Inexact Science

Evan Dowbiggin

Description

'A fascinating in-depth analysis of six of the NHL s most interesting drafts From Guy Lafleur to Sidney Crosby to Connor McDavid, the annual draft of hockey s most talented young prospects has long been considered the best route to Stanley Cup glory. Inexact Science delivers the remarkable facts behind the six most captivating NHL Drafts ever staged and explores the lessons learned from guessing hockey horoscopes. How did it change the business of the sport? And where is the draft headed next? The authors answer intriguing questions like: What if Montreal in 1971 had chosen Marcel Dionne No. 1 overall and not Guy Lafleur? How exactly is it that Wayne Gretzky went undrafted? How did the Red Wings turn their franchise around so dramatically in the 1989 Draft? Evan and Bruce Dowbiggin also delve into the controversies, innovative ideas, and plain old bad judgment that s taken place on the draft floor. Always informative and entertaining, Inexact Science en

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 12 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781773056661
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Inexact Science The Six Most Compelling Draft Years in NHL History
Evan Dowbiggin and Bruce Dowbiggin






Contents Dedication Introduction Chapter 1: Carrying a Torch (1971) Chapter 2: Personal Services (1979) Chapter 3: Super Mario World (1984) Chapter 4: Red Dawn Fising (1989) Chapter 5: The Great Refusal (1991) Chapter 6: Sidney’s Opera (2005) Epilogue: The Shape of Drafts to Come Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright


Dedication
To Mom, Always the enforcer I needed, even when most weren’t willing to drop the gloves over me.


