There’s Noah place like the Bulldogs
What’s in a name? A pretty good chance of being drafted by Hamilton, it seems
Last spring, when he heard his name called by the Bulldogs in the Ontario Hockey League draft, Noah Roberts felt pretty unique. Nobody else with that first name had ever played a game for the team. Which wasn’t really surprising to him.
“I actually didn’t know a Noah before (then),” he says.
It’s not an uncommon name these days but even so, you probably don’t bump into someone with it every day. Or every week. Or even every month.
That said, he wasn’t the first one with it to be drafted by the franchise. That honour went to Noah Lugli in 2015 and more recently, Noah Van Vliet in 2020. Having he and Van Vliet both on board at the same time now was a little unusual but, whatever. Lots of teams have two guys with the same name.
But, after Roberts was chosen in the third round last June, things got a little strange.
A couple hours later, the Bulldogs took Noah VandenBrink in the fifth round, bringing the team’s complement of Noahs to three. Ten picks after that, they took Noah Nelson.
It was around this point, Bulldogs owner Michael Andlauer turned to general manager Steve Staios with an entirely reasonable question.
“Are we picking another Noah?” he asked.
Staios swears there’s Noah … er … no strategy here to load up on Noahs. They haven’t assigned scouts specifically to scour the rinks of the province to find all the best of them. There’s no plan to bring them in two by two.
There’s no goal of creating a team whose favourite part of the game is the flood.
On the weekend he proved this when he grabbed Marek — not Noah — Vanacker with his first pick in this year’s draft. The Delhi teen is a nearly two-point-a-game winger with the Brantford 99ers.
He had to wait to get him. Since his team finished first this season, he picked last. Normally that would be No. 20, but there were three compensatory picks so he didn’t get to choose until No. 23. It was a long wait.
He’s not complaining, mind you. Given a choice between finishing at the top of the standings and picking last or finishing last and picking first, he’ll take the former every time.
“We’ll deal with grinding through finding players,” he quips.
Besides, he says he’s thrilled with who he got. He says the scouting staff had Vanacker slotted a whole lot higher than 23rd. Of course, every GM says this about every one of their picks, but based on Staios’s success in recent drafts, we’ll buy it.
Adding to the degree of difficulty though, was the fact that he didn’t have a second-round pick — traded away as part of the deal to get star centre Mason McTavish — so he didn’t get to take another player until slot No. 49. It’s not ideal but it’s the cost of success.
Anyway, as the draft moved along, things were Noah-free. Which is probably fine with the existing quadrangle of Noahs.
Back in the fall when they were all on the ice together at training camp it was mayhem. A couple times new head coach Jay McKee would yell ‘Noah’ to get one of their attention.
“We all turned to look at him,” Van Vliet says.
They quickly sorted it out with nicknames. Roberts became Robbie. Nelson became Nelly. Van Vliet got the Raptors’ treatment and became Freddy. And Vandenbrink got Vandy. That made things easier.
This draft was only going to help by adding more kids who didn’t share their name.
Staios managed to get a player from Hamilton (Hamilton Jr. Bulldogs’ winger Clark Dunford), one from Welland (defenceman Callum Cheynowski) and Daniel Berehowsky, the son of former Toronto Maple Leaf, Drake Berehowsky.
He chose young men named Masen, David, Ethan, Daniel, Graydon, Henry, Tyron, Thomas and Jensen. And as the process neared its end, he had seemingly proved he really could make it through a draft without selecting someone named Noah.
Then he got to his final pick. From Naples, Florida, Noah Lapointe.
He just had to do it, huh? “Yes,” he laughs. “We did.” Five kids with the same not-allthat-common name now in one organization. It’s strange. But this has to be the end of it, right? It can’t possibly happen again for a while.
“Oh no,” Staios says. “Next year I’m going to be looking for one.”