Thoughts about the NHL Entry Draft
The London Knights are almost making this a habit. For the third time in the last 8 years a Knights' player was taken first overall. When you consider the 60 teams in major junior and then the hundreds of clubs worldwide who produce players for the NHL, the odds of that actually happening rival the art of caching lightning in a bottle and finding gold at the end of rainbows.
So how does it keep happening ?
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It's actually a whole lot more simplistic than the lightning or pot of gold tricks.
The fact that three more players were plucked from the Knights' roster this year, two of them in the top-7, just points to the ability of the Knights' organization to find the talent and get that talent prepared for what it takes to play professional hockey.
Look around the Canadian Hockey League as a whole. The OHL, WHL and QMJHL are largely recognized as the best developmental leagues in the world. That is thanks to their calibre of play, their schedule being very similar to that of the NHL or AHL and the attention that gets paid to them by the fans and the media. It really is Pro Jr.
But you can't just have a team in one of those loops and expect to be successful. It takes an awful lot of work.
Only Guelph, Red Deer, Shawinigan and the Memorial Cup Champion Windsor Spitfires had more players selected from their rosters by NHL teams. And if you add up players drafted who spent at least part of the season with the Knights, then London had more players picked than any other team in Major Junior Hockey. Michael Zador, Scott Valentine and Barron Smith were all London draft picks used in deals to pick up Trevor Cann and John Tavares.
It's all about identifying and developing and London's system is one of the best at it. The 2009 Draft is just more proof.
From day one the players are treated like professionals. They are coached by professionals and they learn to play and act like professionals because London's success goes well beyond the draft.
As was reported right before the festivities in Montreal, only 50 per cent of players selected will ever play an NHL game. And only half of those will ever play more than five.
But ex-Knights have been able to find their way to the show in huge numbers out of the Hunter umbrella. Rick Nash, Corey Perry, Dennis Wideman, Steve Mason, Patrick Kane, Sam Gagner, Marc Methot, Dan Girardi, Dan Fritsche... the list is still growing, too. Look for Danny Syvret and Bryan Rodney to find their names on it next year. Hopefully Rob Schremp and Drew Larman will join them.
The Knights' blueprint is being copied by other teams now, so their job will not get easier. Windsor made no secret of saying they tried to emulate what Mark and Dale Hunter had done and it worked quite well for them. And there will be others.
But as the NHL draft concludes for another year, we all have to sit back in the it of London and appreciate what our home town team has been able to do. It is as incredible as it is unmatched.
One other note: Everyone keeps making a big deal out of Leaf GM, Brian Burke's statement that he was going to try to trade up to draft John Tavares and the fact that it didn't happen. When Brian Burke speaks, you have to consider his words more than one way. It isn't just what he says, it is why he says it. That statement about Tavares came right after the Leafs had missed the playoffs. The reason Burke said it had more to do with shifting the focus of the hockey world away from the fact that Toronto didn't make the post-season again than it did about actually landing John Tavares in the draft. For that Burke should not be seen as having failed, he should be seen as having succeeded big time. He's a very smart man.
