Sometimes, teams just grace the top 10 in the most unique ways, and the St. Louis Blues found themselves in a particularly interesting one throughout the 2010s. Whether this helped contribute to them ending the decade as the best team in hockey will always be subjective, but the ranking that I’m about to share with you is one of the more objective ones, and it will be more than mind-boggling.
We can thank SportsNet and Josh Beneteau for bringing this one to our attention. It talks about teams that “have drafted the most NHLers in the later rounds.” Just to be clear, the phrase “later rounds” talks about players drafted between Rounds 3 and 7 between the 2010 and 2019 drafts, and “NHLers” means skaters who have hit the 200-game milestone in the NHL.
A few teams that have won Stanley Cups, like the Blues in this period, are also in the top 10, like the Los Angeles Kings and Pittsburgh Penguins, who sit at No. 2 and No. 3, respectively. The Tampa Bay Lightning, another Cup-winning team, clocked in at No. 4, and the Florida Panthers, who won the Cup this past season, sidled in at No. 5.
St. Louis Blues drafted quite a few quality NHLers in the later rounds
The next Cup-winning team on the list was, you guessed it, the Blues, who, out of the 38 skaters drafted between 2010 and 2019, five managed to reach the 200-game threshold. That’s a solid 13.16 percent, and it’s better than the other 22 teams listed as the Vegas Golden Knights (2017) and the Seattle Kraken (2021) were not included for obvious reasons.
One particular Blues player mentioned in the piece was Colton Parayko, who remains a staple of the franchise to this day. If you’re new to the Blues, know that Parayko is not only often seeing first-pairing minutes in Gateway City; he was also on that Cup-winning team in 2019.
Now, the burning question is, ‘Will the Blues see the same solid results in the 2020s?’ Hey, knowing how effective Doug Armstrong has been as a general manager, I surely wouldn’t put it past him. We got another five drafts to go in the 2020s, and anything can happen if we’re reviewing these rankings again in 2034.