The First Day Of The Rest Of Their Lives
by unallocated on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 02:43pm
It’s nerve-wracking enough for a player who knows that he’s very likely to be selected in the first round. It’s flat-out terrifying for players who will sleeplessly spend the next two days waiting for the phone to ring from somewhere, anywhere. It will be heart-breaking for those who never hear their name called. For many it will be the difference between playing professional hockey and having to seek other career options. For hockey fans, it is the equivalent of Christmas morning. For many General Managers, coaching staffs and scouts, it is make or break time. Years of skating in your backyard on a makeshift rink your father made, driven to 5:00 AM practises by your parents in the dead of winter, shooting a million pucks and tennis balls in your driveway; countless sacrifices made by you and for you. It all comes down to this. Tonight.
Perhaps it is fitting that this year’s NHL Entry Draft, considered to be particularly rich with talent, is being held in Ottawa; a city that took home its first Stanley Cup in 1903. A town so proud of its hockey heritage and traditions will now be the site from which the future of the game will, one by one, find new homes in which their own legacies may be built.
Unless the solar system suddenly collapses, it is a given that the stellar centerman from the Sarnia Sting, Steve Stamkos, will be selected as the number one overall pick by the Tampa Bay Lightning. He’s already been through this at the junior level, having been drafted at number one by a terrible Sarnia junior team (17 wins, 46 losses) and within two seasons he had taken his team to the playoffs and a 37-29 record; this season posting 92 points in 63 games and picking up a gold medal at the World Junior Championships on the way. Stamkos will join recent number one picks (who include the likes of Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Marc-Andre Fleury and Ilya Kovalchuk) in the revered position of having his name called first. Tampa Bay’s General Manager, Jay Feaster, has the easiest job in the world this evening. After that? Well, that’s where it gets complicated. The Los Angeles Kings hold the keys to the rest of this draft with a remarkable 15 picks. That, by NHL standards, is a lot of leverage.