NHL Power Rankings: Best all-time value draft picks of every team

31. Vegas Golden Knights

G: N/A
D: Erik Brannstrom, N/A
F: N/A, N/A, N/A

This one’s easy. Vegas has had just one player out of their two draft classes to suit up for an NHL team, being Erik Brannstrom. Brannstrom has played just two games in his career, both for the Ottawa Senators following last year’s Mark Stone deadline day deal.

Vegas hasn’t had a chance to reap their crops from the farm yet, so it’s obvious that they’ll have the worst lineup of players they drafted. In fact, it looks quite lonely up there. Though, one would imagine this year the rest of the lineup may start filling out. But for now, Brannstrom is taking the solo skate for the Golden Knights.

30. Winnipeg Jets

G: Kari Lehtonen
D: Tobias Enstrom, Braydon Coburn
F: Dany Heatley, Mark Scheifele, Bryan Little

Okay, now the real list begins. The Atlanta Thrashers/Winnipeg Jets 2.0 franchise has been around since 1999, and there is just active player from that year’s draft class (Ryan Miller). So having this many active players on the team makes sense.

In terms of value, you’re getting franchise value out of Mark Scheifele’s 7th overall pick, and very solid production from picking Toby Enstrom 239th in 2003. Other than that, the value isn’t high for a bunch of first-round picks, which was par for the course for the Thrashers portion of their history, which was set with picking Patrik Stefan ahead of the Sedin twins.

The offense here is pretty good, but the less said about the keeping-the-pucks-out-of-the-net effort the better.