TOP FIVE HARD-LUCK FLYERS PROSPECTS
For all the intensive scouting and careful preparation that teams do, there is an element of luck involved -- at least beyond the first round -- in whether the players selected pan out as future NHL players. The biggest variable, of course, is injury.
Even under ideal circumstances, teams are going to have more Draft-day misses than hits, at least beyond the first round. On an all-time basis from 1967 through the 2014 Draft, the Flyers have made a total of 449 picks in the NHL Draft: 394 skaters and 55 goaltenders. Among these picks, 176 players have appeared in at least one NHL game to date.
I have always felt that it's a bit unfair when a once highly-touted young player who suffered a career-ending or career-altering injury ends up on one of those annual lists of biggest NHL Draft busts. That's especially true when the writer does not bring the injury context into the description of the player's NHL dreams going by the wayside.
It's one thing if a team rolls the drafting dice on a player who previously suffered a major injury or has known off-ice issues, and the player never subsequently gets back on track. In that case, the risk was known. It's quite another to criticize a team for drafting a player who gets hurt or otherwise suffers misfortune after he's draft.
Here are five players from Flyers Draft history whose promising careers were waylaid after the Draft. Three never played a game in the NHL, while the other two only played briefly.
1.
Viktor Khatulev (selected 160th overall in 1975): The Flyers were the first NHL team to Draft a player from the Soviet Union. Viktors Hatuļevs, a Latvian, was a brilliant but deeply troubled player who fell victim to the politics of the era as well as his own personal demons and a series of family tragedies.
Khatulev's story is a convoluted tale. He unquestionably had the ability to be an NHL star but a career in North America was never a realistic possibility under the circumstances.
A supremely skilled and powerfully built (6-foot-2, 220 pound) player who often displayed an aggressive physical game that was more in line with the North American style than Soviet hockey, there was very little Khatulev could not do on the ice. He was so skilled, in fact, that he starred both as a left winger and a defenseman.
Khatulev displayed tremendous skill wherever he played. Primarily a forward in the early years of his career and primarily a defenseman later on, he showed the ability to play all three forward spots and either left or right defense as needed. Apart from his bullish strength, Khatulev was a fleet skater and a good finisher. Unlike most European players of the era, Khatulev distinctly preferred shooting to passing the puck.
In 1975, there were rumors that Khatulev, a rebellious soul who refused to leave his Dinamo Riga club to join the Red Army club (CSKA Moscow), might attempt to defect to the West. At the behest of scout Eric Colville, who had seen the player dominate the 1974 and 1975 World Youth Hockey Championships (the predecessor of the World Juniors), the Flyers chose him in the ninth round of the 1975 Draft. Khatulev was also selected in the 1975 World Hockey Association draft (116th overall) by the Cleveland Crusaders.
At about the same time as the defection rumors spread, the 20-year-old Khatulev was slapped with a five-year-ban from the Soviet league, ostensibly for engaging in several on-ice fights. Khatulev's suspension was lifted before the next season, on the condition that he not be allowed to leave the Soviet Union for any reason, including international hockey tournaments.
It was not until 1978-79 that Khatulev learned of the Flyers' interest in him. Colville was able to get in touch with him through back channels during the NHL-Soviet Super Series in Moscow. Khatulev, who feared that he was under surveillance, said he had never given any thought to defecting and, furthermore, was happy living and playing in Riga.
Heavy drinking was hardly uncommon among Soviet players of that era, and Khatulev's struggles with alcoholism were especially severe. A full-blown alcoholic by his mid-20s, he rapidly spiraled downward after the deaths of his wife in a car accident and father (fatal heart attack). His on-ice performance and off-ice behavior became increasingly erratic.
In the spring of 1979, he was again banned from the Soviet League. In this case, the suspension was for punching a referee. At some point around that time, Khatulev began abusing -- and, eventually, dealing -- drugs in addition to his out-of-control drinking. He was imprisoned and, in 1981, was given a lifetime ban from Soviet hockey.
Virtually penniless and still addicted to alcohol and drugs, Khatulev bounced around to different menial jobs for the remainder of his life. For a brief time, he worked as a taxi cab driver. Later, he was employed stacking boxes in a warehouse and also spent stints employed as a bouncer, a grave digger and tombstone engraver.
On Oct. 7, 1994, the 39-year-old former hockey star was found dead in a street near the warehouse where he worked. Foul play was suspected but the case was never solved.
2.
Glen Seabrooke (selected 21st overall in 1985): The Flyers' first-round pick in the 1985 Draft, Seabrooke was a high-scoring star for the OHL's Peterborough Petes. He spent a 10-game cup of coffee with the Flyers late in the 1986-87 season, tallying one goal and five points.
