'I Just Need to Play': How COVID-19 Affected Drafting and Developing NHL Players

It was August 2020, and sitting socially distanced in a small local hockey rink was a couple of NHL scouts, a high-ranking official with a junior club, a couple of junior hockey coaches from a number of organizations, and myself. It had been five months since the world shut down.

There are seven players and one skills coach on the ice. Four major junior players, two of which were in their draft year. Two kids hoping to be drafted into the OHL that year. One NHLer who was nearing the end of his career.

I was invited to the private skate on a whim earlier that morning by text message, having made a connection the year prior with the person hosting it. We were all happy to be back in a rink and sharing our thoughts on the upcoming NHL draft and eligible players, what might be in store for the upcoming season and just general joy to be seeing other people amid lockdowns in Ontario. In hindsight, we were all ignorant of what exactly was to come.

“They keep telling us that we’ll be back in action around Christmas in Ontario,” said one person. “There may be half-capacity buildings, but we will be playing hockey.”

“Thank goodness we don’t have many draft picks this year, because it’s going to be a mess,” said one of the NHL scouts jokingly.

“It’s not going to affect guys as much as some people think. These kids will find a way to get better,” replied one of the junior coaches.

Little did any of us know what was to come that winter.

There was a year without hockey in Ontario outside of the heavily restricted NHL games. The OHL wasn’t back around Christmas. There were no half-capacity buildings in the OHL – there were no games at all. It wasn’t just a flu.

Fast forward just over three years, and we seem to have finally arrived at the light at the end of the tunnel. While COVID-19 is still present in society, we have found a way to live with it and deal with cases as they pop up. We are beyond the lockdowns, the restrictions and many other things that changed our lives in such dramatic ways (shoutout to everyone who wiped down their groceries).

Now that we seem to have returned to normal – or our new normal – we can begin to look at how COVID affected the landscape of hockey, the development of the next wave of players, what changed in the process of evaluating them, and how the players dealt with a truly unprecedented time.

“I find myself looking to see how many games they played in the COVID year and the year after and try to get a feel for how or if this has affected their development,” an NHL pro scout told The Hockey News. “The development side has affected certain individual players more than others in my opinion, especially players that did not have options and either missed whole seasons in their league or played very little.”

That is a sentiment shared by many across the game. With the varied restrictions and leniency of different regions regarding the global pandemic, some players were affected more than others. While some areas were able to get hockey back up and running fairly quickly, others completely shut down sports.

In North America, the QMJHL got things kicked off in early October. The league went to a three-division format, with teams only playing within their division for the regular season. Due to COVID-19 cancellations and entire teams coming down with COVID during the worst moments, teams played anywhere between 26 to 43 games in the regular season. Coincidentally, the Victoriaville Tigres were the eventual champions in the playoffs after being the team to play the fewest games in the regular season.

The USHL got off the ground in November 2020, although the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders' home arena was damaged by a storm in August, forcing the team to suspend operations for at least the 2020-21 season. The Madison Capitols opted out of the league for the season due to pandemic restrictions in Madison, Wis. Six of the 14 teams played a full 54-game schedule, and only one team played fewer than 51 games. The powerhouse Chicago Steel would be named league champions following the playoffs.

Out west, the WHL didn’t kick things off until February, playing a 24-game season that was deemed a “developmental season” by the league. The goal was to get players into some game action and allow them to play hockey in what was a pivotal year whether you were a draft eligible, WHL rookie or overage kid trying to figure out what’s next. They played a regional schedule, playing only the teams in their divisions, with each having their own set of rules and restrictions based on their region. They held no playoffs and named no champion.

In Europe, the Swedish junior leagues got underway but then had to go on pause toward the end of November. Although they planned on returning to play in the new year, they never did. Ultimately, all competition in Sweden was shut down by March.

The Finnish junior league had to deal with different restrictions in different areas, with some teams having to cancel many games because of COVID-19 while others were hardly affected. Seven teams had their season cancelled at various points, but the league was able to name a champion despite the struggles.

“Scouting that year was not fun and certainly not easy,” said one NHL amateur scout.

“We always had some video as part of the process, but the pandemic forced us to rely on pretty much only video,” he explained. “Aside from the U-18s and a couple of times when someone from the team would open the side door for you, we didn’t really have many live viewings.”

Scouting players was altered during the pandemic because of travel restrictions, social distancing guidelines and the inability to get into the rinks. Some teams recommended their scouts use video primarily.

The willingness to embrace video scouting varied throughout hockey. While some teams willingly chose to use the lack of in-person views as an excuse for having a difficult time at the draft table, other teams dove in head first.

“Our team wanted to do the best we could and felt that being forced into video scouting could be a blessing in disguise,” said an amateur scout for an Eastern Conference NHL team. “It gave us the ability to watch multiple games in the same time it would have taken to drive to a rink, watch the game and go through intermissions and all of that all for just one game.”

While acknowledging there are certain things that you can gather from a live viewing that you don’t get on video, taking advantage of the additional time video scouting gives you can be a major asset. Differentiating between a player who played zero games from the OHL and a player overseas who played in 40 games was the difficult part.

“We're all just guessing when it comes to how it affected the development of players, but I'd guess it delayed some parts that have to do with on-ice details but possibly accelerated some parts like off-ice training as well,” noted an NHL scout based in Europe.

Scouting came down to the perspective teams and scouts had on the landscape. Development and the work done by the players came down to a combination of opportunity and drive to be better.

