In two stints at Hawthorn and his time at Port Adelaide in between, Pelchen got to enjoy the fruits of his labour and drink from the premiership cup.
The same fate will not await him at St Kilda, following Tuesday's surprise announcement that he had resigned from his position as head of football.
Not that the Saints will be winning a flag anytime soon. They're miles off it. Not before 2018 and more than likely not until 2020 do the Saints expect their next premiership window to be open - and that was according to Pelchen's own exhaustive modeling.
Pelchen was the junior recruiter at Hawthorn at the tail end of the club's golden era from 1983 to 1991. He played a small part in those successes but was prescient enough to warn the board that the glory days would not last forever and the club had to drastically change its thinking to accommodate the new world of drafts and salary caps.
Such was the hubris at Hawthorn at the time that Pelchen's dire warnings were completely ignored and sure enough, the club nearly merged with Melbourne in 1996.
By then, however, Pelchen was safely ensconced at the fledgling Port Adelaide as its Victorian operations manager, a role that encompassed many activities, including recruiting. And he was there right through until the 2004 premiership.
Twelve months later he was back at Hawthorn. It was a homecoming of sorts, but he was also part of an influential Port Adelaide alumni group at the club that over time would include senior coach Alastair Clarkson, fitness coach Andrew Russell, development coach Geoff Morris and players Stephen Gilham, Stuart Dew and Shaun Burgoyne.
This time, Pelchen had the ear of the board and in his role as general manager of list management and strategy, he set about reshaping the Hawthorn list, using analytics to project how many A, B and C-rated players the Hawks would need to win a premiership, based on results at other clubs for many years going back.
Pelchen wasn't there for the famous 2004 draft that delivered Jarryd Roughead, Lance Franklin and Jordan Lewis to the club, but most of the recruiting in the next few years was his handiwork. His best piece of work might have been to extract two first-round picks out of North Melbourne in 2005 for the fast-fading Jonathan Hay. Premiership players Grant Birchall and Max Bailey joined the Hawks as part of that deal.
Both Pelchen and general manager of football operations Mark Evans used to directly report to former chief executive Ian Robson, but once Stuart Fox replaced Robson, he wanted just one line of reporting from the football department and chose Evans. Pelchen left the club shortly afterwards.
At St Kilda, he was following a similar model with the playing list and his fingerprints were all over the 'Road to 2018' document released by the Saints at this year's season launch that outlined the path to their next premiership.
Chris Pelchen at the 2012 NAB AFL Draft. Picture AFL Media
The only problem for Pelchen was that his title at St Kilda was 'head of football', a role that encompassed more than just list management. And that might explain why he has now departed the club so abruptly.
The Saints have restructured their football operations. Former player Luke Beveridge returns from Hawthorn to become director of coaching and an important ally for second-year coach Alan Richardson, just as Richardson was to Ken Hinkley at Port Adelaide in 2013.
But what is missing is the all-encompassing general manager of football role, similar to that filled by Geoff Walsh at North Melbourne, Neil Balme at Geelong and Chris Fagan at Hawthorn.
In Pelchen and soon-to-be chief operating officer Ameet Bains, the Saints were overstocked with list management types, but still lacked that overarching football manager, with a handle on high performance, sports medicine, compliance, coaching, media and the myriad other football matters that are critical to any club.
New Saints chief executive Matt Finnis has reshaped the club's management team in the three months he has been in charge and a club whose finances are closely watched by the AFL needs to make sure there is no duplication of roles. The way forward for the Saints appears to be with Bains overseeing list management as part of his COO role and a new football operations boss managing the rest.
Pelchen was the subject of a vitriolic attack from Dermott Brereton in the wake of Scott Watters' sacking as St Kilda coach last year. Pelchen and Watters endured a rocky partnership at the Saints and Brereton went in to bat for a mate.
The next few months will establish whether Brereton was speaking for many in football when he said Pelchen would never get another job in football once he left St Kilda. It would appear that Greater Western Sydney will need a new list manager next year given Stephen Silvagni's likely departure and Pelchen, with his experience in developing young lists, Pelchen would appear a decent fit.
