Auston Matthews' Blueprint to Be the No. 1 Pick of the 2016 NHL Draft

After months of speculation, the ZSC Lions confirmed what many had been expecting. Auston Matthews, the consensus choice as the probable No. 1 pick of the 2016 NHL draft, will spend his draft year playing in Switzerland’s top professional hockey league:

It’s a groundbreaking decision.

It’s typical for European teenagers to come to North American junior leagues both to raise their profiles with NHL teams and get a head start on adapting to the game as it’s played on this side of the Atlantic. It’s extremely rare for the flow of talent to go in the other direction.

Matthews’ choice raises a lot of issues, but perhaps the most critical is what this does to his value on draft day next year.

At this point, he’s the consensus No. 1 selection, but there’s a lot of ground still to be covered in the race to the 2016 draft, and he’ll need to confirm that status with a strong campaign in Switzerland. What would such a season look like?

The obvious answer would be to go back and look at what top Swiss players have done in their draft years. There’s just one problem: Very few top Swiss players actually get drafted out of their home country.

Matt Slocum/Associated Press

Timo Meier, picked ninth overall by San Jose this summer, played his last hockey in Switzerland at age 16. That’s when he came over to Canada to play junior hockey with the Halifax Mooseheads. Kevin Fiala, drafted 11th overall by Nashville a year ago, stayed in Europe but jumped to Sweden for two seasons leading up to his draft day.

To find the last first-rounder to be drafted out of Switzerland, one must go all the way back to 1999, when the Toronto Maple Leafs picked Luca Cereda 24th overall.

Fortunately, there’s another way to do this.

One of the more useful tools developed by stats writers has been a set of league translations.

In 2004, Gabriel Desjardins created a translation factor based on the performances of players who had played in one league and then gone on to the NHL. In 2013, Rob Vollman went back over those numbers to see if they had changed in recent years and published the results in his book, Hockey Abstract.

Using those translations, we can compare the offensive production of recent top forward picks in their leagues to get an idea of what Matthews will need to produce for Zurich if he is to retain his No. 1 overall ranking:

Player	Drafted	League	GP	PTS	NHL-82
Connor McDavid	1st, 2015	OHL	47	120	59
Sam Reinhart	2nd, 2014	WHL	60	105	37
Nathan MacKinnon	1st, 2013	QMJHL	44	75	36
Nail Yakupov	1st, 2012	OHL	42	69	38
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins	1st, 2011	WHL	69	106	33
Taylor Hall	1st, 2010	OHL	57	106	43
John Tavares	1st, 2009	OHL	56	104	43
Steven Stamkos	1st, 2008	OHL	61	105	40
Patrick Kane	1st, 2007	OHL	58	145	57
Jordan Staal	2nd, 2006	OHL	68	68	23
Sidney Crosby	1st, 2005	QMJHL	62	168	58
Alex Ovechkin	1st, 2004	RSL	53	23	30
Eric Staal	2nd, 2003	OHL	66	98	34
Rick Nash	1st, 2002	OHL	54	72	31

The average player on this list puts together a season which equates to roughly 40 points over 82 NHL games. That would work out to 59 points over a 50-game season in Switzerland’s top league.

KARL DEBLAKER/Associated Press

There is an issue, though—an issue nicely highlighted by Alex Ovechkin. Ovechkin has one of the lowest translation numbers on this list, yet he was regarded not just as a No. 1 pick but a generational talent. So why was his point production so low, relatively speaking?

The issue is with the translations.

Players graduating from junior to the NHL are by definition extremely young. The gap between what a player is as an 18-year-old in the OHL and a 19-year-old in the majors can be wide because that player is improving rapidly. That rapid improvement shows in the translations.

In contrast, players coming from European pro leagues are often much older. It’s common for players in their mid- and even late 20s to make the jump to North America. The 26-year-old KHLer who makes his NHL debut at 27 simply doesn’t improve year over year the way our teenager did.

As a result, teenagers playing in professional leagues often look less impressive by these translations than they really should.

So let’s reset. If Matthews were to post an equivalent season to Ovechkin, what would that look like? It’s admittedly a high bar, as Ovechkin was an above-average No. 1 pick, but top Russian leagues have always been reluctant to play youth, and Matthews will likely have an easier time convincing Zurich’s Marc Crawford to use him, so it shouldn’t be too far off.

Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images

Using Ovechkin’s 30-point equivalency as a baseline, we end up with Matthews needing to score a little less than 0.9 points/game, or roughly 45 points over a full 50-game Swiss season.

If he’s in that range, NHL teams can be comfortable that he’s producing the way a No. 1 pick should.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.