WHL draft needs to grow up
Decision to draft bantam players isn’t doing anyone any good
EDMONTON — It is time for a change. The WHL’s archaic belief they need to draft players as young as 14 for their bantam draft has to stop. It is unnecessary. It doesn’t benefit the kids or the WHL teams.
Canada’s other two major junior leagues, the Ontario Hockey League and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, draft players after their first year of midget-level hockey, the calendar year they turn 16, and those teams are just as productive as those in the WHL.
Players can’t play regularly in any of the three leagues until the year they turn 16 unless they apply for exceptional status and no WHL player has ever received exceptional status.
Only five players have been granted exceptional status: John Tavares (2005), Aaron Ekblad (2011), Connor McDavid (2012), Sean Day (2013) and last year Joseph Veleno became the first underage player in the QMJHL.
So why is the WHL still drafting kids out of bantam?
Because no one wants to speak up. Parents are afraid their children will be blackballed and often they simply aren’t informed enough to realize it is unnecessary.
The WHL will argue they draft players so young because it allows the kids more time to plan their move away from home.
It is laughable, yet parents and the hockey community keep allowing it to happen.
They draft the kids because they want them to sign a WHL contract right away.
They are worried players might consider going the college route instead.
It is a self-centred argument and does not benefit the kids.
The priority of the WHL should be to run its program in a way that is best for its players and kids in bantam should not be worried about the draft. It does not help them and the OHL and QMJHL prove you don’t need to draft bantam-aged players to run a successful league.
The educated hockey parent realizes the Canadian Hockey League path, the WHL’s umbrella organization, is the quickest to the NHL. The college route is for kids who are focused on education or players who aren’t physically mature and need more time to grow and develop.
What irks me about the WHL is its current structure not only hurts the players, but it also hurts the teams. Drafting kids in their final year of bantam hockey is a bigger crapshoot than the NHL entry draft, when kids are 17 and 18.
Scroll through the bantam draft and you will see way more misses than hits even in the first round because outside of a few elite players, it is almost impossible to tell which path their development will go down.
Some kids are six feet tall and 200 pounds in bantam.
They have a physical advantage, but they stop growing and by the time they are 17, many kids have caught up to them and now these players who were highly touted lose their confidence and watch their development grind to a halt.
WHL teams try to project how a player will look 16 to 28 months later. Very few businesses can accurately project where their sales or market share will be in 21/2 years, but the WHL is arrogant enough to believe they have the winning formula. They don’t. The WHL drafted 230 players in May 2014 and they were eligible to play in the WHL this year.
Only 25 of them have played more than 40 games and many of those 25 players are fourth liners. It makes no sense. The WHL could easily wait one more year and those 25 players would have four months — ample time — to plan their schooling and billet situation.
Last week, Hockey Canada president Tom Renney suggested Canada could look at starting a nationwide midget elite league.
It would protect 16-year-olds from playing major junior, which is great because 98 per cent of 16-year-olds aren’t ready to play at that level.
At the very least, parents, agents and hockey associations need to stand up and say something about the bantam draft.