ALL ABOARD THE PLAYER CAROUSEL
For some NHLers, expansion pick offered a fresh start, helped springboard careers
Scott Walker can still feel it, the “nervous excitement” inside what is currently known as Bridgestone Arena but back in 1998 was plainly Nashville Arena.
Crammed into a restaurant space, the Nashville Predators’ original members — the franchise’s first players, coaches and managers — congregated for a meet-and-greet at the to-bechristened rink.
Some scanned the room with an inquisitive eye. Others exchanged pleasantries. Walker remembers running his internal calculator, thinking, “OK, how do I fit in here?”
“We’re in this together and we’ll figure it out,” someone from the team’s brass, probably general manager David Poile, said at some point, according to Andrew Brunette.
Poile had snagged Walker, Brunette and 24 others, including Bob Boughner, in the 1998 NHL expansion draft, filling out the bulk of Nashville’s Season 1 lineup. The key was in the ignition of a brand-new car, the NHL’s 27th team.
“It was just a really unique experience being an original Nashville Predator,” Boughner says of the 2017 Stanley Cup finalists. “To this day, that is something that people talk about.”
Two decades after the NHL announced it would grow to 30 from 26 teams, giving the thumbs-up to four U.S. cities in 1997, the league is doing it all over again with the Vegas Golden Knights.
Those four millennial expansion clubs — the Predators of 1998, the Atlanta Thrashers of 1999, and the Columbus Blue Jackets/ Minnesota Wild of 2000 — have four distinctive startup tales.
The Golden Knights are working on their own. On Wednesday, the 2017 expansion draft will lay the foundation for Sin City’s opening-night roster.
While the people, circumstances and environments are different, there are common human emotions associated with the expansion process, especially at the player level.
A sense of uncertainty, a longing for opportunity and a fear of the unknown are three that seem to zap every player involved. The world is their oyster, sure, but that world can be unpredictable.
Expansion can take you to heaven or hell. And, as Brunette notes, “Everybody has a story.”
The four-pack of expansion drafts near the turn of the century followed the same exposure guidelines. Teams were required to protect 12 or 15 players — one goalie, five defencemen and nine forwards, or two goalies, three defencemen and seven forwards — in a league operating in a salary cap-free world.
It had a different feel than the Vegas draft, where protected lists max out at 11 players and the quality of an average player drafted presumably will be higher.
Misfits were in and out of those organizations in a blink of an eye. Jody Hull, plucked from the Philadelphia Flyers by the Thrashers in 1999, is a prime example.
Hull’s stay in Atlanta lasted mere weeks. Atlanta “decided to go in a different direction” following training camp, despite telling the 30-year-old winger to put down roots locally.
“We were settled. We had moved into a house,” says Hull, who had a young family of four back then. The team placed him on waivers prior to the regular season. He went unclaimed and played one game for the Thrashers’ IHL affiliate in Orlando before the Flyers reacquired his rights and the family moved back to Philadelphia.
“There was some disappointment when they told me their plans, obviously,” says Hull, nowadays running the bench for the OHL’s Peterborough Petes. “Like every guy, you hunker down and you roll with the punches and see where it takes you.”
Hull, who helped roll out two other expansion teams, the 199293 Ottawa Senators and 1993-94 Florida Panthers, harbours no hard feelings toward the Thrashers. The initial experience was unique: “It’s kind of like those players who go through the free agent thing on July 1. You’re sitting there and hoping you get the phone call, hoping a phone call comes your way.”
Former journeyman goalie Jamie McLennan can relate to the less-than-ideal situation expansion presents.
Fresh off a President’s Trophywinning season in which he and starter Roman Turek backstopped the St. Louis Blues to 51 wins, the current TSN analyst was one of seven netminders chosen in the 2000 expansion draft.
“I knew I was going from a first-place team to potentially a last-place team,” says McLennan, who went to the Minnesota Wild. “It was excitement but a little bit of nerves. Because you’re likely given an expanded role but certainly aren’t going to have the (same team) success.”
McLennan liked the Twin Cities. The area reminded him of Edmonton, his hometown. “Cold in the winters, nice in the summers,” he says. “Down-to-earth people.”
A career backup, McLennan’s time with the Wild lasted just two seasons, one with the big club and the other in the AHL. He continued to shuffle around the league, suiting up for the Calgary Flames (twice), the New York Rangers and the Florida Panthers before retiring after the 2006-07 season.
“That’s the business,” he says of the twists and turns.
For Walker, Brunette and Boughner, the Predators came knocking at an opportune time.
Walker, who had three NHL seasons on his resume, craved a more impactful role within the Vancouver Canucks’ forward group, or elsewhere. A clean slate? No hierarchy? Walker, now co-owner of the OHL’s Guelph Storm and a part-time development coach for the Canucks, did not mind taking a seat on the player carousel.
Brunette, a winger with offensive upside, felt stuck in Washington, splitting his first five years of pro hockey between the ECHL, AHL and the Capitals. Ditto for Boughner, then a defenceman for the Buffalo Sabres.
“Darcy Regier was the GM at the time,” says Boughner, recently named head coach of the Florida Panthers. “He pulled me aside and said, ‘Listen, with the expansion draft we have to expose two people and you’re going to be one of them.’ I was excited at that time. I thought, if I get the chance to be drafted in the expansion draft I’ll be able to expand my role a little bit. And I did.”
Culturally, the late 1990s was less reliant on digital technology, especially for day-to-day communication and news consumption. There were no Twitter leaks, no CapFriendly. com expansion draft tool. Players weren’t left in the dark, by any means, but the Golden Knights draft is getting next-level buzz.
“I don’t even think I had a cellphone. I don’t even know,” Brunette says when asked how he found out he’d been drafted by Nashville 18 years ago. “I remember I was playing golf and I think I might have made the turn (and was taking a breather). Either that or I had just gotten off the course. Something like that.”
The 1998 draft acted as a springboard for Brunette, promoted to assistant GM of the Wild on June 1. He played a career-high 77 games for the Predators in their inaugural season before jetting for the Thrashers in free agency.
Defenceman Steve Staios, scooped up in the 1999 expansion draft via Vancouver, became Brunette’s teammate for two seasons. Both left town for greener pastures.
Brunette is one of the most successful players ever to go through an expansion draft, finishing with 733 points in 1,110 NHL career games for six teams. Staios did all right for himself, too, becoming a core member of the early-2000s Edmonton Oilers.
“I remember walking around with a hard hat,” Staios says of his first visit to Atlanta’s Philips Arena. “You’re thinking, ‘Oh, wow, this is really new and fresh.’
“When you look back, which I don’t do often, you realize certain things happen for a reason. It was an opportunity in Atlanta. It was different,” adds Staios, now general manager of the OHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs.
“Who knows where my career would have gone if I didn’t head there. You really can’t go back and try to predict what might have happened.”
Everybody has a story, right?