25: The Draft Year: Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
"SCOUTS?"
It's just a one-word line from a movie, but if you're an
a
fi
cionado of Slap Shot, you instantly get the picture. The
thuggish Charlestown Chiefs have seen the light and decide
to stop gooning it up to play real hockey-until team owner
Joe McGrath barges into the dressing room and says: "You're
blowin' it, boys! Every scout in the NHL is out there tonight
with contracts in their pocket, and they're lookin' for talent, for winners!… They come here tonight-to scout the
Chiefs! The toughest team in the Federal League! Not this
bunch of…pussies!"
To which playing-coach Reg Dunlop (Paul Newman) raises
an eyebrow and says: "Scouts?"
The next scene, of course, shows absolute mayhem on the
ice as the Chiefs immediately revert to their old goony ways.
It's a classic illustration of how good intentions,
honourable
as they may be, just sometimes aren't meant to be, especially
where hockey is concerned.
And so it was for the McKenzies in Mike's major bantam
AAA season of 2001-02. It was supposed to be Mike's farewell season to high-level competitive hockey. Our newfound
emphasis with Mike was going to be on education, Trinity
College School in Port Hope, where it was time to start focusing on balance (football, cross-country, volleyball, culture,
academics, personal growth) as opposed to living the one-dimensional minor hockey life.
Well, it was a nice thought while it lasted.
Actually, we didn't entirely abandon that quest. Mike was,
in fact, enrolled at TCS for Grade 10. Education had become
a higher priority for us. He would dutifully get up each day
just after 6 a.m. and be on the bus to Port Hope by 7:15. That
wasn't always easy either, especially if he had a weeknight
game in Barrie at 9 p.m. and wouldn't get home until well after
midnight. Mike found the academics to be much more challenging-they even had classes Saturday morning to make up
for time lost playing sports on Wednesday afternoon. He made
many great friends there, loved the teachers and was thriving
in spite of the heavier workload and extra travel time.
The
fly
in the ointment was that the aliens had returned
with the real Mike McKenzie who they took away when he was
twelve years old.
I'm not saying Mike was an elite-level player as a
fi
fteen-year-old, because he wasn't. But "old Mike" was back in a big
way, with
confidence
and performance I hadn't seen since
major atom. Still not the greatest skater in the world, he was
competing consistently hard, showing no fear or hesitation,
getting physically involved at every turn. He was putting
up great numbers-I recall two games where he scored
five
goals in each game and he
finished
the season with close to
fi
fty-and his feet never stopped moving. His work ethic was
off the scale. While he had sort of settled in as an average to
slightly below-average skater, all the other parts of his games
were back at a high level.
Hockey people will tell you there comes a time in some
players' lives where they just wake up one day and "get it,"
which is a euphemism for the player
figuring
out what it actually takes to play the game and play it well (feet always moving,
competing hard every shift, winning more battles than they
lose and just coming up with a consistency of effort that maximizes whatever talent they possess).
Mike, for reasons I still can't comprehend, "got it" in major
bantam. Like many kids at that age, he started to attract interest from Ontario Hockey League teams and scouts.
What's now known as the minor midget AAA year (Mike's
major bantam season) is unquestionably the most bizarre
year of minor hockey because there's a whole new dynamic
at work-the foreboding presence of the next level. The entire
focus, unfortunately, changes for everyone-coaches, players
and parents-because there are scouts and general managers
and agents to deal with.
It changes everything. It shouldn't, but it does.
Sadly, the value system I've always maintained should exist
in minor hockey (have fun; teach values; improve individual
skating and skills; teach team concepts, strategies and tactics)
goes out the window when the kids are
fi
fteen years old and
draft eligible for major junior hockey.
On Mike's team, we were fortunate to have a level-headed
coaching staff. My pal Bucky Crouch, who was the goalie
coach when I was Mike's peewee coach, was in his second year
as the head coach of the Wildcats and he had experience with
kids of this age. Mike's cousin Mat was on the AAA team and
Cindy's brother John (Mat's dad) was an assistant coach with
Bucky. Having been a star OHLer and pro player himself, John
had been through all of this; he knew what it was all about.
And it's not like the Wildcats had a lot of hot commodities
for the draft. Mike was probably considered the team's top OHL
prospect and he was predicted to be a
fi
fth- to- eighth-round
candidate, strictly middle of the pack (he ended up being chosen 125th overall, in the seventh round, to the Saginaw Spirit).
But even on a lower-level team like Whitby, "draft fever" occasionally made an appearance.
The big mistake coaches and parents inevitably make in the
draft year is to repeatedly use the S word, thinking it's a catalyst to great performance, when, in fact, it's quite the opposite.
"Scouts."
It should never even be uttered in the presence of a
fi
fteen-year-old player. I believe it is the cardinal sin to do so. If
coaches and parents would just realize the impetus for a
fi
fteen-year-old to play hockey, and play it well, should never be to
do it for the scouts, the world would be a much happier place.
