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Prospect Or Suspect - Dec. 1, 2010 – Ryan Dixon
TEENAGE ANGST has long been at the root of screeching songs and scattered scribblings, but the scope of insecurity can certainly cross over from arts to sports.
It’s easy to assume every 18-year-old who’s drafted by an NHL team breezes through life with a cocksure attitude stemming from a combination of youthful optimism and the fact they’ve already obtained rarefied status simply by having their name called out by a squad from the world’s best hockey league.
But don’t, for one second, think there isn’t some emotional turmoil and serious self-doubt associated with being a kid trying to crack a stacked NHL roster.
Tim Burke is the San Jose Sharks’ director of scouting and just as anyone who’s married can tell you the wedding is simply the start of an incredibly involved process, Burke knows full well selecting players at the draft is merely the first step in the long process of turning them into NHLers. Often, the journey starts with some assurances.
“Many times a player will walk through the door and he thinks he’s a number or he thinks, ‘Oh my God, they’ve got all these defensemen, they’ve got all these wingers, nobody is talking to me,’” Burke said. “Every player who comes in, the first thing we want them to know is we’re going to try and make you an NHL player.”
Making good on that commitment may mean some initial coddling, but that quickly gives way to other things, like conditioning.
David Good doesn’t attend every draft, but he’s always well represented. Shortly after any player chosen by the Nashville Predators is done shaking hands with his new employers, those same mitts are then filled with a package from Good, the Preds’ strength and conditioning coach.
A few weeks later, Good gets a firsthand look at the fresh crop of draftees during Nashville’s conditioning camp. While building confidence in players is paramount, there’s also something to be said for eroding ego a little bit, too.
“The kids come in during conditioning camp and think they’re top dogs and then they get here with the veterans later on at the regular training camp and they kind of see where they stand,” Good said.
Good confirmed the most common need for the majority of kids is getting “bigger, faster, stronger.” He also stressed it’s important the regimen he provides targets rounded results.
“The biggest thing that’s overlooked is that we, as strength coaches, forget that they’re athletes,” Good stated. “We think of them as (specifically) hockey players and these guys need to develop as athletes, too. If I can make them a better athlete, they become a better hockey player.”
Feedback obviously plays a massive role in anybody’s professional development, and young hockey players are no exception. Burke said the Sharks always take the approach that no matter where a prospect is – toiling in major junior, college or somewhere in Europe – they put faith in the coaching that player is receiving and stress that he do the same.
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“So the kid is not getting power play time, we’re not going to go to that coach and beg for that,” Burke said. “We’re going to say this is a hurdle, we’re going to help you get through it, we’ve given you some principles to work on, you’ve got to get through it.”
Having an open dialogue with prospects is also important because it goes a long way in making a player feel as though the organization is still in his corner, even if he’s enduring some roadblocks.
“When the player isn’t getting the ice time or he’s maybe taken a step back, while he’s taking that step back we’ll try to catch him before he falls and keep staying with what we identified in him, and keep the kid abreast of it,” Burke said.
“We’re not easy on these guys. We don’t make excuses, but we tell them the truth and we back it up by going back to what we were going to work on. We don’t back it up by avoidance or saying you go figure it out somewhere.”
One of the channels teams can use to communicate with players is through their agents. According to Burke, agents have become increasingly viable vessels for parlaying information because they recognize it’s in the best interest of their clients to hear constructive criticism.
“The agents have been very good because when we tell them so-and-so is not at this level yet, but we think we see it coming, they’ve got to now go back to the kid and not make excuses for him,” Burke said. “The agents are getting better at that and I think they understand it more because you look at how many guys have put themselves out of the league.”
Another prime motivator? Having a prospect sit down with a player on the team, be it someone who went through the process of being a highly rated talent or the kind of guy who had to grind it out every step of the way to achieve their NHL goal. Burke pointed to a pair of players from the Sharks roster who cover off each avenue.
“Doug Murray, are you kidding me?” he said of San Jose’s late-blooming Swedish defenseman, who was drafted 241st overall by the Sharks back in 1999. “Look at what he went through to make it. So he can sit down with a kid and say, ‘Look, this is the way it is. It’s not going to all go smooth.’
“Or a Joe Thornton talking to some of the high picks about what happened in Boston. He wasn’t ready, he’ll tell them what he had to go through. Those are powerful things.”
Helping a person in their late teens or early 20s negotiate their way into the NHL goes beyond building up body strength or showing them exactly where to stand for every second of a two-minute penalty kill. These players all have lives away from the rink and the happenings of their off-ice existence can hugely impact their mental state, especially given how young they really are.
“You have a lot of issues today with divorced families, they’ve got girlfriend issues, you’ve got to assume other roles for kids, you’ve got different levels of support (required),” Burke said. “There are all kinds of things that come into play.”
By the same token, as much as a team can be there at every turn for a kid, sometimes it’s all about letting that young mind absorb and digest all the material that’s been thrown at them.
“People forget, sometimes the greatest development of a player can be that he went home for the summer and thought about all this stuff,” Burke said. “It’s amazing when a kid comes back for a second year, sometimes you’re like, ‘What happened?’”
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The Hockey News has released its archive to all THN subscribers: 76 years of history, stories, and features.