Draft day memories

June 25, 2009   ·   Hasan   ·   Jump to comments

The NHL Draft may not be as hyped as the NFL or NBA Drafts and in general most of us don’t know the players as well to start with (only the diehards including a certain blogger here would be familiar with anyone else in this year’s draft besides John Tavares and Victor Hedman).  Nonetheless, watching the first round – especially if you’re at a draft party – is always fun.

2003 is probably the first draft that I really remember - at least on TV, and that was memorable for Pierre McGuire’s meltdown about how Zach Parise was being passed up time and again.  Lo and behold the Devils trade up to take him and Pierre couldn’t kiss our fanny enough after that.  I just remember thinking, geez we just win a Stanley Cup and we have management bold enough to go and get this kid who’ll probably become a good player on top of it (even I knew enough hockey to know who J.P was).  The whole thing was kinda laughable – in a good way.  And what do ya know, Pierre was more right to go off the way he did than even I could have hoped for.

Next year was the first time I went to a draft party, and there was a big cloud over it in that 2004’s draft would be the last thing hockey-related many of us would see for another year with the lockout looming.  We drafted Travis Zajac 20th which turned out to be another good pick – at the time all I knew was he was going to North Dakota, which has generally been a fine hockey school.

If 2004 had dark clouds on the horizon, 2005’s draft represented rays of sunshine, for the lockout which had decimated an entire season was finally coming to an end, and this draft was the first hockey event of the new era.  As usual, the Devils drafted in the 20s (taking Nicklas Bergfors at 20), a pick which the jury’s still out on but he may well get his chance this year with the big club.  I remember this draft party more for how it was run at the Meadowlands than the actual selection of Bergfors.  First off, the Devils did a very good thing in the light of the recent lockout and gave all attendees a voucher for two tickets to a particular game (either against the Panthers or Lightning, it was an option).  There were also vouchers for free hot dogs and soda during the draft party, but I heard that backfired when the hot dogs ran out and so did the ice for the soda.

My lasting memory of the 2006 Draft Party (the last at the Meadowlands) was the chaos surrounding the Devils’ pick.  We traded down twice, finally coming up with the last pick of the first round.  Just before we were set to draft though, poof the telecast went off the air.  VERSUS just had to go to its scheduled bull riding or whatever programming they were showing and cut out before the Devils’ pick.  People up front were literally working the phones to find out who the Devils picked (turned out to be defenseman Matthew Corrente, who could also wind up with the big club this year).  Man, that was amusing.

Somewhat conveniently the Devils had no first round pick in 2007 after the team officially moved out of the Meadowlands but before they could move into the Rock so there was no draft party.  Last year’s draft party - which was the first at the Rock – the team also did a very good job with.  As per usual there were several players there to sign autographs including recent HOF’er Scott Stevens.  I chanced getting there early and waiting on the Stevens line for him to sign my Stevens HOF program, and wound up being one of the very last ones to get a signature before he had to cut out for an interview.  I didn’t say much to him, just congratulated him on the HOF and he said thanks.  After that I went downstairs and the Devils were offering tours of the Rock, areas most STH’s don’t usually get to see like the media room and Platinum Lounge.  I was pretty well exhausted after all that standing and moving around so I just sat back after that and waited for our pick (Mattias Tedenby, another smallish Euro winger).  Oh, one other thing last year I really liked, the Devils gave out free copies of the Hockey News draft preview.

This year my main goal is just to get a couple of new Stanley Cup t-shirts as two or three of the ones I have are pretty worn, see people I know, boo Calgary when their pick comes up and enjoy the coverage.  It will be nice to go back to the Rock for the first time in two months and get a little more of the taste of Game 7 out of my mouth.  Maybe other sports have better draft coverage and more familiar players and I can’t speak for NBA draft parties since I’ve never been to one but it does seem like there’s something unique about how much the NHL involves its fans in this aspect of their team.  Even statheads would be bored by the monstrosity that is the MLB draft and I don’t remember ever hearing about a football draft party - not that the Jets and Giants really need one since the draft is always in New York anyway.

And just think, less than a week after the draft comes the game of musical chairs called NHL Free Agency.  That day’s had more bad memories than good for Devils fans, but that’s another story for another day.