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***JKortesi81*** · 12-23-2018, 11:48 PM

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“I survived the SMJHL S45 Entry Draft.”

That’s how it feels, like I should get that tattooed on my body somewhere. What a crazy offseason we’ve had in St. Louis. We swept the Colorado Raptors to win the Four Star Cup. Then we had to say goodbye to a decent chunk of our roster, as those talented guys got their much deserved callups. Guys like Nicholas Williams, Nicky Pedersen Jr, Alex Winters, Philipp Winter, and Adam Taylor all got called up. Gordie Maple, a Crow for the last five seasons, finally aged out of juniors.

But all was not lost! We still had a hell of a core, and it looked like we’d have a decent sized draft class to add some reinforcements to! It was good that the class wasn’t too crazy. The turnaround time from winning the cup to the draft is significantly shorter for cup finalists than it is the Halifax Raiders of the world, who can start scouting after 50 games.

But then, a few more prospects signed up.

And then a few more. . .

And then the floodgates opened and before you knew it, we had about 3 days to scout almost 200 prospects!

I can’t speak for how other franchises scout rookies, but I’ve tried to personally message every single prospect every season. In past Reddit drafts, I’ve gone a bit towards starting with a “form letter” and then doing a personal one on one with whoever messages me back. But even then, we were talking 100ish prospects, maybe a little more. 180 is SO MUCH MORE.

I know it sounds like a lot, but you never quite understand just how much it is until you’re trying to message everyone. It felt excessive, but it was because of that tactic that I got to have some great conversations with some rookies.

Even with a decent amount of rookies being seemingly inactive before the draft, there was still a very solid 110 or so prospects that I had to figure out if they were good players with a drive to be the best. And top of that, how well they’d fit in with the Scarecrows.

I had a lot of good conversations with a lot of players that are going to be fantastic SHLers. And sadly, even with 9 picks, I still couldn’t get everyone I wanted. But, the most important thing for me now was simply: Who was I going to take at Pick 8?

In a draft this big, especially since we didn’t have a 2nd rounder, I wanted to take someone in the first round that was a bit of a “known” quantity. Someone that is attached to a former player’s hockey school or has them as an agent. Things like that. Historically, they’re more of a “sure thing”. But in the SMJHL, I’ve learned that anyone can bust out of the league, be it a first round pick or a 7th round pick.

In looking at my draft sheet, and talking to my GM partner in crime Ryan, we had a few people on our top list: Nikolai Evans, Borromini Cannellini, Tyler Tougard, Karl Scholz, Olivier Cloutier, and Kalvins Zvenjneks. KZ isn’t a player who has someone helping him out like the rest (see: first gen), but he really impressed Ryan. The hope was one of them would fall, but it wasn’t looking like that would happen at all. Personally, I wanted Evans from the get go. I know his dad, and we’re pretty good friends, even though he DID defect to Russia. But that’s okay. Its old news now between us.

The first thing I did was figure I needed to trade up. With the sheer amount of prospects, I figured I could move up a little bit and just flip picks later in the draft or something. I went and contacted my friend Zoone, who runs Kelowna now. They’re picking 2nd in the draft and I figured he’d be as good as any person to start with.

“We’re taking Evans.” Was his immediate reply. Well, there goes that. He wasn’t interested in trading down, for sure. Of course, at the time, it was universally assumed that Cannellini would be going first overall. He has strong hockey bloodlines and he’s as surefire of a pick as any.

And then, a wrench was thrown into the equation. The league decided last minute that they were adding TWO NEW EXPANSION TEAMS. We just had too many incoming players, and not enough places for them to play. At first, I was livid. I didn’t want my picks to get knocked down a few pegs in each round. The plan we were forming in short order was already blown to bits. I didn’t like that there was going to be an expansion draft and we’d have to lose a player. Our team was one of the better rosters, and I’d be forced to expose a player that was going to be a decently key piece to defending the cup. I hate the idea of losing one of my guys, so I fought hard to not have that become reality. But in the end, I remembered that the main point of the SMJHL is developing players, not focusing on winning cups.

Needless to say, I had to leave Roger Baston and Jerry Larry unprotected. I knew I’d lose one of them, and sadly Baston was selected in the Expansion Draft. I was sorry to lose him for sure. He’s a fantastic center. It’s a shame, but luckily there’s a lot of talent in the draft to replace him.

Back to trying to trade up, I found out most teams had similar tastes as we did for who they liked. I figured I would have to try to get up into the Top 6 no matter what. I asked every team ahead of us if they’d move down, and only Halifax at pick 3 was looking to move. Then they flipped to pick 4. Halifax and I talked about a price for pick 4 for a bit.

And then, another wrench was thrown into the equation.

Anastasia O’Koivu decided at the last second that she was going to appear and throw her name into the draft prospect pool. This really sent shockwaves through the league. This was good for me, because it added a player to our “top” list. But of course, she was added to everyone’s list.

Draft day came, and all of a sudden everything we thought we knew was flipped upside down. Detroit was talking to us about flipping pick 6 and pick 8. Then they traded up to pick 4, scared that their target was going to Vancouver. I’ve learned that you can’t trust anyone on the Whalers when it comes down to this, so it made sense for Detroit to go get their guy.

The whispers that come with every draft were loud and clear: We had 7 players we really wanted at pick 8, and they were all going in the Top 7. Halifax was still looking to trade down from pick 6, so I called King and we finally made a deal. We traded down in the later rounds to move up two spots. It wasn’t a bad call, and now we sat pretty nicely at pick 6. Our choice was essentially going to be made for us. It was around this point that I started chatting with Tyler Tougard a lot more. He really seemed like he wanted to come here, so I was leaning towards him. But I had no idea who was really going to go where in this draft.

