Every year, a handful of of the top forwards selected in the summer’s NHL Entry Draft make the jump to a significant role with the team that selected them.  It’s rarer, however, to see a defenceman make that leap, as Cam Fowler has this past season (Fowler has been making strides at the NHL level too – after recording just three points in his first 10 games, he has eight in his last nine).

I wondered how long it took the average highly-touted defensive prospect to make the jump to being a top four defenceman, so I went back over the last 10 drafts to see. 

I looked at every defenceman taken in the top 10 spots in the draft, and counted the years it took for them to be playing top-four even-strength minutes for their hockey club.  This chart shows what I found:

The chart shows that just three of the 25 defenceman selected (12%) made the jump to top-four minutes the year after being drafted.  All three were top-five selections, but even so they represented just 21% of the selections made in the top-five.  The average top-five selection takes between three and four seasons of development before they’re ready to step into a top-four role on an NHL team.

That means that for teams looking to rebuild their blue-line, unless they luck out with a player like Drew Doughty, it will take between three or four years before their lottery selection is ready to make a real impact on their club.

And while Fowler has had some struggles, it also suggest that all those folks who let him slide out of the top-10 at this past summer’s Entry Draft probably had it wrong.