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***skyrrhawk*** · 11-30-2023, 11:21 PM

Let’s do a data breakdown!

The earliest pick: one, obviously! The 1OA, Italian-born defenseman Demir Bellona, was selected by the Quebec City Citadelles, a team who traded up extremely late in the leadup to take the spot and make the selection.

The last pick: Mr. Irrelevant for S75 is the 144th overall pick, Belgian left wing Ace Van Levianta, a single pick amongst a sea of “Pass” calls by GMs and the last in five straight rounds in which only one selection was made. Maybe Carolina was having a laugh?

The Most Average: Picks 36 & 37 are your dead center of the pack picks for S75, with the selections being defenseman Warwick Windsor of Canada to Great Falls at 36 and goaltender Launchpad McQuack to Newfoundland at 37.

First Goalie: Song Ju-gong of South Korea was selected seventh overall by the Citadelles, a team they already had experience with. (Song was picked up during the S73 season to back up beloved Quebec City goaltender Net Man, posting three wins and a .912 save percentage in three games played.)

Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty of things.

This is a big draft class! Literally! Five players in this draft class top out at the whopping height of six feet, eleven inches- or 210.82 cm for any non-North Americans in the chat.
And three players weigh in at three hundred pounds, which is fully double the weight of the lightest players in the class!

Goaltender Launchpad McQuack finds himself on both those lists, cutting an absolutely massive and imposing figure in the crease for the Newfoundland Berserkers.

Goaltender Luke fromm is another one that lands on both lists, matching McQuack across the ice in net for the Detroit Falcons; truly, this matchup will be one of titans.

The third player landing on the top line in both height and weight is Vancouver Whalers left defenseman Max Hammer. There are definitely a number of players in the league on some smaller, speedier teams who will want to avoid him on the ice! (Quebec City, I’m looking at you.)

Maine Timber goaltender Shotty McStopper weighs in at a much lighter 225 pounds, with new Norwegian Quebec City Citadelles right defenseman Fredrik Gronlund coming in nine pounds heavier at 234. It’s amazing how much smaller the weight difference can make a guy seem! McStopper is a veritable beanpole next to the likes of McQuack and fromm.

Let’s talk about the aforementioned Little Guys. The ones who weigh barely half of the three players discussed above, if we’re assuming they took legitimate weights and not weight-in-gear. (Which, for that matter, has anyone checked to make sure that the five players above didn’t take their height in skates?)

The Colorado Raptors have chosen to draft A Tiny. New center Pinli Switchbang clocks in at a whopping [drumroll, please] five feet tall, 150 pounds. Let’s compare them to their position-mates on the roster:

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Shadow Fenix, as the only carryover center from last season’s team, clocks in taller than either of the other two Raptors centers- maybe that’s what he deserves as the elder statesman? And Switchbang’s fellow draftee Supreme Dalek towers over them at a full foot taller.

In fact, three of the four lightest players of this draft class are centers. Switchbang is accompanied by fellow short and light center Ethan brown, Whalers draftee, who comes in at a height of five foot four, and by Kaiden Brown of the Nevada Battleborn, who comes screaming in at the far other end of the spectrum. Despite his weight- only 150 pounds, remember!- K. Brown stands at a comparatively monstrous five foot ten! A light breeze could blow that guy over.

The final member of the Light Brigade, as it were, is Scarecrows left wing James Madison, who clocks in at the same five foot four, 150 pounds as the Whalers’ E. brown.

Joining Switchbang in the “very short” category is Philadelphian Ongo Gablogian of the Carolina Kraken- but that doesn’t mean he matches the petite center in weight! Gablogian weighs in at a hefty 250 pounds.

While this player doesn’t quite land in the very smallest categories, she’s deserving of the mention. Japanese-born left wing Elly Snow-Leopard of (appropriately) the Yukon Malamutes is 5’1” and 152 pounds, just barely avoiding landing in the Very Smallest S75 Players List by a whole one inch and two pounds.

The average height of players in this draft class is, by the math, 6.000043836 ft. However, that number doesn’t make a usable fraction, so really it’s just six feet tall. Those five footers are really dragging the average down, though, seeing as only 31.5% of the draft class clocks in under that height!

The average weight is 207.85 pounds, landing fairly solidly in between the aforementioned lightest and heaviest players. Thirty-two players in the class weigh in above that number, or 43.8%, and of those only five weigh in at 250 pounds or above!

