Are NHL Teams Avoiding Drafting From the QMJHL?

Two weeks ago, The Hockey News' Adam Kierszenblat wrote an interesting story about how the Vancouver Canucks have yet to have drafted a QMJHL player since the 2015 NHL Draft.

From this absurd realization, spun a couple of weeks of sporadic data collecting has now led to this -- a perhaps unnecessarily in-depth look at which teams are positively biased toward or against taking QMJHL talent in the NHL draft.

I felt that this was important to look at for two reasons.

Firstly, there's been an increasing trend of Maritime or Quebec born players who have decided to forego the QMJHL entirely, opting to go the NCAA route.

This list includes the likes of eventual NHL first rounders Alex Newhook (Montreal, Drafted by Colorado), Shane Bowers (Drafted by Ottawa), and more recently Carolina's Bradly Nadeau and Chicago's Sacha Boisvert.

Not to mention, just this year, the QMJHL has seen three of its first round talents -- two of which who were taken in the top 10 -- commit to college in Victoriaville's pick Enzo Lottin (7th overall) and Saint John's pick Tynan Lawrence (10th overall).

Read more here:

Related: REVIEW: The 2024 QMJHL Draft, Two Months Later

Secondly, there's this notion that has appeared in online scouting circles lately that the QMJHL is the lesser of the three CHL leagues.

There's also claims from Jack Han, former player development analyst for the Toronto Maple Leafs, that the physical development of QMJHL and Quebec raised talent is stunted due to poor coaching.

This negative slant against the league is present not only in scouting discourse but also shown in public data model's such as Patrick Bacon's -- used by Twitter analytics guy and EPRinkside's JFresh -- equates one point in the QMJHL to .113 NHL points, compared to .141 for the WHL and .144 for the OHL.

This reflection has already seemed to present itself in team's draft habits as for the first time in the league's history, there hasn't been a QMJHLer taken in the first round of the NHL Draft for back to back years.

Additionally, the 2023 NHL Draft saw only 12 players from the QMJHL get taken, or 5.36 per cent of the draft, which is the lowest percentage of QMJHL talent taken in an NHL Draft since 1970.

Read more here:

Related: No QMJHL Players Selected in First Round of 2024 NHL Draft

2024 wasn't much better, with 15 skaters or 6.69% of the draft originating from the 'Q', far below the average of 10.14%.

There's also been some worrying trends outside the first round too.

The percentage of QMJHL talent drafted in general has dropped an average of .421 players per season since the 2005 NHL Draft, when the seven round limit was introduced.

Meanwhile, of the QMJHL talent that is drafted, the percentage of them that are taken in the first three rounds since 2005 has dropped by 24 per cent.

Given this, it felt like like it would be intriguing to take a peak behind the curtains and unravel the data to see which teams are still willing to draft out of the QMJHL and which ones aren't.

You'd immediately think Montreal would be the top team, but you'd be surprised to know that you'd be wrong as Anaheim is the team with the highest affinity for drafting talent from the Q, with 12 players over the last 10 seasons or an average of 1.2 per draft.

The Ducks also have the highest percentage of its draft pool stemming from the QMJHL with 16 per cent, which was only increased with the additions of Chicoutimi's Maxim Masse (2024, 66th) and Rimouski's Alexandre Blais (2024, 100th) this past June.

Among the crop includes some notable names in Maxime Comtois (2017, 50th) and Benoit-Olivier Groulx (2018, 54th).

Although, their best picks from the league may soon become Nathan Gaucher (2022, 22nd) Tristan Luneau (2022, 53rd) and Noah Warren (2022, 42nd), who seem to be all on track to becoming regular NHLers at the very least.

Second in all metrics is the Tampa Bay Lightning, who boast an average of 1.1 QMJHLers over the last 10 drafts, as well as an equally impressive 15.94 percent of their draft pool.

The team has always been favourable to the QMJHL with their most notable picks from the league draft coming from outside the 10-year period, from Vincent Lecavalier and Brad Richards to Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat.

