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A Look at the NHL Entry Draft Through Different Eyes

July 27, 2021, 7:27 AM ET [4 Comments]
Paul Stewart
Blogger •Former NHL Referee • RSSArchiveCONTACT
As I have gotten older, I have come to watch the NHL Entry Draft on television little differently than most people. Unless I personally know a young player or his family, I don't care very much about which team selects which player.

I see these kids come up, one by one, and I feel happy for each one and his family. No matter the player's hometown or hockey backstory, years of hard work and sacrifice went into his arrival at this special moment. No matter what happens in this player's career in the future, no one can take that achievement away. I don't necessarily care what draft round or selection number. Actually, I feel that much happier for the ones who weren't a lock to be chosen and especially the ones who previously passed through the Draft unselected.

I find myself hoping for the best for every player; OFF the ice as well as on the ice. My wish for each, as a hockey lifer myself and a hockey dad, is that they get the best guidance and the most complete preparation. I hope each young man has good influences and good mentors, so that he maximizes his chance to have his on-ice development and health be what determines his destiny in chasing the ongoing dream of a pro career. I pray that nothing beyond his control derails him, because every hockey player is one freakish injury away from never playing again.

I also think about the young players and families you never see on your TV; the ones who worked and sacrificed just as much as the names and faces on your screen but who didn't get selected. For these players and families, I want to pass along some personal advice that I've shared with my own sons.

There are graveyards filled with hockey players who were loaded with talent and were drafted by NHL teams but didn't have nearly the moxie, the work ethic, commitment or sheer love of the game to make it as pros. There are Hall of Fame players like Joey Mullen, Vezina Trophy winners like Ed Belfour, Hart Trophy winners like Martin St. Louis who were never selected in the NHL Draft.

When you look down the illustrious list of names from the fabled 1979 NHL Entry Draft, two names that do not appear are Dino Ciccarelli and Tim Kerr. Both went unselected. Signed instead as undrafted rookie free agents, they went on to combine for 978 NHL goals in the regular season alone.

If your son went undrafted by an NHL team or if your son or daughter was not recruited by a Division 1 collegiate program, help him or her channel it into motivation. Tell them what Bob "the Hound" Kelly once told me: Others made a decision but now you have to make a decision about theirs.

Do you just accept rejection? Do you quit? Or do you double down on your striving for your goals? The fact of the matter is that the NHL Entry Draft is just that. It's a point of entry into an NHL organization, but it's NOT the only one. You may find a side door open up or maybe you'll have to break it down. Once you're in, guess what? You're going to learn that there's a long hallway to navigate from lobby level and then you may be kept waiting for the elevator door to open after you push the button. Still waiting? Climb the stairs instead. How many flights are you willing to climb? What if I told you that the penthouse is on the 20th floor? Great. Then start climbing and, if you need to hold onto the rail, it's there for your assistance.

The Entry Draft is a good thing but it's not the be-all and end-all of a career. Has there ever been a Draft where the subsequent career success went exactly by the same order as the numerical selections? Damn right, there hasn't. Same with that coveted letter of intent from the collegiate recruiters. It really doesn't mean a thing in the big picture. It's also ephemeral.

Being a highly touted prospect or a top pick is no guarantee of lasting success or happiness. When I was a minor league player in the New York Rangers system, I saw firsthand what happened to Don Murdoch. He was an early first-round pick and got a big bonus by the standards of the time. Good-looking guy. On the ice, he had some immediate NHL success, too.

It was short-lived.

He wasn't prepared to handle any of it: the money flying in and flying out, the attention and "friends" of convenience. He was a really good NHL scorer and, just as suddenly, he wasn't. The so-called friends and the tipsters who want to "help you double your money" all disappeared once you were no longer a hot commodity. The same gaggle of party girls who were hanging all over you a few year ago at the New York nightclubs are now chasing after the next local young celebrity. It was never YOU that any of them actually cared about.

Donny became a journeyman player and then a scout. I can't speak for him but I do think that was actually more fulfilling time to him than the years when it all seemed to come so easily. He got to be just a regular guy who was in hockey.

When I see the first few picks posing for pictures, I just hope they have the guidance and level-headedness to deal with what's coming. The kids who aren't taken near the top of the Draft don't have nearly as much thrown at them so quickly, so it can be a blessing in disguise. They have no other choice but to continue to work to earn their keep.

Back when I was a young student-athlete, the only type of draft I had any experience with was when my mom left the window open on an autumn Boston day. The only draft that occupied my thoughts was the one that involved a letter from the government informing me that an expenses-paid trip to Vietnam awaited.

With few exceptions in that era, the NHL Entry Draft (or Amateur Draft, as it used to be called) was for Canadian players only. American players were mostly limited to playing collegiate hockey if they could it make it that far. After that, it was time to find a job in the real world. I knew that I had a snowball's chance in Hell of being a pick in the NHL Draft, which wasn't a TV event back then. It was something that NHL general managers and scouts gathered at a hotel to do. They'd smoke their cigars or cigarettes, make their selections and then have a boilermaker or five. No players and no families attended.

Days or weeks later, the draftees would get a phone call. They'd be called inside from their farm chores or summoned to the office by the foreman of the factory job they worked in the hockey offseason. They'd pick up the phone and hear the good news. Or maybe their mom or sibling took a message from Mr. So-and-So from NHL Team X, and the young man found out when he got back from the coal mine. Glamourous it was not, but the excitement no doubt was the same.

I never even gave a thought to receiving such a phone call. First of all, it was something too far removed and remote to be in my conscious mind. My grandfather was the U.S. national hockey team manager and a major league scout after his own NHL officiating/coaching and MLB umpiring careers. There was no such thing as a hockey or baseball draft in his lifetime. You scouted, you traveled countless miles and you recruited (or tried to recruit when there was competition) players in whom you saw promise. In hockey, NHL teams claimed rights to the players on the junior hockey teams they sponsored.

By the time I attended Groton and the University of Pennsylvania, the NHL Amateur Draft had been around for a number of years. But I knew that I had about as much chance of an NHL team calling me to tell me I'd been drafted as I did of Raquel Welch attending one of my team's games and slipping me her phone number. Great fantasies, but Mr. Rourke and Tattoo in their white tuxedos were nowhere to be seen, and my family sure didn't have the money to send me flying off to the resort on Fantasy Island.

Nevertheless, my one and only dream was to play professional hockey. That's why I tried out for the Binghamton Dusters, who were the last place team that year in the lowly North American Hockey League. It's why I had 42 fighting majors my first season in Bingo. It's why I gladly rode on our rickety, freezing cold, foul-smelling team bus that my teammates dubbed "the Iron Lung".

My first tryout contract was hardly my last. I was on several of those before I finally stuck in the World Hockey Association with the Cincinnati Stingers. When the WHA merged with the NHL in 1979, I was finally drafted. The Quebec Nordiques made me the final player picked in the Dispersal Draft. I was chosen only because my former Cincinnati coach, Jacques Demers, was now with the Nordiques and he liked me. I finally did get that long-elusive phone call.

"Cat," Jacques said, "We're back together."

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A 2018 inductee into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, Paul Stewart holds the distinction of being the first U.S.-born citizen to make it to the NHL as both a player and referee. On March 15, 2003, he became the first American-born referee to officiate in 1,000 NHL games.

Visit Paul's official websites, YaWannaGo.com and Officiating by Stewart
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