Local hockey prospects await NHL draft and a shot at the big time.
Father Louie was a tough guy who scored only 41 NHL points
When Louie DeBrusk approached his draft year in 1989, he did so with a rather indifferent mindset.
He wasn’t sure he’d even be drafted, because that meant he would be picked in one of the first three rounds, which was how the rules worked back then for 18-and-19-year-olds.
There were no online scouting reports to sway his thinking, no ranking readily available.
But he had a break from his summer job as a roofer and his coach, Wayne Maxner, of the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights, figured De-Brusk should head to the NHL entry draft at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minn.
This time around, at the 2015 NHL draft, DeBrusk expects there will be more nerves to contend with. This time, he’s attending as a dad.
Jake DeBrusk, born in Edmonton, played major junior hockey in Swift Current with the Broncos. He is pegged as a potential first-round selection at this weekend’s draft, which gets underway Friday in Sunrise, Fla., and continues with Rounds 2 through 7 on Saturday.
Though prospects such as Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel are generating most of the pre-draft chatter, there is interest in how players like DeBrusk will be drafted.
The winger is a different player than his dad, as evidenced by his Western Hockey League totals of 42 goals and 81 points in 72 games this past season.
Louie, selected in the third round, 49th overall, by the New York Rangers, let his fists do his talking, accumulating 1,161 penalty minutes and 41 points in 401 NHL games.
“We’ll be nervous,” said Louie, who along with his wife Cindy and 17-year-old daughter Jordyn are flying from Edmonton to Florida this week.
They will be joined by more family members there.
“I was surprised, happy. That was it. I didn’t know anybody when I walked to the (team) table or anything about the Rangers,” DeBrusk recalled. “Today it’s entirely different. These kids have been prepared for this.
“For Jake, this has been building up for the last year and a half, and for us, we’ve been able to experience it with him — all the meetings with the scouts, all the publicity and, obviously, the play on the ice.”
DeBrusk, an analyst with Sportsnet, was playing for the Edmonton Oilers when Jake was born. Five days later, Jake attended his first hockey game and has been around the rink since, although he did not start skating until Louie was playing in Phoenix with the Coyotes.
At the recent NHL Scouting Combine in Buffalo, N.Y., Jake interviewed with every team but the Los Angeles Kings, who talked to him during the season.
“He wasn’t one of those kids who had skates on at three or four, but he had always had a hockey stick in his hand. He got a stick from a good friend of Cindy’s when he was one and it was like a security blanket. He took that thing everywhere,” said Louie. “I actually had to hide it on him a couple of times. We tried getting golf clubs and baseball bats and lacrosse sticks in his hands to get him to think about other things, but he was so focused on the stick.
“He just wasn’t one of those kids who always had those elite skills, but he always had that something. He played with some really good hockey players here in Edmonton and sometimes was over shadowed by them, but he’d always find a way to be in the mix.
“Players who grew up in hockey families — whether they want to or not — are going to be around the game a lot. For the ones who do have the interest, the motivation, the skills to become a hockey payer down the road, it’s the perfect environment to be in.”