identify their “type” of player. They have to consider their coaching and developmental staff when selecting players, “oh Craig that’s not accurate”, think again, it’s always in the back of scouts and manager’s mind.
Ok, so a better question to ask would be which teams had a “good draft.”
Which teams had a “good draft” in 2024? That will take a lot of time to know the answer to that one, but there were a lot of QMJHL teams that did great work surrounding this draft class and projecting their future impact. Obviously, if you ask them, they selected the player or players available, but they also addressed organizational need in this years selection process.
One longtime Q scout said that this year’s draft class had a lot of uncertainty very similar to that of the COVID year which was a very intriguing comment to me. The 2024 QMJHL draft was wide open, rankings and draft lists took a big hit, which again indicates that every team zeroes in on their own thing when projecting and evaluating talent.
So which teams had a “good draft”?
Well, they all did, but that’s all about seeing and evaluating potential in a player and what type of opportunity they will receive in the next few months and years ahead. A few years back a few scouting colleagues and I shared some cold beverages after the draft and went down the list, just like every organization does.
A draft day synopsis is quite common, but ultimately it all comes down to projecting talent within the team and league. If you look down through every selection, teams definitely identify similar players year after year round after round.
It’s a well-known drafting strategy that most QMJHL teams start targeting netminders around the mid-way point or late in the 5th round, that happened a lot earlier this year. Obviously, every year is different, every year has its share of unique draft prospects, but ironically organizations continue to be consistent when drafting “their type” of players.
“Raw” talented players usually go anywhere from the 4th to 6th, because every organization believes that those players just need a little more time and coaching to excel. Clearly asking questions like who won the draft should give way to, which teams had a good draft, to which organizations appreciate, evaluate or project talent the best.
Year after year, teams draft and they draft well, they draft for their future, they draft for the present. The teams that are the most successful, usually have the best approach, experience and philosophy. They also value the same aspects when it comes to young players, their development and opportunities.
You see the organizations that have stability and consistency throughout their team usually are the most successful in all facets of the game. Being successful isn’t a fluke, sure some teams may hit once or twice and have an incredible draft, but it’s the organizations that constantly hit so to speak year after year and have larger percentages of draftees play in the league and have the most success.
Those are the teams and organizations that usually consistently “win” the draft. It’s one thing to break down the draft, but to find fault and be overly negative about certain players and where they were selected is wrong on so many levels, we all see it differently, but let’s be supportive for the player and the game, but also the organization.
Let’s not judge scouting staffs and organizations for their selections, let’s give it time, time for the players to develop, time will be the ultimate indicator on who “wins or loses” the draft. You can look at the analytics all you want, until the player and organization become intertwined in the growth and development process that’s when you can fully determine the results.
Which teams do you think had a “good” 2024 QMJHL draft? Who do you think won the 2024 QMJHL draft?
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