Fitness testing serves purpose when NHL evaluators see teens
TORONTO — They are shouting at him now, as JonathanIsmael Diaby’s feet feverishly pump the stationary bike’s pedals and he painfully works his way up the imaginary mountain during the Wingate anaerobic test. His body is telling him to quit, to stop this torture. But the voices around him will not allow it.
“Faster! Go! Go! Go! Go? Go! Push! Push! Push! Drivvvvvvvvve!”
Finally, it is over and Diaby collapses his arms on the bike’s handles and sucks in as much air as he can hold, all the while stealing glances at the grey garbage bins next to him.
Those bins are technically not part of the fitness test. But scouts and general managers will tell you that they are almost as important as any of the more than 10 stations that the top-100 draft-eligible teenagers will go through during the NHL Scouting Combine.
“If you throw up, it’s because you gave 100 per cent,” said the 18-year-old Diaby, a defenceman from Blainville, Que.
Yes, puking can help a prospect.
Former Toronto Maple Leafs general manager John Ferguson Jr. used to say that he did not know what any of the test results actually meant in regards to evaluating a future NHLer. But he figured it was a good sign if a kid’s face was red and was grunting loudly while on a bike. It meant that they were pushing themselves to the max.
These fitness tests, which include everything from a standing long jump to tossing a medicine ball while seated on the ground, are designed to find a player’s limit. Work hard enough and you should feel sick.
Diaby did not throw up — at least not in public. But the noises emitting from the curtained-off area behind the test area indicated that several other draft prospects were happily losing their lunch for the opportunity to be selected in the June 30 NHL Entry Draft in Newark, N.J.
Of course, how fast you can pedal is a funny way of deciding who will go first overall. Especially since the topthree prospects — defenceman Seth Jones, centre Nathan MacKinnon and winger Jonathan Drouin — all skipped the fitness portion of the combine because they were either too banged up or fatigued from playing in the Memorial Cup final last weekend.
“[Ilya] Kovalchuk walked off the bike two seconds after he got on and he still went first overall,” said Florida Panthers GM Dale Tallon. “Riding the bike and bench-pressing, to me, are not vital as far as their hockey careers. The puck doesn’t weigh that much.”
So why even bother? Why are teenage prospects— whose bodies are still developing — showing how strong they are today when many of them will not be in the NHL for three or four years? Why is the bench press being used instead of a skating drill?
Say what you will about the importance the NFL draft combine places on the 40-yard dash. At least it is an indicator of a player’s speed.
“Would an on-ice component make a difference in a team drafting a player?” asked Dan Marr, the director of Central Scouting. “It seems like we should do more sport-specific tests. But when you look at all the details there, you have to determine if the value is there.”
In other words, teams already know what a player can and cannot do when they are on the ice. The point of the five-day combine, which also included player interviews and medical testing, is to fill in the rest of the blanks that cannot be seen during a hockey game.
“Some of them just want to see how a kid competes when he’s being pushed,” said Marr. “If there are some limitations to the players, they want to know.”