(Unsplash/Chris Liverani)

By Kevin Watson

round 1 goes friday

Local retired NHLers discuss draft ‘like no other’

Jul 22, 2021 | 12:00 PM

The 2020 NHL Draft was a strange one, but it’s safe to say the 2021 NHL Draft is going to be a whole new kettle of fish.

When COVID shut down the world in 2020, the amateur hockey season was nearing an end, so NHL scouting staffs had a pretty good handle on the upcoming draft’s prospects.

Former Red Deer Rebel captain Colin Fraser, who is preparing for his third NHL draft as a scout for the Chicago Blackhawks, where he won one of three Stanley Cups, became accustomed to watching copious amounts of video at his home in Sylvan Lake instead of being in junior hockey arenas during fall 2020 and early 2021.

“The European teams were playing, but then they were getting shut down. There were a lot of hiccups along the way, so to say we were watching a ton of video, I’d say it wasn’t all day, every day, but yes everything was video-based. We would have projects—this week you’re watching the Swedish League, the next you’re watching the Finnish League, but then they’d get shut down. The next week you’re watching the Russian league. The USHL played the whole way so you could watch those teams quite a bit.”

Another former Rebel captain, Jesse Wallin, who won one of his two Cups with Detroit, is preparing for his second draft as the Red Wings’ Chief Amateur scout. He’s been exceptionally busy as the Wings have the 6^th and 22^nd picks in the first round and another two picks in rounds two through six. He watched plenty of video, but also made three trips to the U.S. to see live game action.

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“It was very different in the sense that a lot of these kids you’ve only seen online, so it’s a little bit different basing a comparison. I think we’ve done the best we can in terms of watching them on video and we’ve got different views at different points of the season, so the process hasn’t really changed for us other than just the way we’ve been able to watch these players.”

Because Fraser is based in the west, he watches the WHL a lot, and with a compressed season of 23 games over roughly two months, it’s made the job of getting a good read on prospects even harder.

”With 17-year-old kids, some of them came out like gangbusters and had a really good start, but some of them had a slow start. Over a full season you would watch them for 68 games plus playoffs, so you would see the progression either positive or negative; it can go both ways.”

Wallin, who scouted for St. Louis for six years and won a Cup with them, says this year was more challenging because they couldn’t get to know players as well as usual.

“In a perfect world, you identify these kids early and you watch them over a period of time. A lot of them we know who they are as under-agers, so you have an idea of what type of player they are because you’ve seen them the previous season and now you’re digging into them more in their draft year. You evaluate them over the course of time and compile that altogether and make your decisions, where we just don’t have the same runway with the kids this year. “

Also a former Rebel, Bryce Thoma is helping Wallin identify future players for Detroit.

The Hawks. meanwhile, have the 11^th overall pick in the first round and they would like nothing more than to get a player that works as hard as former Rebel Brandon Hagel. The rookie scored nine goals and 24 points in 52 games for Chicago last season, then represented his country for the first time en route to a gold medal at the IIHF World Hockey Championship.

Hagel signed with Chicago as a 20-year-old free agent during Fraser’s first year as a scout. Fraser says it’s a team effort when finding a diamond in the rough and such a pleasure to see a guy that works that hard get rewarded for it.

“Hags is a good example of a player that has a relentless, no quit attitude. A big reason why the Blackhawks liked him was because of his work ethic and his bite and his motor. He put up over 100 points as a 20 year-old and all we talked about was how hard he worked,” says Fraser.

“Now as an NHLer, he’s a really good example for young hockey players on how to be successful without scoring 75 goals and 150 points. He starts in the minors, he starts on the fourth, third or second line, and he’s on the first powerplay, but he’s a guy that’s earned it all.”

The first round of the 2021 NHL Draft is on July 23.