Case in point: Not too long before the draft, word leaked out that the “sure thing” first overall pick, Cannellini, was looking to only play 1-2 season in the junior leagues. The average star plays in the J for 3 seasons usually. Some stay a bit longer, because juniors has this sense of unity and togetherness that keeps players wanting that one last season with their team chasing the cup as a top player than playing 3rd line or 3rd pair minutes.

With that news, the whispers picked up that Evans was going to go first overall. And that’s still a very good choice. Montreal wasn’t going to get that pick wrong no matter who they took.

And I guess that leads to the draft. Like I said, Evans went first overall, so Kelowna still went defense and took Scholz. Cloutier joined the Armada. And then KZ went to Detroit at 4. Vancouver traded down to 7, flipping with Colorado, who’s been hungry for a defender themselves. They took O’Koivu. That gave me the option of the consensus first pick for 97% of the offseason, or Tougard. By this time I was really enjoying the thought of Tougard getting passes from Hoover, and I won’t lie, a player only wanting to stay 1-2 seasons really isn’t appealing to me. So I took Tougard, and I’m happy about it. Cannellini ended up going to Vancouver. Quite the interesting times so far.

The worst part of this draft was not having the second rounder, only because we had to wait so long before we picked again, at pick 27. Players were going off the board left and right, but as we approached our pick, I realized one of my favorite players that I talked to in the draft process was sitting right there. I knew I was taking him if he was on the board, and he was!

Pick 27 – Michael Fox, RW – Fox is a playmaking winger with some nice skating ability. He’s already worked on his defensive skills. This guy is everything I imagined. He’s active, he’s training hard, and I’m telling you he’s going to challenge for rookie of the year. We nailed this pick.

Our next pick was at 33, so we didn’t have to wait too long this time. The one thing we sorely lacked was an offensive minded defenseman who has a cannon from the point. As a result, we took just that.

Pick 33 – Basil Magnicotta, D – He comes from S39 Four Star Cup winner Jon Tellofsen’s hockey school for kids that can’t read good. He has a cannon for a shot and looks to be rocking our Power Play sooner than later.

I could keep explaining the ins and out, but that’ll get boring. Let me get to the picks and why we took them.

Pick 57 – Aleksi Leskinen, C – I won’t lie, I didn’t speak with Aleksi enough before the draft, but he was highly touted in our draft room. We needed a center, and taking one with a nice lineage who can distribute the puck is perfect for us.

Pick 62 – Fork Spoon, RW – People have given some crap to us about this pick, but Fork Spoon is an awesome dude. He’s going to develop into a nice scorer in this league, once he learns a bit more defense. He’s willing and able to do this. We’ll coach him into using his full potential.

Pick 67 – Billy Sorokin, G – Aleister Cain won’t be around forever. A lot of the goalies we liked were off the board, so with our second 7th rounder we drafted his replacement. There was some visa issues after the draft, so it seemed like he wasn’t around, but now we’ve worked that out and he’s going to be a great player for us. He’s already been a great person to have around the LR.

Pick 77 – Blaze Zukal, C – I had a lot of good conversations with Blaze leading up to the draft, and I couldn’t believe he was still there when we were picking. A scoring center that will hopefully develop some chemistry with Fox, Zukal will look to be a prime source of secondary scoring in his first season in St. Louis.

Pick 87 – Gordie Boomhover, LW – Y’all fucked up. 87th overall has found us some really good players in the past. Okay, it just got us Aleister Cain, but he’s been a top goaltender for a few seasons now. And we struck oil again. We were talking about Gordie as our next pick in the voice chat, so no, we didn’t draft him because Kimmy said something in the GM chat. We actually wanted to take him, and nobody clicked that link, as we assumed it would like sign us out of the website or something stupid. I never really pay attention to the GM chat itself during the draft. As I was looking over Boomhover, I realized that he was royalty from my discord chats. NEVER PUT THE TWO TOGETHER UNTIL THAT MOMENT. I assumed Royalty was long gone because he was so awesome. We fucking RAN to the podium for this pick. We got the steal of the draft right here. In S30, the Crows drafted, with pick 92, Ronnie Westbrook. That started the #GooneyWent92 Meme Tag. #GordieWent87 is going to take that spot in a few seasons.

Pick 97 – Jeff Bazinet, D – Here’s another awesome steal! I know people stayed away from The Baz because he was an enforcer. And usually, I would too. But after talking with Jeff predraft, I realized he wanted to change his fighting ways and be a more well rounded player. And that’s what he’s dedicated his game to being! Baz has already improved leaps and bounds this offseason, and anyone who’s expecting to come watch him smash faces constantly is going to be disappointed. He’ll still be tough as nails, but he’s not going to spend more time in the penalty box than on the ice this season. Look out for the The Baz. He’s going to be another star.

All in all, so far all of the rookies we got are in our locker room and are making it a better place. This draft was incredibly crazy to be a part of. I don’t think we’ll ever have another one like it. It had the perfect mix of new players, returning players, two expansion teams getting dropped on us last second, and so many other assorted things. It was so much fun, even if it caused King to burn out and quit the league and gave me an aneurism or two. I’m extremely excited to see how far this team can go. If they keep up the good attitudes and the updating, we should be considered the favorites to raise the Four Star cup once again.

At least, I hope so.

gordieboom · 12-24-2018, 06:01 AM

@JKortesi81 Nice read. Very cool to get an insight look in a GM's head and what happens behind the scenes.

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