Top prospect put through his paces at scouting event
West Vancouver’s Rielly hobnobs with Grapes, attends a Stanley Cup game and gets grilled by teams, including the Canucks
Maybe this is called living the dream: Meet Don Cherry in the morning. Meet Rex Ryan in the evening. Appear on Hockey Night In Canada. Have one of your best dangles of the season shown on national TV.
West Vancouver’s Morgan Rielly, a top- 10 prospect for this year’s NHL entry draft, did it all Saturday and was still buzzing about it when he returned home this week. He was impressed with Grapes, the bombastic 78- year- old icon of Coach’s Corner, but sounded equally star struck about meeting Ryan, the larger- than- life coach of the NFL’s New York Jets.
Rielly appeared in a taped segment on Coach’s Corner, an annual feature in which Cherry introduces a handful of top prospects. He later met Ryan in a private suite at New Jersey’s Prudential Center during Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final.
First up, Grapes. “I was a huge Don Cherry fan growing up and I still am,” said Rielly, an 18- year- old defenceman for the WHL’s Moose Jaw Warriors. “I mean, as a kid when you’re watching Hockey Night In Canada and it’s time for
Coach’s Corner, it was always quiet in the house so everybody could hear what he had to say.
“So it was pretty cool to have the experience to kind of hang out with him and just chat a bit. It was pretty special.”
Rielly and five other prospects
– Nail Yakupov, Ryan Murray, Filip Forsberg, Mikhail Grigorenko and Alex Galchenyuk – gave mini- bios of themselves on Coach’s Corner while a video showed one of their big playing moments. Rielly’s was a gorgeous Brian Leetch- like dangle against the Lethbridge Hurricanes.
“We spent about an hour with Don during the L. A. Kings’ morning skate,” said Rielly, a product of Hollyburn minor hockey. “He was looking pretty sharp in his suit. He’s got quite the personality and he’s pretty funny and extremely outgoing. My family knew I was going on with him about a week prior, so it’s taped here at home.”
Rielly and the other prospects then attended the Kings- Devils game at night and took a little tour that included meeting NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, as well as Ryan.
Rielly said he resisted the temptation to query Ryan on how he planned to deploy Tim Tebow in his offence.
“I wanted to ask him about Tebow, but I’m sure he was getting questions like that all the time,” Rielly said. “So I kind of tried to stay away from that a little bit and I asked him how he liked hockey. I do follow the NFL and Rex Ryan is certainly a big name in that league. He was there with his kids and stuff and I was pretty fortunate to have the chance to meet him.”
The schmoozefest with Cherry, Ryan and Bettman was just part of a whirlwind week for Rielly, who attended the NHL scouting combine in Toronto and was interviewed by 24 teams, including the Vancouver Canucks. The Canucks will select 26th overall in the first round, which goes June 22 in Pittsburgh, so they likely won’t get their mitts on him unless there is a significant trade to move up.
“I met with a big group of Canuck scouts, probably about eight,” Rielly said. “They were asking me questions about character, who I was as a player, about how I grew up and what
my parents did and that kind of stuff. I talked with them for about 20 minutes. It was pretty cool to meet with your hometown team.
“The questions I was asked kind of changed a bit from team to team,” he continued. “There were a few who were more concentrated on what kind of expectations you have heading into the draft. Then there were teams that just wanted to ask you hockey questions and weren’t that interested in how you grew up.”
He didn’t escape the process without a few oddball questions, however, and none was more goofy than being asked if he had fathered any children.
“I guess I really didn’t expect to hear that question,” Rielly noted. “First they asked me if I had a girlfriend and I said ‘ no.’ Then they asked me if I had any kids and I said ‘ No, I don’t.’ So that was probably the weirdest one I had.”