A draft steal is a player drafted late in a NHL Entry Draft who ends up enjoying a good career, if not sometimes a stellar one. It being impossible to perfectly determine how successful a young player will be in the future, it sometimes happen that scouts and management will underestimate the abilities of some youngsters or that they will bloom into a much better player than predicted. The fact that so many rounds have passed between the beginning, where stars are expected to be drafted, and the moment they have been choosen, and that so many teams just overlooked them earn them their name of draft steal.