What happened to all those first round picks?

It's the off season and good grief, it's boring - despite the best efforts of Hooks and the gang!

So in a quiet evening, with no hockey and nothing resembling hockey I decided to figure out what happened to all those first round picks the Pens traded away, chasing the Stanley Cup.

I restricted it to over the last ten years (i.e. the 2008 draft forward). I traced who we traded the pick to, who we got and what the team with 'our' pick then did. I'll also take a hindsight look at who was chosen after that pick that would have been a better choice because hindsight is amazing.

2008 - Penguins trade Colby Armstrong, Eric Christensen, Angelo Esposito and their No. 1 pick to the Atlanta Thrashers for Marian Hossa and Pascal Dupuis.
Atlanta Thrashers selected Daultan Leveille as the no. 29 pick. If you've heard of him, award yourself a point. He played no NHL games, only 24 AHL but 183 in the ECHL before retiring after 2016/17, aged 28.
I think it's fair to say, the Pens won this trade handsomely. But, players taken after Leveille included Roman Josi and Braden Holtby (and also Justin Schutlz).

2009 - Penguins are the Stanley Cup Champions. Despite that, they still had their first round pick, and selected Simon Depres with the 30th pick. So far, he's played 193 NHL games and 111 AHL games. He is still playing; after a year in the KHL following a long term concussion, he's signed a tryout contract with the Canadiens for the 2018/19 season.
Players taken after Depres - Tyson Barrie, Anders Lee

2010 - Another year where the Penguins retained their first round pick, selecting in 20th place, Beau Bennett. Despite his injuries, he's managed to play 200 NHL games, 104 AHL games and he's playing in the KHL this year, where he's figured out one letter in the Russian alphabet. Fortunately, the one he knows is the first letter of 'injury'!
Players taken after Beau - Kuznetsov, Justin Faulk, John Klingberg. Well at least Beau got his hands on the Stanley Cup before Kuznetsov did!

2011 - Another year where the Penguins retained their number 1 draft pick, selecting Joe Morrow in 23rd. He was traded to Dallas for Brendan Morrow in 2013. He's bounced around a lot (was involved in the Seguin trade) and has played 121 NHL games and 158 AHL games. He's currently signed with the Jets for 2018/19.
Guys the Pens could have taken instead of Morrow - Khucherov, Saad, Gaudreau, Rackell. Sigh.

2012 - the Pens didn't have a first round draft pick in 2012 - they had two! With the number 8 pick, obtained from Carolina in the Jordan Staal trade, they selected Derrick Pouliot. I think pretty much enough said, but we traded him to the Canucks last year and he's signed with them through 2018/19. He's played 138 NHL games and 114 AHL games.
Selected after Pouliot - Trouba, Vasilevskiy, Filip Forsberg

Pens also had their own 22nd overall pick, with which they selected Olli Maatta. Finally, a hit! Olli is a two-time Stanley Cup Champion and has played 302 NHL games (the most of anyone drafted using a Penguin pick).
Players selected after Maatta - well actually, no-one really jumps out as being a vastly better pick. Slavin and Matt Murray (who we got anyway so it worked out well).

2013 - The Pens traded their first round pick to the Calgary Flames, along with Kenny Agostino and Ben Hanowski in exchange for Jerome Iginla.
Calgary Flames selected Morgan Klimchuk in 28th position. He's played 1 NHL game and 187 AHL games to date and is still in the Flames organisation. He's the last of 2013 first rounders to play an NHL game and if he does make it to the NHL for more than one game, his ceiling isn't that high.
This is a trade that feels like a loss on both sides!
Other guys the Flames missed on: well, the guy who stands out the most is one Stanley Cup Champion, Jake Guentzel. Just as well they missed then.

2014 - Another year in which the Pens managed to hang onto their first round pick, selecting Kaspari Kapanen in 22nd. He was subsequently traded to the Maple Leafs in the Phil Kessel trade and is still with the Leafs and expected to have a full time NHL presence this year. Games to date - 55 NHL games, 119 AHL games.
Guys selected after Kapanen - Pasternk, Montour, Point. Others are just starting to hit the NHL now so there maybe more names to add.

2015 - Those of a nervous disposition should probably look away now. This is the one pick we traded which really, really hurts. The Pens traded this pick and Rob Klinkhammer to Edmonton for David Perron. The Oilers took the pick and sent it off to the Islanders for Griffin Reinhart (who was subsequently lost to the Vegas expansion draft for nothing).
With the 16th overall pick, the Islanders selected Matthew Barzal. He's only played 84 games in the NHL, but he won the Calder Memorial Trophy in 2018.
Players selected after Barzal: well, that's a tough one to beat frankly. But Boeser and Konecny both went after him and both are also guys you'd want in your system. Don't mind me, I'm just quietly sobbing over here.

2016 - Penguins were the Stanley Cup Champions - do we care? Oh, ok then. So the Penguins first round pick went to Toronto in the Kessel trade that also saw us lose Kapanen. They in turn, after the Pens had won the SC and so knowing it would be the lowest of the first round picks, traded it to the Ducks for Frederick Andersen for a 2017 2nd and this pick.
With the 30th overall pick the Ducks drafted Sam Steel. He's only just made it into the pro leagues, having come up from juniors to start this coming season. He was the WHL player of the year in 2016/17. So for the future, who knows?

With that, I'll leave it there simply because the 2017 (we won again) and 2018 drafts are too recent to be able to draw many conclusions about how they've fared. (Let 2017 go guys, we wouldn't have selected him anyway).

The one thing that surprised me was that we had a lot more first round picks than I thought we did through the period - and out of all of that have Olli Maatta (and Phil Kessel) ... oh and I suppose 2 Stanley Cups to show for it. We may have had the first round picks, but our drafting was not that good - or we're demonstrating nicely the difficulty of predicting NHL players when you're picking in the high 20s consistently. But most of the teams we traded our first round picks to didn't do much better; out of the players other teams selected with the Penguins' picks, only Barzal is a keeper and that's an even worse loss for the Oilers, given what they did with it. So don't feel too bad!