Habs busts

[Willie Dog]

Got you with the title huh?

I found this blog where they posted about Habs draftees over 6'3 and 200 lbs who failed and he spoke to scouts and a form prospect about it. I found it interesting.

habshq.com/2011/08/13/the-bust-chronicles-darwin/#more-119

The Bust Chronicles: Chapter 1
Posted on August 13, 2011 by Oren W.

The Montreal Canadiens have seen a few of them and it’s an arduous and often unsuccessful evolutionary process. They are usually called Christian Larrivée, Mathieu Aubin, André Deveaux, Scott Selig, Cory Urquhart, Ben Guité and of course the list goes on. They measure in at an ape like 6’3, play center, weigh in at 200 lbs, shoot right and once rookie camp comes along, bring the promise of a big forward finally giving the Canadiens the toughness and scoring touch they need.

So, how many of them would you assume made the Canadiens a bigger, stronger and better team? Actually here is a more interesting fact, lets look at the 8 year span from 2001 to 2009 how many of the forwards measuring over 6’1 feet have the Canadiens seen impact their line-up.

Out of 21 players rated officially by their current team page as over 6’1 the Canadiens currently only have one in their line-up, Max Pacioretty. Of the 21, only 6 ( Duncan Milroy, Maxim Lapierre, Kyle Chipchura, Guillaume Latendresse, Gregory Stewart and Max Pacioretty ) have actually seen Bell Centre ice, out of those 6, 2 of them Gregory Stewart and Duncan Milroy only played 5 games for the Habs and are no longer part of the organisation. How does that compare to other teams you say ? I dared to look and was amazed at the discrepancy.

To get a better understanding of why the Habs fared so low, I decided to reach out to two sources, the first was an ex Hab scout, the second, a player the organisation has let go and who is continuing his career in Germany.

Here is a write up of our scout’s main points:

” Most teams will quickly identify a core group of prospects they want to keep a close eye on, depending on the program they play for you can have more or less access to them and the way they develop at the Junior, College or development program phase. Some players are serious about the program their NHL teams have asked them to pursue during the summer, they come back after a year and you see the difference. ”

” Smaller players usually have a stronger will to succeed and usually out speed and outsmart bigger players, I think that one of the things that didn’t help the Canadiens is that during several training camps we had strong players with a smaller stature that just outplayed bigger players, we didn’t have big players that made small players look bad. Obviously the coaching staff was more interested in working with them because the organisation wanted the focus to be put on hard-workers, inevitably the bigger players would end up in the minors with the smaller players and we’d see their intensity levels fall off, the organisation would see very little follow-up and just like that you fall off the prospect depth chart and end up playing in the East Coast league. ”

” Sometimes you draft a player because he fills a niche that your team needs, he has the physical dimensions but no real skill-set, there is a two percent chance he will make it but usually it depends on the psychological make-up of these individuals, you can’t fake dimension, but you can fake a personality and sometimes scouts think they have a go getter when in fact they have another ‘prune’. ”

” You can’t help but think sometimes that some players could have been something special but in the end the player’s will has to be stronger than the organisation’s. ”

Cory Urquhart on the other hand had his perspective, and after the exchange it really puts the psychology of an NHL prospect with size in focus.

” I don’t know if there is a way to develop size ” per say ”, I’m big. I’ve always been a big player, but I’ve always played more of a skill game, I could have been 5’4 it wouldn’t have changed anything to my game. ”

” People have always given the Habs a hard time with size, they tried ridiculously hard to make things work on several levels, they give guys every opportunity, the hockey people on that team back then and even now were really smart and I felt privileged to be a part of it ”

In french we say ”Meme son de cloche” which means that no matter who I’d seek out to get additional information I’d get similar responses.

So I decided to seek out a bit more info, and one name came up Paul Dennis, a man who used to head player development and mental reinforcement for the Maple Leafs and now teaching Sports Psychology at the University level in Toronto.

”Can anyone sincerely say they knew what kind of man they would turn out to be when they were 17, too many things change. I think it’s a good thing teams now have Sports psychologists at the prospect combines, when you build an outline of the player you want to draft, you’ve got to make sure the expectations you put on his development are hurdles they can overcome, and that includes the amount of changes they’ll have to overcome to become NHL talent. ”

[blny]

We could go back to the Serge Savard days of the early 90s when players like Bilodeau, Ryan, Higgins, etc were drafted for their size.

Of the list of players taken between 2001 and 2009, Andre Kostitsyn should be on that list. He's got the physical dimensions, and from time to time - when the mood strikes him he shows how strong he really is.

I think the league in general has had issue over the last twenty years wrt drafting players with size. Instead of the primary focus being on actual hockey sense, they've had a certain blood lust for a kid who's 6'3 at 18. Since the lockout, this has changed somewhat. We are seeing teams willing to draft smaller players with undeniable skill and smarts that would likely have been passed over 10 years ago.

It's interesting that the article mentioned a correlation between size and work ethic. I tend to agree with it.

The bottom line is the draft not a sure thing. It's a total crap shoot for everyone. The only way to increase your chances is to be bad enough to draft in the top 3 a few years in a row. Even then there's no guarantee. As a result, it's all about balance imo. Draft according to your organizational philosophy, and develop a really strong pro scouting staff so you can identify late bloomers or players you want to acquire to fill a need. You need both to succeed.