When Atticus Hale declared for the SMJHL draft, I feel like there weren’t a lot of people that truly believed in him. Despite his background and work ethic, outside of those close to him, there seemed to be questions about his abilities translating to the higher levels. In hindsight, I don’t know why. Hale still viewed himself as a first round pick, but as the first round of the S60 SMJHL draft came and went, it wasn’t until pick number 14 that he would hear his name called by the Carolina Kraken. Though sve7en has always been a big cheerleader for Atticus and would be the one to ultimately make the call on draft day, it was actually then co-GM Mazatt’s recruitment interview that did the convincing. Over the course of Atticus Hale’s SMJHL career, fellow S60 draftee and teammate Patya Perevalov (natedoeshockey) would become one of his closest friends and their friendly rivalry would be one of the driving forces behind the rise of Hale’s stock leading up to the SHL draft.

During SHL recruitment season, Atticus Hale would get a lot of attention from all of the teams with high first round draft picks. However, it was the New Orleans Specters, who held the second overall pick, and GMs JKortesi81 and python who were in constant contact with Atticus. Real talk - I have to give credit to JKortesi81 here because he and the New Orleans Specters were coming off a run of several seasons in a row in which high draft picks did not pan out. He could have easily decided to pass on the first gen user/player with only a single season under his belt to draft a known commodity and, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have blamed him one bit. Instead, he would draft Atticus Hale with the second overall pick in the S61 SHL draft.

Though I’ve met a lot of awesome people during my 3+ years here, it’s those mentioned here that both saw Atticus Hale’s potential and are some of the biggest reasons I’m still here.

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