Development Faces New Challenges in NHL

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The New York Sun

It’s often said that the key to success in the National Hockey League is to build through the draft. While that may be true from an organizational standpoint, the axiom hardly applies where general managers are concerned. In a world where players are drafted at age 17 or 18 — and often take four to five years to develop — even the GMs who do the savviest job at the draft board probably won’t be around to enjoy the fruits of their labor, not unless their teams also win in the present.

In the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, because the players drafted are expected to contribute immediately — the first-round selections in particular — the draft can deliver quick returns for embattled GMs. Over the course of a three-year period, an NFL GM can pick up 15–20 starters through the draft, while an NBA team’s starting lineup can be completely renovated in mere months (see the 2007–08 Boston Celtics).

Baseball’s drafting process is more similar to the National Hockey League’s, with players also taking between four and five years (or longer) to develop into major leaguers. But baseball players are immersed into a minor league system in which their development is monitored by the organization. They are coached with the big club’s interests at heart, the concerns of the minor league teams for which they play at most an afterthought.

Meanwhile, at any given time, an NHL team might have its top 30 prospects playing for as many as 30 different teams, ranging from Canadian junior teams, to NCAA teams, to European teams, to their minor league affiliates (AHL or ECHL). Forced to leave the players’ development in the hands of others often yields frustrating results — a key reason the Islanders have extracted Kyle Okposo from the Minnesota Golden Gophers. A burly power forward with an excellent scoring touch, Okposo — drafted as a winger — was being utilized at center this season for the first time, a change that did not sit well with Islanders GM Garth Snow. In the aftermath of Okposo’s decision to turn pro, a war of words erupted in the press between Snow and the Minnesota head coach, Don Lucia.

“While I’m disappointed Kyle is leaving at this point of the season, his dream has been to play pro hockey,” Lucia said in the press release announcing Okposo’s decision. “It is unfortunate that the Islanders put him in a very difficult position.”

“Quite frankly, we weren’t happy with the program there,” Snow countered in an interview with the Star Tribune (of the Twin Cities). “We entrusted the coach there to turn him into a better hockey player, and it wasn’t happening. We feel more comfortable in him developing right under our watch.”

Snow has come under fire in the college hockey community for his comments. But his responsibility is to the Islanders, not to Lucia or the University of Minnesota. By taking control of Okposo’s development — rather than waiting on the sidelines — Snow is eliminating the possibility that Lucia could be blamed if Okposo fails to reach his enormous potential, instead placing that responsibility squarely on the Islanders’ organization.

Because teams typically have so little control over their prospects’ development, even the first round of the NHL draft is a complete crapshoot. Fewer than half of NHL first-round picks develop into impact players. For example, between 1992 and 2002, only 86 of the 299 players drafted (29%) emerged as front-line players (top-six forwards, top-four defensemen, or starting goaltenders). There was, however, an incredible exception. An astonishing 24 of the 30 players drafted in 2003 (80%) have already emerged as impact NHLers, in what will quite likely go down as the greatest draft in NHL history.

That year, the New Jersey Devils traded up from the 22nd to the 17th selection in order to draft Zach Parise, today their most consistent scoring threat. Parise was coveted for his enviable combination of speed, skill, and character, but his lack of size (5-feet-11-inches, 186 pounds) was the primary reason the Rangers passed on him.

With the 12th overall pick, the Rangers instead chose Hugh Jessiman. At 6-feet-6-inches and 231 pounds, Jessiman boasts the size Parise lacks, and the fact that he grew up a Rangers fan was an influence on the Blueshirts’ brass. But Jessiman has bounced between the AHL Hartford Wolf Pack and the ECHL’s Charlotte Checkers for the past three seasons, and is unlikely to develop into any more than a marginal fourth-liner.

That said, because the Blueshirts have done such a fine job in the later rounds — most notably in their selection of Henrik Lundqvist with the 205th overall pick in the 2000 draft — their egregiously bad decision in 2003 has been nicely mitigated.

Ironically, Glen Sather was named the Rangers’ GM mere weeks before Lundqvist was drafted, and it was a stroke of good fortune that one of his first official moves — one in which he probably played no role, given the lack of time he had to influence the Rangers’ draft strategy — will turn out to be the most critical of his tenure at the team’s helm.

Mr. Greenstein is the editor in chief of InsideHockey.com.


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