Looking Back at the Draft Class of 2024, 12 Months Later, with Mark Yannetti

“I’m fairly honest and I think I’m fairly good at evaluating past performance. Last year was an exceptional draft. The only thing is, you get worried about goalies, because of the success rate, but damn he’s a good goalie. So, as I said, in terms of drafting a goalie, I have high confidence in terms of him versus other goalies. I think last year was an exceptional draft.”

That was Kings Director of Amateur Scouting Mark Yannetti looking back at the Kings’ 2024 NHL Draft Class one year later.

The Kings made four picks last June in Las Vegas, coming away with two forward prospects, one defenseman and one goaltender. Yannetti and the Kings were very happy with their haul from a quality standpoint and also pretty happy with the way they played their board. The Kings entered the day without a second-round pick but acquired one early, before the draft began, by moving down in Round 1 in a trade with Montreal, adding a late second-round pick in the process. That has been well documented.

What I found interesting was the way the Kings did it. They used analytics to make the call. As Yannetti spoke about, it took him some time to convince then General Manager Rob Blake to move down, but by working hard on models, simulations and the right sorts of projections over multiple years, the analytics team, along with Yannetti, were able to provide backing for upper management that trading down would still mean that a player from the same tier they’d be picking from at 20 would be available at 26, while also providing a strong confidence that the player the Kings wanted to pick in the second round would also be there.

As it turned out, two players from that tier were available, which the Kings were confident would be the case. One of those players was forward Liam Greentree, who the Kings ultimately selected.

“I think that Greentree is, and you never know, but Greentree is easy, self explanatory, I think he’s going to be a top six without blinking, possible top three,” Yannetti said of the Greentree pick, one year later. “He’s going to score goals, he’s got size and the value we extracted at that pick was high.”

The other part of that trade, though, was contingent on acquiring a very specific player in Round 2 – Carter George.

If that part of the trade didn’t work, while the Kings got what they thought they would in Round 1, the confidence to move back in later years might not have been there. Yannetti called it a “calculated risk” that both sides of the trade would work out. He explained that it’s easy to convince someone to trade up, because you’re trading up to draft a very specific player. In trading down, you’re trading down in a belief that the overall quality of what you pick will exceed what you’d take with one pick where you were at. In this case, the combination of Greentree and George exceeded the first-round pick at 20, which might have been Greentree anyways.

In getting George as well, the Kings were very validated by trading down to get a player from their original tier, plus a highly desired goaltender.

“On Carter George – Owen Sound should have been picking first in the OHL draft this year, they somehow made the playoffs,” Yannetti said. “He’s on the track. I think he is a high probability of success.”

The entire discussion regarding the decision to trade down is available in the podcast below.

Later in the draft, the Kings moved the other way to acquire defenseman Jared Woolley.

When you get deeper in the draft, there is a much wider variation on available players. The Kings moved up in Round 6 and sent out a seventh-round selection to do so. The reason? On their internal rankings, as Yannetti shared, every player on their board before Woolley was gone. So was every player in each of the five tiers after Woolley. Woolley was the outlier, with where the Kings ranked him, and they traded up to ensure they got a player they considered to be a value at that spot, someone who didn’t really have a fall back option if it did not work.

The result was a season that Yannetti and the Kings were extremely happy with.

“I think Woolley has outkicked his coverage to the point of, I would be fairly confident if there was a re-draft today, he would go in the upper half of the second round,” he said. “I’m just saying that’s my [opinion] and I feel confident in saying that. If he does something similar next year to this year, it’s not going to be the upper half of the second, we’re talking higher. You can’t count on those exponential leaps but he’s a different kind of kid. Part of the reason we moved up to draft him is because of one of those character things in the combine.”

Lastly, the Kings selected forward James Reeder in the seventh round.

Reeder’s path is a long one. He’s still got three seasons of NCAA eligibility remaining and he’s a player on the smaller side, with strength and weight to be added as he hopefully develops into a professional player. If you ask the Kings, that’s the hold up with Reeder. There’s an NHL caliber player in there but that player needs to be matched with an NHL caliber frame. As of right now, that’s not there, but there’s a lot of time for it to come in. For a seventh-round pick, you’re taking a gamble somewhere and the Kings believe they have a player with a lot of great traits, if his size rounds out.

“The Reeder kid, all he is is small,” Yannetti said. “The Denver guys – more so Teddy [Belisle] and Andy [Johnson] – they couldn’t call on him enough, I mean after every game, they just raved about the kid. The kid is an NHL player, 100 percent, but he’s in a 25 percent body. So he’s a long shot in terms of getting there as a seventh-round pick. If he fills out, if he develops, he’s on the younger side of his development curve, if you looked at him, you’d say, oh, he’s not 17, he’s 15. As far as seventh-round picks go, he’s got a really good chance. The only thing that will keep him in or out of the NHL is strictly his size.”

The Kings have already stated a desire to trade down this weekend, in Round 1, if a similar situation arises from last year. Picking again without a second rounder, if the Kings can find a way to make two picks count for more than one, they’ll be eager to do so. If not, they have a set board already for that first pick and they’ll go from there.