That said, they've taken some notable names including Mathieu Joseph (2016, 120th) and recently Drummondville's Ethan Gauthier (2023, 37th).

Another team that is quite favourable to the QMJHL happens to be the only team where parts of its fanbase will get upset at not picking someone from the league -- the Montreal Canadiens.

The Habs have taken nine QMJHLers over the last 10 seasons, including some promising names too in Joshua Roy (2021, 150th) and Raphael Harvey-Pinard (2019, 201). That said, the team has yet to have taken a player from the QMJHL in the first round since Nathan Beaulieu in 2011.

Despite the high number of QMJHLers per year, which would have them tied for third most with the St. Louis Blues, San Jose Sharks and the Nashville Predators, the Habs are much lower on a pick by pick basis with 10.59 per cent of their draft pool over the last 10 seasons coming from the QMJHL.

Not to sweat, this is still above the average (10.14 per cent), but it is only nineth in the league, below the Colorado Avalanche, the Pittsburgh Penguins and all the teams listed above.

The only other team with 10% or more of their draft pool originating from the QMJHL is the New York Islanders exactly hitting the average of 10.14 per cent.

On the other side, there are seven teams where QMJHLers have consisted of less than five percent of the teams draft pool.

At the bottom of the list is the aforementioned Vancouver Canucks, who have yet to have taken a player from the QMJHL since selecting defensemen Guillaume Brisebois (2015, 66th) and Carl Neill (2015, 144th).

The drought of QMJHL talent within the Canucks organization might end with the 2025 NHL Draft as the team has recently hired Patrick Leblond, the former director of scouting and hockey operations for the Cape Breton Eagles. as a scout.

The second team that seems to avoid the QMJHL is the Winnipeg Jets.

The Jets taken a player from the league since selecting defenseman Leon Gawanke (2017, 136th), and have maintained an average of .2 QMJHL players per year over the 10 seasons, making for a measly 3.56 per cent of their draft pool.

Apart from the Jets and the Canucks, every NHL team has taken a QMJHL player within the last five drafts.

Three surprising teams with low rates of drafting players from the QMJHL include the Los Angeles Kings, the Dallas Stars and the Washington Capitals.

The Kings are surprising as the team boasts NHL defenseman Jordan Spence (2019, 95th) and have recently taken Angus Booth (2022, 116th), both of whom seem promising enough.

Meanwhile the Washington Capitals and the Dallas Stars falling so low is surprising given that they both hold two of the QMJHL's most promising exports in Hendrix Lapierre (2020, 22nd) and Mavrik Bourque (2020, 30th).

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Related: Five QMJHLers Make EliteProspects' Top 100 NHL Prospect List

Showing that even though these teams don't often take talent from the 'Q', when the right one comes around they will.

The other teams with a QMJHL draft pool percentage of below five percent include the Florida Panthers and the Minnesota Wild.

All this being said, it's clear that most NHL teams have waned on the idea of taking QMJHL talent over the past decade or so, especially so high.

Although, that doesn't mean that no good talent comes from the league, just look at the Rangers' Alexis Lafreniere, the Devils' Nico Hischier and the Islanders' Noah Dobson to name a few.

Even with the decline in drafted talent from the league, there's still been plenty of offers to QMJHL players for rookie camps and try-outs. Just last season saw the NHL debuts of undrafted players Pierrick Dube (Washington) and Samuel Laberge (New Jersey Devils).

Furthermore, it's very likely we might be on the cusp of a resurgeance as the 2025 NHL Draft alone features promising prospects in Moncton's Caleb Desnoyers, Blainville's Justin Carbonneau and Chicoutimi's duo of Alex Huang and Emile Guite, all of whom should challenge for first round selections.

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If this is a systemic issue, as Jack Han had alluded to, then this is a big issue that might only get worse if left unfixed.

Even if it does get fixed, it might take until the fruits of that labour make the NHL --  which could be upwards of five years after these changes are implemented -- before teams clue in and start to select from the QMJHL at the rate they once did before.

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