In 1987-88, Seabrooke enjoyed a highly productive rookie season in the American Hockey League. He scored 32 goals and 78 points in just 72 games for Hershey. The player also dressed in six games for Mike Keenan's, recording one assist on six games of sparing ice time.
The next season was a major negative turning point in Seabrooke's career. He suffered a serious shoulder injury after crashing into a goal post during a game with Hershey.
Reconstructive surgery after the season proved unsuccessful. to Seabrooke was forced to retire at age 21 with permanent damage to his left shoulder and arm. His NHL career ended after just 19 games (one goal, six assists) over parts of three seasons.
Years later, the former player sued the Flyers team doctors, claiming they mishandled the injury and rushed his rehabilitation in order to hurry him back onto the ice. He ultimately won the case in court. In 1995, the plaintiff was awarded $5.5 million in damages.
3.
Claude Boivin (selected 14th overall in 1988): The Flyers tried hard to move up into the top 10 of the 1988, but were unable to do so. According to the book "Full Spectrum", Flyers scouts coveted forwards Teemu Selänne and Rod Brind'Amour, and the team tried to trade up from the 14th overall spot in order to be able to select one of the two players. General manager Bob Clarke was unable to do so.
As their consolation prize, the Flyers selected Drummondville Voltigeurs power forward Claude Boivin with the 14th overall pick. It seemed liked a promising enough selection at the time. Boivin had a combination of size (6-foot-2, 200-plus pounds), decent skating, a penchant for fighting and physical play plus still-untapped offensive potential that would eventually see him rack up 75 points in 59 games to go along with 300 penalty minutes in his final junior season before graduating to the professional ranks.
As he began his climb toward the NHL, Boivin had a promising rookie year with Hershey, where he posted a respectable 45 points and 159 penalty minutes in 65 games before tallying six points in seven playoff games. But then Boivin suffered the first of two serious knee injuries, and he was never the same player again.
Boivin tore his anterior cruciate ligament and underwent reconstructive knee surgery. Later, as a rookie with the Flyers, he had a setback never regained full mobility upon his return to the ice. When he reached the NHL level, Boivin's subpar skating got exposed along with questionable hockey sense with and without the puck.
Boivin ended up playing in 132 games as a role player with the Flyers and Senators. At the NHL level, he didn't score enough to become a power forward, didn't defend well enough to be a checker and didn't fight well enough to become a feared enforcer. If not for all the knee problems, however, Boivin stood a much better chance of fulfilling his initial promise.
4.
Ryan Sittler (selected seventh overall in 1992): The Flyers did not expect to use the pick with which they selected the player often deemed the biggest Draft bust in franchise history. The previous night, the team had agreed to trade the selection to Quebec as part of a package for the rights to Eric Lindros. On the morning of the Draft, the Nordiques traded Lindros for a second time to the New York Rangers, and the Flyers were compelled to make a selection on the draft floor while the Lindros situation was in limbo. The team's scouts and general manager Russ Farwell hurriedly decided to select Sittler, the son of Hockey Hall of Famer (and ex-Flyer) Darryl Sittler.
The younger Sittler wound up being a marginal minor league player, who never came anywhere close to earning a callup to the NHL. Because this pick proved to be so ill-fated, it has become almost legendary as an example of a team screwing up on the draft floor. Like most legends, though, there are plenty of mitigating factors that get overlooked.
First of all, the Flyers were hardly the only NHL team that thought highly of Sittler. The Hockey News had deemed him "the safest pick in the draft" despite the fact that he had yet to make his collegiate hockey debut at the time of the 1992 draft.
Secondly, the 1992 draft class as a whole was a rather mediocre one. If you look at the remainder of the first round after the Flyers' selection of Sittler, there was a handful of players who went on to have lengthy and solid NHL careers but only one (Sergei Gonchar) who could be deemed an All-Star caliber player.
Finally, injuries played a huge role in Sittler's failure to develop after his draft selection. He sustained three major injuries in successive years, including a serious eye injury suffered in a fight during his first AHL season. The other injuries were to a shoulder and a knee. He eventually developed a substance abuse problem as a result of dependency on painkillers (which, thankfully, he later overcame).
Sittler probably never would have become an NHL star, even if he had stayed healthy. But there's a good chance that he would have proven to be at least a decent role-player if his formative years after the draft had not been repeatedly interrupted by torn ligaments, broken bones and blurred vision. His fate of never playing a game in the NHL was something that few if any hockey people ever would have predicted on draft day 1992.
When arbitrator Larry Bertuzzi ruled that the Flyers had made an enforceable trade for the rights to Eric Lindros, the rights to Chris Simon (the Flyers' second-round pick in 1990) were substituted for the rights to Sittler (who had an injury-plagued season at University of Michigan) at the preference of the Nordiques.
5.
Artem Anisimov (selected 62nd overall in the 1994 Draft): Not to be confused with the current NHL forward of the same name, Anisimov was a promising young defenseman of the mid-1990s whose NHL potential got ruined by injuries.
