For those who live with hockey residing in the soul, every day carries some manner of frozen celebration, even in the dead of summer, but some days are better refrigerated than others. For me there are three or four genuinely dry-ice moments in the hockey calendar that are a given every year: the morning of day one of training camp in September; the morning of the season opener about a month later; and the moment that the NHL commissioner places the team drafting first at June’s Entry Draft on the clock. With those first two events, no doubt I’m joined in celebration by thousands of puckheads across the continent. But the latter?
Welcome to my world, that of the DraftGeek.
I can trace my addiction back to, of all things, a George Michael sportscast on WRC-TV in 1981. That was the Bobby Carpenter draft. Michael that evening led his sportscast with word of the Caps drafting Carpenter third overall that summer. Obviously pre-Internet, pre-anything hockey coverage then in the offseason, the broadcast news gatekeepers had to apprise us of anything significant transpiring for the pro hockey team here. Carpenter had appeared on Sports Illustrated’s cover in March of ‘81, making his selection by the Caps in that draft a lead story affair for local media. And of course, the ‘81 draft was just a year removed from the Miracle on Ice, and so the Caps selecting what was then regarded as the finest American hockey prospect perhaps since Hobey Baker made a formative impression on your blogger.
In the spring of ‘81 there was a rather public game of cat and mouse between the Caps and General Manager Emile Francis’ Hartford Whalers. Hartford drafted immediately after the Caps at no. 4, and the Whale was trying to decide between Carpenter and another center prospect, Ron Francis. The Caps went with the Can’t Miss Kid from Massachusetts. The Whale made out all right, though.
Fast forward to 1994. Peter Bondra, a relative unknown in the larger hockey world, barnstorms to the top of the NHL goal scoring title in the labor strife abbreviated ‘94-95 season. The very next season he’d score 52 goals. Bondra was drafted 156th by the Capitals, in the eighth round, of the remarkable 1990 draft. I remember watching Bondra in ‘94 and thinking, how the hell did we land this guy, so late? Bondra’s discovery by then Caps’ scout Jack Button is the stuff of Entry Draft lore. Bonzai was the proverbial backwoods prospect, completely off of everybody’s radar, until Button got a tip and somehow found the slick-skating Slovak without a GPS. It was, hands down, Button’s greatest and most important scouting work for the Caps.
There’s no such thing as a Peter Bondra in a round eight of the NFL or NBA drafts (heck, the NBA doesn’t even have a round four anymore). I love that about hockey’s.
In our lifetime we may never see the likes of the ‘90 class again. Owen Nolan, Jaromir Jagr, Martin Brodeur, Petr Nedved, Doug Weight — gracious, Sergei Zubov went in round 5 that summer! After the Caps selected Bondra in round 8 they did ok in round 9, too: Ken Klee.
Fast forward to 1996. The leadup buzz with that draft surrounded a big-bodied, ungodly talented Russian power forward named Alexander Volchkov. (Our good friend JP exercises his inner DraftGeek with this update of Volchkov, one of the all-time Entry Draft marvels.) Without question there were scores of questions surrounding Volchkov’s commitment and heart — in hindsight, magnificently inpsired and well-placed ones — but there was no denying that in ‘96, Volchkov’s talent stood head and shoulders above his draft classmates. He was that tantalizing, once-in-decade-or-two talent that makes scouts and GMs drool. That he landed in Washington seemed a stunner of massive fortune to a franchise that by then had endured an unhealthy share of postseason misfortune. Volchkov and his dazzling skill set were worth taking a flyer on.
Some flyer. More like an airplane with icy wings and an engine that wouldn’t. But it’s hit-or-miss intrigue like Volchkov that adds additional flavor to the draft.
That ‘96 draft further tormented the Capitals and their fans with one Jaroslav Svejkovsky — he the scorer of four goals in 1997’s final regular season game in Buffalo. Who who watched that vintage performance would have thought that the apex of Yogi’s career? Alas, it was, but early that offseason more than a few DraftGeeks experienced irrational exuberance imagining the Caps the draft winners of ‘96 coming away with both Volchkov and Svejkovsky.
If 1990 was the NHL’s vintage year for prospects, 1996 was its white zinfandel — from a box.
2002’s draft was also supposed to be a lemon. That draft, conducted in Toronto, was the first I attended. Actually being in the building for a draft affords you a powerful and lasting sense of how much of a family celebration the draft is, parents and siblings by the thousands dressed in their Sunday finest, with camera flashes illuminating Air Canada Centre like cigarette lighters at a rock concert. On TV the draft is all about the players and the draft floor mass of scouts and managers on telephones and talking heads second guessing. In the stands it’s all about the biggest day in the lives of five thousand families.
‘02 was really panned for its lack of depth. And yet the Caps came away with Steve Eminger, Alexander Semin, Boyd Gordon, even Tomas Fleischmann eventually. The worst drafts still manage to produce players; ‘96 for instance delivered Dainius Zubrus.
By Draft 2003 — billed by insiders as a fair rival in talent to ‘90 — we’d evolved with technology to the point where DraftGeeks were well linked from Canada, Europe, and America with message board madness related to the draft. Hockeysfuture was exploding into the consciousness of future-minded puckheads. In the early spring of ‘03, Friday and Saturday nights for your blogger were laden with bottled beer and HF boards immersion. I was never happier.
Hockeysfuture has been a godsend for DraftGeeks, but there are enough of us that its server regularly crashes around 10:00 a.m. on draft mornings. I remember that agony, too. A religious rite at Hockeysfuture is the posting of serious-minded mock drafts. There is a stable of Tier I DraftGeek there who annually offer near pro scout quality stuff with their mocks. And there are genuine scouts who both read and post there, regularly.
It was only recently that we in the States began seeing the draft on TV. And now the draft has become enough of an event for the league that it receives prime time TV coverage, on Friday nights, with the NHL Network even picking up Saturday morning’s post-first round action. Heaven.
My favorite draft moment? A funny thing happened one super sunny April day in the District in 2004, not long after the Caps had basically bottomed out in the league standings: a ping pong ball bounced their way in the league’s New York office, awarding them a coveted Russian prospect who’d already made a name for himself as an organization-altering talent. I’ll remember the fortune of that day ’til they toss dirt over my casket. (And likely I’ll be buried clutching a mock draft for that year.)
The NHL Draft is about families who’ve dedicated so much of their lives to the cultivation of elite hockey talent, driving the family car through amazingly harsh northern winters — pre-dawn black ice and frozen door locks and ice-crusted windows for pre-school skates and homework over hot chocolate and other ice rink nutrition. It’s about an end-of-every-round dynamo Detroit confounding 29 other clubs with diamond-in-the-rough picks guiding them to annual contention and, every few years, Lord Stanley. It’s about a “weak” draft delivering, in round six, a pint-sized MVP from the Quebec League. It’s about the CHL versus U.S. college hockey. It’s about wheeling and dealing.
No wonder I’m addicted.