Yet most minor hockey coaches say it without even thinking.
"Lotsa scouts in the building tonight, boys," the coach will
inevitably tell the lads in the pregame speech, thinking he's
motivating them or pushing their buttons and the result will
be a big win. Oh, he's pushing the kids' buttons all right, but
not the ones that should be pushed.
If a player is playing to impress the scouts, that player
first
has to think what it is that will impress a scout. The
first
response from the kid, or his parents, is usually "score a lot of
goals," which means that player is thinking that is the measure of success. He is not thinking about doing all the small things necessary to not only score a goal, but help his team
win the game. Which is too bad because scouts, while statistics certainly aren't ignored, often do look for the little things
and intangibles that make up a hockey player. But players, and
their parents, often don't understand that. They think it's all
about goals and, not surprisingly, this leads to unprecedented
levels of
selfish
ness.
Hockey is a team game. It is supposed to be seventeen players (two goalies and
fi
fteen skaters) dedicated to a common
cause, doing whatever it takes for the team to do its best.
Playing for scouts is simply playing the game for all the
wrong reasons. If the players play for each other
first
, the
scouts will go home happy and satis
fie
d. Trust me on that,
because ultimately that's what they're looking for. And if the
coaches of minor hockey teams would only realize that, they
and their players would be so much better off.
Yet the competition and jealousies within a team-and
this involves mostly players and parents-can rip it apart.
If some players on the team get letters from the OHL clubs
saying they're interested in them, the ones who don't get them
feel slighted and out of sorts. When the mid-season OHL draft
list-you have to be on the list to be drafted and it ranks players according to AA, A, B and C levels-inevitably makes its
way into the public domain, imagine the furor when Johnny
is on the list but Billy isn't; or Steve is a AA prospect and Bobby
is a mere B; wait until Peter shows up at the rink with an agent
and the other players and parents think if Peter has an agent,
surely we need one, too.
Forget Slap Shot; this can be, in its most extreme form, the
minor hockey equivalent of an X-rated
fl
ick, a depraved orgy
of immoral excess and self-satisfaction.
The culmination of all of this, of course, is the OHL draft
each May. I don't have any problem with the draft itself, or
how the OHL does its business. It is a wholly necessary function to equitably distribute or assign players' playing rights
to allow for the league to exist with a reasonably competitive playing
field
. My problem is how, for better or worse, kids
and their parents perceive the draft as if it de
fine
s a kid at age
fi
fteen.
This is true of all drafts in all sports. I often end up talking to friends' kids who either didn't get drafted or didn't
get drafted as highly as they anticipated. I try to make them
understand the draft is an arti
fi
cial process of highly subjective
evaluation. It assigns their rights to a team; it doesn't affect
them in any appreciable way as a player.
Example: The OHL draft is held on a Saturday in May. No
one is playing any games in May. I ask a player what kind of
player he is on the Friday before the draft. I ask him what
kind of player he is on the Saturday of the draft, and what
kind of player he is on the Sunday after the draft. The answer,
of course, is that he is the same player on Friday as he is on
Saturday as he is on Sunday, because he hasn't done anything
on the ice that could possibly change the way he's played the
game or even alter the perception of himself and his ability. All
that happened on Saturday is that some people (scouts) made
a highly subjective evaluation of that player, which brands
him a
first
-rounder or an eighth-rounder or a no-rounder. This
would be
fine
if the people making this highly subjective evaluation were perfect, but they're not and they would be the
first
to tell you that.
There are some
first
-round picks in major junior who never
develop into OHL stars and there are many mid-to-late-round
picks who do. It's absurd to allow anyone to hang a brand
or label on you as a
fifteen
-year-old and suggest you should
embrace this as your standing in the hockey community.
Let's also try to keep the whole thing in perspective. In
Mike's OHL draft year of 2002, exactly three hundred players
were chosen. As of the middle of the 2008-09 season, seven-just seven of them-have gone on to become what I would
de
fine
as NHL players-Wojtek Wolski (3rd overall in the OHL
draft); David Bolland (8th); Tyler Kennedy (16th); Patrick
Kaleta (31st); Kevin Porter (60th); Jared Boll (101st); and
Benoit Pouliot (207th). That's it, although it must be noted the
1986 birth year in Ontario was not a particularly strong one
(keep in mind, Kaleta, Porter and Boll are Americans, so only
four Ontario kids from that '86 draft class were regular NHLers
seven years after their OHL draft year). Still, it gives you some
idea of the odds against your
fifteen
-year-old, even if he's an
OHL
first
-round
fl
avor of the day, becoming an NHL player.
The point is, at the age of
fi
fteen, you don't let anyone
de
fine
you. You are way too young to accept someone else's
notion of who you should be or what you're going to be. You do
all that yourself. There is plenty of time for self-determination.