The defensive partner of Oleg Tverdovsky( the second overall pick of the '94 Draft) on the Russian junior national team, Anisimov was the defensive conscience of a highly effective duo. The Flyers believed Anisimov, who played his club team hockey for Ak Bars Kazan, would become a shutdown defenseman someday in the NHL.
The Hockey News agreed. In THN's 1995 Draft Preview issue system rankings, Anisimov was ranked as a four-star prospect. He was regarded as a more positionally sound version of Darius Kasparaitis.
Unfortunately, in the fifth game of the following season, Anisimov suffered a freakish knee injury in which he suffered full or partial tears of the anterior, posterior and medial ligaments in one of his knees. He missed a full calendar year. When he finally returned, Anisimov was a shell of the player he had been before, losing more than a full stride off his speed. He also became tentative in initiating physical play.
The Flyers never brought him over to North America. By 1998, he was clearly no longer in the organization's long-term plans. Anisimov remained active the Russian Super League (the predecessor to the KHL) until 2008, but never again was more than an average second-pairing defenseman at that level.
Anisimov wasn't the only hard-luck Russian defenseman the Flyers drafted in that era. Vladislav Boulin, a fifth-round pick in 1992, was developing at an encouraging rate in the American Hockey League before a major knee injury set him back as a potential NHL player. Most tragically of all, promising 1995 sixth-round pick Dmitri Tertyshny died in a horrific boating accident in the summer of 1999, shortly after completing his rookie NHL season with the Flyers.
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FIRST RUSSIAN FLYERS
* The Hockey News online has a 25-year
retrospective on the initial NHL influx of players trained in the former USSR, culled from the August 1989 issue of THN. Among those who expressed opposition -- or at least reservations -- about NHL teams signing Soviet players were Flyers general manager Bob Clarke and former Flyers player Rich Sutter (by then with the Vancouver Canucks).
With the exception of Khatulev back in 1975, the first Soviet player the Flyers drafted was highly-touted center Vyacheslav Butsayev with the 109th pick of the 1990 Draft. Butsayev, who never made the hoped-for impact in the NHL that many thought he could have based on his size and physical skills, was not the first Soviet-trained Flyers player.
That honor belonged to the late Andrei Lomakin, a 27-year-old forward whom the Flyers drafted with the 138th overall pick of the 1991 Draft. A former star for Khimik and Dynamo Moscow as well as the Soviet national team, Lomakin immediately joined Philadelphia for the 1991-92 season.
Lomakin, who won Olympic Gold with with the Soviet team at the Calgary Olympics in 1988 and participated in the classic 1987 Canada Cup series, boasted classic Soviet skating and puck-handling skills. He also played a responsible two-way game.
Lomakin joined the team immediately, becoming the first Russian player to dress for the Flyers. The small (5-foot-9, 175 pounder) winger did not provide as much offense as hoped, but was still a reliable player in his own end of the ice.
He scored 14 goals and 30 points in 57 games his first year, adapting relatively fast to the NHL game but quietly struggling with the English language. The next year, he was joined by much younger countrymen Dmitri Yushkevich and Butsayev.
Lomakin scored just 8 goals and 20 points in 1992-93, but displayed a commitment to two-way hockey that impressed Clarke (who had returned to the Flyers organization with a senior vice president title-- the same title he now holds again). Lomakin posted a solid +15 rating for a Flyers team that finished fifth in the Atlantic Division.
Clarke left the Flyers after the 1992-93 season to take the GM job for the expansion Florida Panthers and picked up Lomakin from Philly in the expansion draft, figuring he would do well under coach Roger Neilson's system.
Lomakin had a solid season for the Panthers in 1993-94, scoring 19 goals and 47 points in a second- and third-line role. But he never got going after the 1994-95 lockout (one goal, seven points) as was out of the NHL after the season.
In the summer of 1995, Lomakin accepted a contract offer from Fribourg-Gotteron of the top Swiss league, but shortly into the season transferred to Eisbären Berlin in Germany's DEL.
Lomakin dominated his slower, less skilled opponents in the DEL (21 goals, 35 points in 26 games). In 1995-96, he split the season between Berlin and the Frankfurt Lions, retiring at age 33 after an injury plagued season. He settled permanently in North America after his playing career.
Tragically, Lomakin passed away in a Michigan hospital on Dec. 9, 2006 after a lengthy illness. He was only 42 years old.
Among the first three Russian players to suit up for the Flyers, it was Yushkevich who went to have by far the lengthiest and most successful North American career. "The Russian Tank" played a physical brand of hockey and was well-liked in the dressing room.
