The best NHL Draft late-round steals

Reaching at least the Eastern Conference Final three times in the past four years, the Tampa Bay Lightning have been one of the top teams in the league recently. They have done that by taking players other teams oftentimes overlooked, including undersized skaters. Palat, a seventh-round pick in 2011, qualifies as one of them. He has developed into a tremendous playmaker for the Lightning and became a key contributor during the 2014-15 run to the Stanley Cup Final as a part of the "Triplets" line alongside Nikita Kucherov and Tyler Johnson.  

Over the past two seasons, only four players in the entire league have scored more goals than Anders Lee. There is perhaps no one in the NHL right now who is better and more relentless in front of the net than Lee, and the Islanders got him with the 152nd overall pick in 2009. 

The Dallas Stars' current roster has been pieced together mostly through blockbuster trades and big free-agent signings. However, one of their cornerstone players and their current captain, Jamie Benn, was a late-round gem, selected in the fifth round of the 2007 draft. Since joining the Stars, Benn has become one of the league's top scorers and won the scoring title during the 2014-15 season. Along with Tyler Seguin, he has helped form one of the best offensive duos in the league. 

As far as last picks in the draft go, you would be hard-pressed to find a more successful one than Patric Hornqvist. He has become one of the elite power forwards in the NHL, and after a successful run with the Predators, the team that drafted him, he has been a core player on a Penguins team that won back-to-back Stanley Cups. The second came with Hornqvist scoring the Cup-clinching goal in the final minute of the deciding game...against the Predators, the team that selected him. 

The most remarkable thing about the Predators finding a franchise goalie so late in the draft is that when Rinne was drafted, he was the backup goalie on his Finnish team. The story goes that he played so sparingly that the Predators' contingent of scouts, led by then assistant general manager Ray Shero, had to be at the team's games to see Rinne take warmups. It was a total shot in the dark pick that worked out tremendously well. 

The 2003 draft will be remembered as one of the strongest draft classes in NHL history, particularly for its ridiculously deep first round, but it went much further than that. One of the best late-round picks came in the seventh round when the San Jose Sharks nabbed Joe Pavelski with the 205th pick. Pavelski has been a steady producer for the Sharks since making his NHL debut in 2006 and over the past five years has emerged as one of the top goal scorers in the league. 

Lundqvist has been the best goalie of his generation and the backbone of the New York Rangers. At times, he has masked terrible flaws in front of him. He has on occasion carried the team to levels it probably should not have been able to reach. He has won Olympic gold and the Vezina Trophy and simply has been a sensational player. The only thing his Hall of Fame career is missing is a Stanley Cup, and unfortunately, given the current path the Rangers are taking, that seems unlikely barring a trade to another team. 

One year after snagging Pavel Datsyuk in the sixth round, the Red Wings followed that up by getting Zetterberg in the seventh round. His career pretty much mirrored that of Datsyuk's as the two became a fearsome duo that helped the Red Wings maintain their place among the NHL's elite. Zetterberg's best moment came in the 2008 Stanley Cup Playoffs when he won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff's MVP. 

Another of the Red Wings' spectacular late-round gems, Datsyuk became the most dominant two-way center of his time, consistently finishing as a top scorer in the league while also winning the Selke Trophy three times as its best defensive forward. He was one of the core pieces of Detroit's 2008 Stanley Cup-winning team and the 2009 squad that finished as the runner-up. 

Throughout the 1990s, the Detroit Red Wings found more late-round gems than any other team in the league. Holmstrom was the first of those players, after being selected in the 10th round in 1994. He became one of the best net-front power forwards in the league and a constant pain in the neck for every opposing goalie and defender who encountered him. He scored 243 goals in his career and had, who knows, how many more taken away. He was a member of four Stanley Cup teams with the Red Wings. 

In their early days, the Ottawa Senators routinely picked at the top of the NHL Draft. Sometimes it worked in their favor, and sometimes (like in the case of Alexandre Daigle ) it did not. In 1994, they selected Radek Bonk third overall, and while he had a solid NHL career, he made nowhere near the impact that their sixth-round pick — Daniel Alfredsson — did. Alfredsson became the face of the Senators and their all-time leader in pretty much every major category. 

