Unexpected all-stars happy to get off the bus
Imagine how Tom Brady’s life might be different if Drew Bledsoe wasn’t injured during Week 2 of the 2001 National Football League season.
For one, Brady probably wouldn’t be married to Gisele Bündchen.
When Bledsoe, the New England Patriots’ starting quarterback, suffered a shorn blood vessel in his chest following a hit from the New York Jets’ Mo Lewis, Brady took over. The Patriots lost the game 10-3, dropping their record to 0-2.
Patriots fans probably thought their season was over since Brady was a sixthround draft pick (199th overall) out of Michigan in 2000, and six other quarterbacks were selected before him: Chad Pennington (New York Jets), Giovanni Carmazzi (San Francisco), Chris Redman (Baltimore), Tee Martin (Pittsburgh), Marc Bulger (New Orleans) and Spergon Wynn (Cleveland).
But we all know what happened: the Patriots won 14 of their next 17 games, including nine straight, to win the Super Bowl. Brady has now appeared in five Super Bowls and has three championship rings. If his receivers had made a couple more catches – as Brady’s supermodel wife pointed out – he would have won a fourth ring this year.
Brady is one example of how drafting young athletes into professional sports is an inexact science (just ask any Canadiens fan). The latest example is Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks, who has gone from an unknown – and undrafted basketball player – to the biggest thing in North American sports since Tim Tebow, with Linsanity replacing Tebowmania.
In less than three weeks, the Harvard graduate has gone from sleeping on a teammate’s couch in New York to moving into a $13,000-amonth apartment on the 38th floor overlooking the Statue of Liberty.
While Lin is stealing most of the headlines – and was invited to the NBA’S all-star weekend despite starting in only 11 games, with eight wins – there is no shortage of undrafted stars in pro sports, including the National Hockey League.
In fact, there’s another one in New York.
Defenceman Dan Girardi is leading the NHL with an average of 27:02 of ice time per game while posting 4-16-20 totals in 58 games to go along with a plus-14 for the Rangers, who are in first place in the Eastern Conference. The 6-foot-1, 206-pounder was also the only undrafted player to take part in this year’s AllStar Game.
“It’s a great story for me and my family,” the 27-yearold Girardi told Newsday’s Mark Herrmann during allstar weekend. “It’s quite the journey, coming from the East Coast League and not being drafted to being at the AllStar Game with all these elite players. It’s almost surreal.”
Added Rangers coach John Tortorella: “It restores my faith. I think sometimes our league forgets about people like that. The league stepped up and, where credit was due, gave it to him. It’s not just pedigree. It’s what he’s done on the ice. He’s a pro. I think that’s the highest compliment you can give him.”
Pincourt native Alexandre Burrows is another undrafted player. But the Vancouver Canucks forward played in his 500th career NHL game this week.
“It was always a dream to play in the NHL and it was really a big dream sometimes with those long bus rides,” the 30-year-old Burrows told Brad Ziemer of the Vancouver Sun about his days in the minors. “You are going to games where there are no scouts and no one really cares about hockey.”
He added: “Everyone has got their own story, has their own journey. Everyone has to work hard to get to 500 games even if you are a first-rounder or not drafted.”
The Ottawa Senators’ Zack Smith was passed over the first two years he was eligible for the NHL entry draft before being selected in the third round (79th overall) in 2008.
“I’ve had scouts tell me that the guys who make it to the NHL on talent alone is about five per cent,” Smith’s father, Dean, told the Ottawa Citizen’s Ken Warren during a Senators’ father/son road trip this month. “The other 95 per cent is desire.”
My favourite story about an undrafted player involves goaltender Ed Belfour.
In 1989, I covered a game between the Canadian national team and the Soviet Union in Granby, in which Belfour stood on his head in a 1-1 tie. He was an undrafted 24-yearold at the time, but had been signed as a free agent by the Chicago Blackhawks after playing at the University of North Dakota.
“(The Blackhawks) keep telling me I’m the future there, so I’m just going to keep working as hard as I can here and hope to make it back there,” Belfour told me after the game.”
I doubted I’d ever hear Ed Belfour’s name again, but last year he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Will Jeremy Lin end up in the Basketball Hall of Fame one day?
Probably not ... but stranger things have happened.
Maybe he’ll even marry a supermodel.