Yushkevich had an excellent rookie season with a mediocre Flyers team in 1992-93. He showed some offensive potential (five goals, 32 points), a flair for hitting and stretches of good positional play. The righthanded shooting rookie, a plus-12 on a .500 team that gave up the same number of goals that it allowed (319 apiece) formed a good pairing with the team's top defenseman, Garry Galley.
Unfortunately, Yushkevich really didn't advance much in his next seasons with the club. There were stretches of strong play but equally long stretches where he struggled. Back in Philadelphia for his second tour of duty as general manager, Clarke got a bit frustrated with the defenseman's inconsistent play during the lockout-shortened 1994-95 season.
When Yushevich's agent asked for a hefty raise as a restricted free agent the summer of 1995 season, the Flyers shipped Yushkevich to Toronto for the 1996 first round pick used to take Dainius Zubrus and the 1997 second rounder used for goaltender Jean-Marc Pelletier.
Yushevich came into his own as an NHL defenseman during his time in Toronto, becoming a much more reliable and consistent defender. During the 2002-03 season, the now 31-year-old defenseman returned to Philadelphia as a trade deadline dump-off from Los Angeles.
The veteran provided excellent play and was a warrior in the playoffs, as the Flyers prevailed in a seven-game battle with Toronto before losing in six games to Ottawa. After the season, Yushkevich elected to continue his career at home in Russia, despite an offer from the Flyers to return for another season.
Yushkevich played in Europe until retiring in the summer of 2010. He moved into the coaching ranks and is currently a head coach in the KHL for Yugra Khanty-Mansiysk. Yushkevich has also served as an assistant coach for the Russian national team.
Likewise, Butsayev is now a KHL head coach with HK Sochi. Previously, Butsayev had a stint as an assistant coach and interim head coach for CSKA Moscow -- the former Red Army team for whom Butsayev rose to prominence as a young player prior to coming over to the NHL.
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SATURDAY QUICK HITS
* Last week, Lehigh Valley Phantoms announcer Bob Rotruck tweeted that the team has sold more than 4,000 season tickets for its inaugural season in Allentown's new PPL Center. The arena will have a seating capacity of 8,641. By AHL standards, that is an impressive number of season ticket sales.
* Mid-to-late 1970s defenseman Rick Lapointe would have celebrated his 59th birthday today. Along with defenseman Mike Korney, the Flyers acquired Lapointe from the Detroit Red Wings in a Feb. 1977 trade that sent Terry Murray, Bob Ritchie, Steve Coates and Dave Kelly to Detroit.
Lapointe, who was selected by the Red Wings with the fifth overall pick of the 1975 NHL Draft, had a pretty solid 664-game regular season career in the NHL and was a serviceable player for the Flyers when healthy over parts of three seasons. Although he dressed in 77 games for Philly in 1978-79, his best season for the Flyers came one season earlier.
Limited by injuries to 47 regular season games in 1977-78, Lapointe posted 20 points, 91 penalty minutes and a plus-35 rating at even strength. He dressed in all 12 playoff games the Flyers played that spring before bowing out to Boston in the Stanley Cup semifinals. That season proved to be Fred Shero's final year as the Flyers' coach.
Following the 1978-79 season, which saw the Flyers lose Bernie Parent to a career-ending eye injury, the team was in the market for a veteran goaltender with starting experience. On June 7, 1979, the Flyers traded Lapointe and promising young forward Blake Dunlap to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for goaltender Phil Myre.
Lapointe passed away at age 44 after suffering a fatal heart attack on Oct. 17, 1999.
* On this date in 2005, the Flyers signed free agent defensemen Derian Hatcher (four years, $14 million) and Mike Rathje (five years, $17.5 million) to multi-year contracts. They also brought back unrestricted free agent defenseman Chris Therien (one year, $500,000) for a second tour of duty with the club.
The Rathje signing would prove to be a regrettable one. He played one full season with the team but then had to be shut down in the fall of 2006. Hip surgery, a herniated disk in his back, and a diagnosis of Piriformis Syndrome ended his NHL career after just 97 games with the Flyers. Philadelphia ended up having to carry Rathje on its long-term injured reserve list through the end of the 2009-10 season to get some salary cap maneuverability around his $3.5 million cap hit hit.
Hatcher already had creaky knees by the time he came to the Flyers but managed to grit his way through it until 2008. He dressed in 208 regular season games and 21 playoff tilts for Philly before his physical issues became too severe to play. He retired in 2009 after spending the 2008-09 season on long-term injured reserve. After his playing days ended, Hatcher spent several seasons as a Flyers player development coach.
Therien, now a Flyers broadcaster, was mostly a depth defenseman in his second playing stint with the club. For many years a top-pairing player during a long-running partnership with Eric Desjardins (and previously a second-paring defenseman with Yushkevich and then Kjell Samuelsson as his partners), Therien averaged 10:32 of ice time in 47 games for Ken Hitchcock's 2005-06 team.
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