And while we’re talking averages, let’s talk money. The lowest bank in the class as of 11/25- the day of the SMJHL draft- came in at -$1,800,000. The highest landed at an incredible $537,564,142! And the class’s average savings came out to $30,086,411…. and 97 cents. Those two players on the extremes have banks that now sit at $3,200,00 and $537,064,142 respectively.

The most common player position in the S75 class is center, with 19 players. This is closely followed by right defense at 17 before we see a drop-off in numbers to left wing at 13. The rest: 10 goalies, eight right wings, and six left defense. Major imbalance in defensive sides in this draft!

Here’s that info as a pie chart if you’re a visual learner:

[Image: xNCZGlc.jpg]

This class is overwhelmingly right-handed, at a massive 68.5% to 31.5% split. Here’s that information as a pie chart, too!

[Image: PD2UNMy.jpg]

And this is the fun part. The part that we’ve all been looking forward to.

Where In The World Is The Class Of S75 (From)?

Well!

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With such a massive class, there’s a huge range of places that they hail from! As per usual, Canada and the United States clock in with the largest share of players- a whopping 20.5% and 24.7%, respectively. (The chart rounds the United States’ share to 25%.) Meanwhile, seventeen locales boast only a single player having entered the SMJHL draft, each accounting for 1.4% of the group. These nations include everything from Mexico (Andrade La Sombra, LW, 17OA) to South Korea (Song Ju-gong) to… the deep sea and Gielinor? (Those would be 39OA pick Wellerman and 5OA Detroit draftee Kal Åkar Kekkonen, incidentally and respectively.)

Clocking in right after the USA and Canada in number of players- sort of, anyway- is Norway at five, a strong class of players for the nation that most recently produced the Valkyrie sisters, the Solberg twins of the Quebec City Citadelles, members of the SMJHL S73 Draft Class. On Norway’s heels at four is Latvia, Sweden and Finland at three apiece, and a further four nations who each produced two members of this class.

Europe’s contributions, mapped:

[Image: HsmV0xx.png]

And, of course, we can break down North America’s contributions even further! So let’s do that.

[Image: cOf2AN8.jpg]

(I was also going to add a heatmap to this section, but I couldn’t make it work how I wanted. So you get the pie chart. Eat up. I promise it tastes good.)

Ontario comes out on top here, standing as the only state or province to claim a full 10% of the North Americans as its own. (Who’s surprised by this?) Four players in this draft class claim Ontario as home: Masked Stanger and Ethan brown, both of Toronto, Jasmin Quevillon of Ottawa, and Cedar Lawson of Owen Sound.

Close behind, however, are the usual suspects: Minnesota, Quebec, and… California? Well, with the amount of people there, it was bound to happen.

Each state or province labeled as 3.0% is a state or province that produced one player for this draft class; any of those remaining (Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia among them) produced two.

As already mentioned, two players in this class hail from Toronto. But Toronto isn’t the only city to produce multiple players for this class- in fact, seven different cities are getting to see themselves represented in duplicate in the SMJHL’s rookie class this season! While Toronto is the only Canadian representation on that list, never fear, they’re not all American- it’s an even split of the remaining six, with three being American and three European.

Philadelphia has the earlier-mentioned Ongo Gablogian as well as third-round selection Mary Hollywood of the Regina Elk.

Los Angeles? Fellow third-rounder Carter Crutchfield, who went way up the coast as an Anchorage Armada draftee, and Whalers second-round defenseman Niclas Wastlund.

And St. Cloud, Minnesota is represented by Grizzlies fifth-round winger WonderBread, and more ignominiously by unsigned ninth-rounder rhys mos.

The Europeans:

Dublin, Ireland claims the earlier-discussed beanpole goaltender Shotty McStopper and Nevada Battleborn first-round, 10OA selection Literally Wizard. That’s a hell of a change in scenery! This is the most unlikely of the three European cities to have produced multiple players for this draft.

The other two European cities are, maybe unsurprisingly, both Norwegian.

Norway’s capital city of Oslo produced unsigned sixth-rounder benno vaage and Anchorage second-rounder Sebastien Levesque, who has very quickly been added to a list of SHL players whose names do not in the slightest match their hometown.

And Tromso claims Regina second-rounder Inge Baardsen and the Citadelles’ Gronlund, who was chosen at 12th overall.

And there you have it: S75, by the numbers. There’s probably more to say about these folks- actual details of play, player strengths and weakness- but that is not what I’m here for. Go read somebody else’s article for that! Their insights would be better than mine, anyway.

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TheOPSquid · 12-01-2023, 12:14 AM

This is awesome!

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