Khabibulin was not only the 204th player selected in 1992, but he was also the 17th goalie selected. None of the 16 goalies ahead of him came close to matching his career output with the Jets/Coyotes and Lightning. A contract dispute ultimately ended his time in Arizona, but he went on to help backstop Tampa Bay to its only Stanley Cup championship, in 2004, a performance that saw him record five shutouts in the playoffs and a .933 save percentage. 

Before Alex Ovechkin arrived on the scene, Peter Bondra was the most prolific goal scorer in Washington Capitals history. Even though it never resulted in a championship, Bondra was a legitimate superstar for the Capitals, leading the league in goals on two different occasions in a career that saw him top the 500-goal plateau. Perhaps the only downside to his career with the Capitals — aside from the obvious of not getting a championship — is that he was traded before scoring his 500th goal. 

Bure was regarded as one of the best players in the 1989 draft, but nobody was willing to take him out of fear that he might not be able to get out of the Soviet Union. Thus he fell to the sixth round, where the Vancouver Canucks rolled the dice. They were rewarded when he finally made it over to the NHL in 1991 and made an immediate impact, scoring 34 goals (in only 65 games) as a rookie and then topping the 60-goal plateau in each of the next two seasons. His career was ultimately cut short by injuries, but when healthy he was one of the most dominant goal scorers in the NHL. 

Had he been a few inches taller and a few pounds heavier, Fleury almost certainly would have been drafted higher than the eighth round in 1987. But NHL teams to this day still have a fear of players who are deemed to be "undersized." That mindset, though, is changing a little, and it's because of players like Fleury showing that they can be dominant scorers. Fleury was one of the most dynamic and exciting players in the league throughout his career, reaching the 40-goal mark four times, including a career-high 51 goals in 1990-91.

Larionov was significant because he helped lead the push for Soviet players to defect to the United States to play in the NHL. He ended up playing 920 games for the Canucks, Sharks, Devils, Panthers and Red Wings. He is perhaps best known for being a part of the Red Wings' famed Russian Five alongside Sergei Fedorov, Slava Fetisov, Vladimir Konstantinov and Slava Kozlov.

Luc Robitaille lasted until the ninth round of the 1984 draft mostly because teams did not think he could skate at an NHL level. Turns out, they were wrong. He could skate well enough to end his career as one of the highest-scoring players in league history, tallying 668 goals and 1,394 points for the Kings, Rangers, Penguins and Red Wings. During the same draft, the Kings selected Tom Glavine, who became a Hall of Fame pitcher in Major League Baseball, more than 100 spots ahead of Robitaille. 

The Calgary Flames got a steal in Hull in the sixth round of the '84 draft. Problem was they didn't realize it and traded him in 1988 to the St. Louis Blues for Rick Wamsley and Rob Ramage. Hull became one of the most dominant goal scorers in league history, netting 741 in his career. That mark is still the fourth best all time. 

After being selected late in the 1983 draft, it took Hasek seven years to finally come to North America, and even then he served as a backup to Ed Belfour in Chicago. It wasn't until he was traded to the Buffalo Sabres in 1992 (for Stephane Beauregard and a fourth-round draft pick, later used to select Eric Daze) that he became a superstar and, arguably, the most dominant goaltender in NHL history. During his career, Hasek led the league in save percentage six times, won the Vezina Trophy six times, the Jennings Trophy three times, the MVP Award twice and the Lester B. Pearson Award two times. He was also a part of two Stanley Cup-winning teams in Detroit and nearly single-handedly dragged the 1999 Sabres to the Final. 

There were 217 players selected in the 1975 NHL Draft. The 210th player taken was forward Dave Taylor, who went to the Los Angeles Kings. How big of a steal was this selection? Taylor ended up scoring 431 goals in his career (75 more than the second-leading scorer in the class) and was one of just three players in the entire class to score more than 250 goals.