Introduction
Scratch any hockey lifer and they’ll tell you a great NHL draft story. One who got away. One who couldn’t miss. One a team stole from under the eyes of the rest of the league. Hall of Fame reporter Eric Duhatschek remembers the 1984 draft, when he was covering the Calgary Flames for the Calgary Herald , and a random encounter that he had in that long, long day of drafting:
Back then the draft was just one day. They would start at nine in the morning. They always took a break after—I’m going to say round five. I remember seeing (Flames head scout) Ian McKenzie in the break and asking him how things were going. He tells me, “I can’t believe Brett Hull hasn’t been taken yet. This guy had an unbelievable year, and I’ve been pushing, pushing, pushing for him and he’s still on the board!” Sure enough, I think it was 10 or 12 names that came off the board before the Flames came up at number 117. And of course, that’s where they did draft Hull. I always trusted scouts who were enthusiastic about somebody beforehand rather than a year later. Saying, “Wow, this guy’s a really great pick, and I’m a genius”? Ian was never like that. He was pretty honest and forthright about it. He wasn’t right all the time, but he was right more often than you’d think.
So Ian was asked afterwards by a bunch of people, including a reporter from Sports Illustrated , about why they drafted Brett Hull. The main question was “Did you draft him because he’s Bobby Hull’s son?” And Ian’s answer was “No, it’s because he scored 105 fucking goals in the B.C. Junior League!” Remember how SI used to have that section called “They Said It”? Well, that quote became the one they chose, without the “fucking” part, of course. And Ian was very proud of that. It was the only time in his life he ever got quoted in Sports Illustrated magazine.
Now fast-forward to August. In those days, the Flames were producing a newsletter that they sent out to their fans. It was just a four-page publication that you got if you were a season ticket holder. Ian calls me up and says, “Can you ghostwrite it for me? I’ll pay you 100 bucks for it.” And I agreed to. I was doing it more as a favour than as an actual freelance assignment. Anyway, I interviewed him to get what I needed for the write-up. We went through all the players the Flames had taken, such as Gary Roberts, Paul Ranheim, Hull. Then, near the end, he says, “I want to talk about this kid we took in the ninth round, Gary Suter.”
This was still 1984, and it was more than a year before he’d played an NHL game, so it wasn’t just after-the-fact BS. It was just two months after the June draft. No one had paid even one word of attention to Suter. Ian pointed out that he had been an older player, being drafted at age 20 after being passed over a couple times. But mostly it was because of size. In those days, very few NHL teams drafted defencemen who were under six feet tall. Ian told me he had been scouting the University of Wisconsin and was in the corridor talking to a coach or staffer when a player walked by. Ian asked, “Who is that?” And the guy he was talking to said, “Oh, that’s Gary Suter.” Ian replied, “ That’s Suter!?”
Then Ian went back to look at Central Scouting, and they were still listing him at five-foot-nine or whatever. Well clearly, he’d had a growth spurt! Ian watched him play as well, and it looked like he was very close to six feet tall, if not over. So basically, the Flames were sitting on him because they had this information, all based on a chance encounter while talking to somebody outside the dressing room and having Suter walk by. That’s how they ended up drafting him when they did. I put this story in the newsletter article, then typed it up and sent the draft of it over to Ian. He told me a funny story afterwards. He called me up one time and started laughing, saying, “Yeah, I get all kinds of positive responses to that newsletter that you wrote in my name. Most of the time people are saying, ‘Wow, you should do this for a living! You’re so much better than those fucking sportswriters who don’t know what they’re talking about.’ I can’t tell them you are the one who actually wrote it. Thanks for making me look good!”
Suter went on to make McKenzie look more than merely good, nabbing the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie in 1985–86, playing in four All-Star Games and serving as a key member on the blue line for Calgary’s Stanley Cup championship team in 1989. Even after his days with the Flames were over, Suter would be a relied-upon contributor to the Blackhawks and Sharks and go on to play over 1,000 games in the NHL despite a bit of a late start in being drafted. At the time of his retirement, he was considered one of the greatest U.S.-born defencemen ever (before the current era, where there have been far more U.S. blueline stars than there were in Suter’s early days as a pro).
Yes, the draft puzzle can be defined many ways. It is the way to victory. And the road to ruin as well. From Guy Lafleur to Sidney Crosby to Connor McDavid, the annual draft of hockey’s most talented young prospects has been considered the way to riches for top talents and the path to great heartache and disappointment as well. Each June, the hockey world convenes to see the game’s young stars chosen by their future employers (or the first of their NHL employers). Callow juniors and their parents wait for the call that will shape their destiny. Though owners and general managers have attempted to use trades and/or free agency to build their clubs into winners over the years, it’s the NHL draft that has proven the special sauce in creating a championship-calibre operation. Since the introduction of a hard salary cap in 2005, an even greater onus has been placed on drafting.
Inexact Science will tell the curious and captivating events of the NHL draft’s five-plus decades through the six most compelling years in its history. In addition to analyzing these top draft years, Inexact Science will show the lessons learned from the process of guessing hockey horoscopes, how it changed the business of the game and finally where the draft is headed. By looking at what history has shown, the epilogue will demonstrate how the best organizations in pro hockey today have expertly played the crapshoot of the draft. The inexact science of sure shots or diamonds in the rough, but also of the supposed can’t-miss prospects who indeed did somehow miss—and the general managers who paid the price for getting it so wrong.
There have certainly been controversies, blockbuster trades, innovative ideas and/or plain old bad judgement in these six most intriguing years. As Vancouver Province columnist Tony Gallagher put it, riffing on infamous words from Todd Bertuzzi, “The draft is what it is. Read, watch and listen to whatever you like, but make sure the bullbleep filter is cranked to the max when consuming this piffle.” For example, just how did the Detroit Red Wings get the jump on the European talent bonanza (namely the Russian revolution) to propel them to a quarter century of runaway success? Why were Sam Pollock’s Montreal Canadiens able to exploit the inexperience and mismanagement of the NHL’s bumbling expansion teams to their benefit at the draft, en route to Stanley Cup after Stanley Cup? And why is 1979 considered perhaps the greatest draft of all time, and how did it come to be seen that way?
The NHL draft itself took over in the 1960s from a long-practiced system of junior sponsorship and the signing of amateur talent to exclusive agreements. Though the first draft began in 1963, the earliest iterations were decidedly minor affairs and not taken any more seriously than a waiver or intra-league draft. The first six years are often a footnote to what emerged in the ’70s and beyond. Simply put, the amateur draft, as it was labelled at the time, didn’t resemble much of what we’ve come to know.
Just ask Garry Monahan, selected first overall in the inaugural NHL Amateur Draft of 1963. “I didn’t know there was a draft. Certainly, my parents and my older brother, Pat, didn’t know. The phone rang after the fact, and I don’t even remember if it was the next day or the next week (that Sammy Pollock called). We were all sort of flabbergasted . . . My recollection is that my dad told Sammy, ‘You mean Pat, Garry’s (18-year-old) brother?’ Pat was the better player.”
Back then, the draft was designed for teams to claim only players who weren’t already on sponsored lists or signed to C-forms. And that was slim pickings at the time. Selections in those days were not the prime properties that they became a handful of years later. Most years saw a snake format used, meaning those that ended a round would pick first in the next. Teams could defer their pick to another round or to another team. Also prior to 1969, players could still be signed to C-forms that locked in their rights with an NHL team at ages as young as 12 (as in the case of Bobby Orr, who was inked by the Bruins).
Kinks were eventually ironed out in the set-up, such as the Canadiens being allowed to snap up two of the best Quebec prospects before any other team had a chance to pick them. Contrar