Future bright for ‘Q’ stars
Expects a good draft as it looks to help players improve skills
The National Hockey League’s Central Scouting is putting the finishing touches on its mid-season rankings for the 2013 entry draft.
But the head of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League is already expecting positive things from the draft, which will be held in Newark, N.J.
“I think it’s going to be a good draft for our league this coming June,” said Gilles Courteau, the league’s commissioner.
That’s the message Courteau said he’s heard from people in Central Scouting and NHL scouts since last year.
“A good draft is a couple of players drafted in the first round and a higher number of draft picks in general,” Courteau said.
Last year 19 players from the “Q” were selected in the NHL entry draft, compared to 48 from the Ontario Hockey League and 32 from the Western Hockey League.
The NHL Central Scouting’s mid-season rankings are expected to be released this month with a final ranking typically in April. Its preliminary lists last fall ranked forwards Nathan MacKinnon and Jonathan Drouin f rom the Halifax Mooseheads as the No. 1 and No. 2 skaters, respectively in the QMJHL.
Linemates and friends, MacKinnon and Drouin were the only 17-year-olds to make the Canadian team for the recent World Junior Hockey Championship in Ufa, Russia. It’s most likely they’ll be drafted in the first round along with Quebec Remparts forward Anthony ment, felt the way Drouin played will help him move up the draft ladder.
The QMJHL had five players on the national junior squad, which Courteau called an “excellent” representation. A sixth player, Canadiens prospect Charles Hudon, was selected for the team but suffered a back injury and wasn’t able to play in the tournament.
The QMJHL was one of the organizers of the twoday Quebec Hockey Summit in 2011. They held it with the aim of looking at what they
“I think it’s going to be a good (NHL entry) draft for our league this coming June.”
QMJHL COMMISSIONER GILLES COURTEAU
Duclair, according to Courteau, who also noted it’s difficult to make accurate NHL draft predictions.
MacKinnon and Seth Jones, a defenceman with the WHL’s Portland Winterhawks, have been touted as the possible top picks in the NHL draft. Drouin drew lots of media attention for his play at the world juniors, where he was promoted to Team Canada’s top line during the tournament. Courteau, who was at the tourna- could do to improve the development of hockey in the province, Courteau said.
One of the concrete actions taken by the league after the summit was to put in place an individualized development program, he said. Two teams are piloting the project this year — the Sherbrooke Phoenix and the Drummondville Voltigeurs. It’s a testing program to improve players’ development and help them meet NHL requirements. Players are test- ed at regular intervals to see if they can perform certain hockey skills and whether they’re improving.
For example, if the NHL requirement is to skate 150 feet within five seconds and a player took 7.5 seconds to do it in August, Courteau said they’ll do everything they can to improve the player’s skating ability for subsequent tests.
The plan is to eventually have players in the pilot project wear an ultrathin undergarment shirt, equipped with a heart monitor and sensors, to track things like how much force they put into shooting a puck and how many strides they take skating from one end of the rink to the other, according to Photi Sotiropoulos, a league spokesperson.
The information could be compared to an NHL player’s performance. At the end of each week or month, Sotiropoulos said: “You take the statistics that were gathered from the player and then you compare it and you say, ‘Well, you need to skate a little bit faster if you want to be an NHL-level player or you need to shoot the puck a little harder.’”