Interesting Memorial Cup Observation - Defenceman & CHL Import Draft

Memorial Cup 

I was running through the rosters of this years' memorial cup teams and I noticed Hamilton had 3 Overage Defenseman. I thought that was interesting and it peaked my curiosity, so I started looking more into championship teams and the age of their defenseman.

2022 Memorial Cup
Edmonton - 5 of their top 6 defenseman are 19 or older. Average age of 19.2
Hamiltion - Their top 5 defenseman have an average age of 19.4 ( 3 OA defenseman)
Saint John - 5 of their top 6 defenseman are 19 or older average age of 19.2
Shawinigan - Average age of their top 5 defenseman is 19

Basically it means the winners of all leagues had stacked defensive groups.

Previous Memorial Cup Winners.  (Average Age of Top 5 Defenseman)

2019 - Rouyn Noranda Huskies - Avg: 19
2018 - Acadie-Bathrust - Avg:19.2
2017 Windsor -  Avg: 18.8  
2016 London Knights - Avg: 18.6   (OA Goalie)
2015 - Oshawa - Avg: 19.6  (3 OA defenceman)
2014 - Edmonton Avg: 19

 

Thoughts

 It makes sense that these teams are older on the back-end, but I was a bit surprised that so many of these teams defensemen were heavily, heavily, stacked on the back-end. It  means high risk/high reward. You fail and don't make it, next season your at the bottom.

Oshawa who won a Memorial Cup in 2015 had 3 Overage Defenceman.  London in 2016 is the lowest average defensive age of their top 5 among recent winners at 18.6  Their defensive roster had 6 NHL drafted players, with 2 players currently playing in the NHL and an overage goaltender.

WHL

In recent years the lowest defensive age group of WHL winners I could find was In 2013.  Portland had an average Top 5 defensive age of 18.5. This was a transition year of sorts for them as they made the WHL Finals in the previous year, as well as the next.  During 2013 they also had 2 NHL first round draft picks as well an an NHL 2nd rounder as well as an Overage Goalie. 

Based on these numbers is seems like if your average top 5 defensive age is below 18.8 you need an OA goalie and future NHL'ers on the roster.

The Last 2 WHL Tiger championships.

2006-2007 WHL Championship Tigers: Avg Age: 18.8  ( 6 defenseman, 18 or older) OA Goalie

Memorial Cup Winner: Vancouver Avg Age:19

2003-2004 WHL Championship   Avg Age:18.8 (7 defenseman 18 or older)

Memorial Cup Winner Kelowna Avg Age: 18.6 ( OA Goalie. They had 3 future NHL defenceman including Josh Gorges, Shea Weber, Kyle Cumiskey)

Conclusion

If you want to win the WHL or the Memorial Cup, your average age of the defensive group needs to be very close to 19 and if it's not you better have an Overage Goaltender or a couple NHL Calibre defenceman on the roster.  

Tigers Current Roster

Dru Krebs - 19

Bogdans Hodass - 19

Rhett Parsons - 19

Pavel Bocharov - 18

Reid Andresen - 17

Josh Van Mulligen - 17

Tigers Roster

Tigers average age of the Top 5 next season is 18.4, which suggests above average experience and high for a rebuilding team. Because their average age is higher and they are decent players, it's possible to have a better year than initial expectations, (which aren't super high)

Nonetheless it also gives flexibility to add to the future of the team and get younger. We know that 19 year old Defenceman are in demand for championship teams and the Tigers have 3 good ones.

Upcoming CHL Import Draft

The CHL has banned Russian and Belarusian players from this draft. Last year their were 27 players from these 2 countries that were picked, so it will likely leave slim pickings and some shallow Import depth.

Luckily for the Tigers they have THE Top pick in the entire Import Draft. It doesn't make sense not to use it. It is very likely that Gleb Ivanov is then relegated if this pick doesn't come over. 

CHL Import Draft 

Since the Tigers are building around the youth movement and taking the average age of defenceman into consideration it looks like it may make a lot of sense to use that Top Import Pick to draft a 17 year old defenceman to compliment the 17 year old group. 

The risk of taking an 18 year old Import Defenceman first overall is that they may only be here for 1 year. They would likely AHL Eligible at 19 so that is an added risk.  You don't have that problem with a 17.

The Tigers forwards are still pretty young, so an immediate need is more scoring. 

If they do get a scoring forward though, because of the potential slim pickings of Imports, that could be a huge Immediate benefit as well as a potential huge trade bait peace. It's high risk high reward. If they do pick an impact scoring forward, I wouldn't mind it either. It addresses an immediate need, you also wonder about potential future returns should that spot be traded to a contender.  

It wouldn't be ideal though if you got a good scorer for one year and he was gone the next.

It's really tough to go wrong at that draft unless they get someone who doesn't come over.