Building a great team: Good scouting or blind luck?

Sometimes you have to rely on your instincts, former GM Maclean says

If you want to win the Stanley Cup, you have to do a good job at the National Hockey League draft. That’s the word from Doug MacLean, a former NHL coach and general manager who now dispenses his wit and wisdom as an analyst for Rogers Sportsnet.

“If you look at the teams which have won the Stanley Cup in recent years, you’ll notice that the one thing they have in common is that the core of the team has been assembled through the draft,” MacLean said.

“Every successful team has 10 or 11 players that were drafted and developed within the organization,” he added.

“Look at this year’s finalists and you see Boston has players like Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, Milan Lucic and David Krejci, while Chicago has Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith and Corey Crawford.

“There was a time when you could go out and spend money on free agents and build a team that way, but you can’t do that any longer. The rules regarding free agency are more restrictive and the salary cap limits what teams have to spend. And the pool of available free agents is smaller because teams recognize the value of the young players they have drafted and developed and are locking them up with long-term contracts.”

MacLean said drafting well has become critical for a team’s success and points to the resurgence of the Canadiens over the past season.

“You see two young players like Brendan Gallagher and Alex Galchenyuk come in and make an immediate impact, and you have a great young defenceman like P.K. Subban developing into a star, and the future looks bright in Montreal,” MacLean said.

While teams might have specific needs, MacLean said the tried-andtrue rule of thumb is to go for the best available player.

“All other things being equal, you look at talent and try to project that player’s development,” he said.

“Some people thought Edmonton should have picked Ryan Murray in the first round (last year) because the Oilers already had a number of good young forwards and needed help on defence,” MacLean added. “But Edmonton went with (Nail) Yakupov with the first-overall pick and he had a good season, and we can’t evaluate the Murray pick yet because he hasn’t played in the NHL.”

Yakupov finished the season as the top rookie goal-scorer in the NHL with 17 and tied Florida’s Jonathan Huberdeau for the most points with 31.

Murray, who was drafted second overall by Columbus, had to delay his NHL debut after suffering a shoulder injury while playing for the junior Everett Silvertips during the lockout and subsequently undergoing season-ending surgery.

“You have a similar situation this year,” MacLean said. “I had one scout tell me he has (Nathan) Mackinnon ranked No. 1 with (Jonathan) Drouin No. 2 and Seth Jones No. 3. It will be interesting to see what Colorado does with the first pick. They could use some offence, but Jones is a good player and there’s that Colorado connection.”

Jones, who is ranked No. 1 by NHL Central Scouting and several other outlets, was introduced to the sport when his father, former Toronto Raptor Popeye Jones, was playing for the Denver Nuggets.

MacLean noted that the NHL draft is different from the NBA or NFL draft because the players are younger and may be three or four years away from making an impact.

“You have players getting drafted in the NBA or the NFL and starting right away,” MacLean said. “You only have a handful of players who can do that in the NHL.”

When MacLean was GM of the Columbus Blue Jackets, he drafted Rick Nash first overall in 2002.

“He was 6-foot-4 and 180 pounds and today he’s 220 pounds,” MacLean said of Nash, who had 17 goals as a rookie and the following year led the NHL with 41.

Talent prompted MacLean to select Nikolai Zherdev over Thomas Vanek fourth overall in 2003 and the former GM will be the first to admit Zherdev never reached his potential. In fact, Zherdev’s most memorable game with Columbus had a negative effect on the team’s 2004 draft.

“We were playing on the road late in the season and we won because Nash and Zherdev played really good games,” MacLean recalled. “But as a result of that win, we dropped from fourth to eighth in the draft. Washington was in the fourth spot, but they won the lottery and they picked up Alexander Ovechkin and we got Alexandre Picard.

“If we had lost that game, I might still have a job.”

A year later, MacLean selected Gilbert Brule with the sixth overall pick, right after the Canadiens took Carey Price. Over three seasons with Columbus, Brule scored 12 goals in 146 games.

“I remember Pierre McGuire criticized the Canadiens for picking Price over Brule and years later he’s talking about what a bad pick I made,” MacLean said.

“I remember going to the draft with (director of amateur scouting) Don Boyd and we were trying to decide whether to take Brule or Anze Kopitar, who ended up going to Los Angeles at No. 11.”

While there are few misses among the first five picks in any draft, there are always surprises later, which raises the question: Is it good scouting or blind luck?

“Sometimes you have to rely on instinct or your contacts,” MacLean said. “We had good contacts with the Hunters in London after drafting Rick Nash and that helped us when we drafted Steve Mason and Marc Methot. Mason was the backup in London in his draft year and didn’t play much, and Rick Wamsley went to see him in practice and we drafted him in the third round (in 2006). Methot didn’t have big numbers in London, but the Hunters thought he had the potential to play in the NHL and we took him in the sixth round (in 2003).”