Players were forced into doing a number of different activities to develop and hone their craft. From outdoor rinks to finding a sheet of ice they could skate on individually or in small groups, it was difficult for players to put their best foot forward during the 2020 and 2021 seasons in particular.

“I was lucky to have a local rink that would let me in early in the morning to get some skating and skill work done a couple of times a week,” said a 2021 draft-eligible forward. “I had my skills coach sending me stuff to do and I was trying new things on my own as well but it was all on my own for a few months.”

Players such as Brennan Othmann, Brandt Clarke, and Mason McTavish were among the CHLers who made the decision to head to Europe to play in various leagues. Even Connor Bedard – just 15 years old at the time – played in the Swedish junior league before the WHL started back up.

“I just need to play,” said Clarke at the time. “It’s my draft year, and I didn’t want to fall behind. It’s important for me get on the ice. I had an opportunity to come here (to Slovakia) and play with my brother for a bit while challenging myself against pros.”

He understood that it wasn’t the perfect situation and that he had to earn the ice time, and he did just that. Clarke had 15 points in 26 games at the Slovak pro level that year.

“It’s been an interesting transition. They play a different style of hockey over here so with me wanting to push the puck up the ice and use my skating at times, they had to adjust to that,” explained Clarke.

Just about any player who went over to play in a European league shared that sentiment. They just needed to play and get themselves into game action, especially in their draft year.

“Playing in Switzerland has been an adjustment. It obviously wasn’t in the plans, but I had to do it,” Othmann said of his stop overseas.

“We had a longer off-season and summer than usual as we waited for the OHL to figure things out so I was able to hit the gym hard with my trainer and put on some muscle and build up my frame,” Othmann remarked. “It made the transition to pro hockey here a bit easier, especially with how I play the game.”

McTavish, Clarke, and Othmann all made an investment in themselves to go overseas, and it paid off as they were selected in the first round. The Anaheim Ducks took McTavish third overall, the Los Angeles Kings drafted Clarke eighth overall, and Othmann went to the New York Rangers at 16.

Making the trip across the ocean wasn’t for everyone, though. Shane Wright was a burgeoning star in the OHL, matching Connor McDavid’s 15-year-old point totals the year before while playing in fewer games. Had the 2020 season not shut down early because of COVID, his pace could have had him match John Tavares’ 15-year-old scoring record in the OHL.

Aside from the five games he played at the Under-18 World Championship that year in Texas, Wright didn’t play a competitive game of hockey for almost 18 months. Heading into his draft year, expecting the former exceptional status player to come out unscathed developmentally was a lot to ask for. The once presumed surefire No. 1 pick in 2022 fell to fourth overall.

Matthew Savoie and Cole Sillinger decided not to wait for the WHL to figure things out and went down south to the USHL, playing for the Dubuque Fighting Saints and Sioux Fall Stampede, respectively. Savoie set himself up for a monster draft season in the WHL the following year that resulted in being selected ninth overall by the Buffalo Sabres in 2022. Sillinger was draft-eligible that season and wound up being selected 12th overall by Columbus.

Lonely skates, video calls with coaches and teammates, garage gyms and wonky training schedules affected players worldwide. It wasn’t just the physical toll that the pandemic took, though. It was the mental toll that players dealt with as well. Some players made decisions on where to play based on family or comfort because, with the world shutting down, you had to look out for your mental health.

“I was originally planning on playing in the USHL this season but opted to play prep because my grandmother got sick,” said one player who wished to remain anonymous, defending his decision. “I know some teams saw it as me not putting myself against the best competition, but I had to do what was best for me. I was able to get on the ice as much as I wanted here and stay closer to family.”

It wasn’t easy for anyone. The world shut down. Depending on where you were, you were stuck at home and isolated from friends and family.

“I personally know of a few good high school-aged players who quit playing hockey during the pandemic, but I think those are rare cases,” noted one junior scout for a USHL squad.

It won’t be known for years what the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic truly was. We will have to look back in a decade and break down the statistical differences of the players born between 2002 and 2005. Their development will be a truly fascinating case study when all is said and done.

We may never understand how those unprecedented times affected the development of players because there are so many factors that go into it. Some players valued the extra time to train off-ice, while others really missed the game action and developing the small details that make players good pros.

Marco Rossi was a highly touted prospect in the 2020 NHL draft, taken by Minnesota in the top 10. He missed almost an entire season dealing with the after-effects of a bout with COVID-19 that had him fearing for his life. He’s now beginning to hit his stride in the NHL, almost three years later.

Alexis Lafreniere and Quinton Byfield were the top two picks in that same 2020 NHL draft. They’ve both struggled to cement their roles in the NHL through three NHL seasons, with some in the public sphere beginning to question whether they would be labelled a bust. Now in their fourth pro season, they have begun to quell those worries as they have 11 and 13 points, respectively, through 14 games each.

We are beginning to find the new normal. Day-to-day life has settled back into regularly scheduled programming. COVID isn’t gone, but it isn’t what it was.

Looking back on discussions with players from the last couple of years, one player may have put it perfectly when it came to what the experience of a player during that time was like.

“There was a time at the start of the pandemic when hockey was all I had. After a while, because it was the only thing I was doing, it just seemed to matter a little less with everything going on in the world,” they explained. “As the world healed, it felt good to get back into the team atmosphere. The boys in the room are like family. I missed that.”

I think we can all agree on that.