Construction Of A Junior Hockey Team/Part Four

THE ENTRY DRAFT

This is it. The big one every season. The United States Hockey League's Entry Draft.

This is  where all those hours on the road and in rinks really pays off.

Before you draft, you take inventory of what you already have on your roster. You can protect veteran players who were with you last season and haven't gone on to college, yet, as well as guys on your under-18 affiliate list that haven't spent time with your club, yet. It was a little different this year because Youngstown is an expansion team and gots to choose prior to the draft one unprotected player from every other team. For Cedar Rapids, the guy lost was forward Brett Gensler.

Teams then draft until they get to 23 players. Some get their quicker than others because of the different number of protected returning players and affiliate list players each team may have. Once 23 has been achieved by everyone, the draft persists until each team has 30 total players. That's the limit.

"This day is fun once you get rolling," Carlson said. "Because you just never know what can happen. Once you get rolling, and you feel like you got some good picks, it's fun."

Carlson's office remains jampacked. Mullen sits on the couch with a laptop at the ready. Cadelli sits on a bench at the entrance to the office, armed with pages and pages of detailed scouting reports on kids. He has highlighted the kids he thinks most highly of.

Beckfeld sits on the floor with magic markers in his hand. It's his duty to write the name of each team's draft pick as it is made and cross him off one of two lists the Riders have made for players they might possibly draft. There are about 35 names listed on one of the large easel boards, approximiately 150 on the other. A fourth board sits next to Carlson's desk and has names of returning RoughRiders players, the team's affiliate list and guys taken in the previous day's Futures Draft.

They are separated by position and age. You don't want too many available forwards when tryout camp comes in a couple of weeks and not enough defenseman. You don't want too many older players and not enough younger guys, or vice versa.

As the day persists, you listen and are struck by the amount of knowledge each of these men has on so many youth hockey players. It's borderline incredible.

"For us, the people are as important as the hockey player," Carlson said. "So we try and know as much as we can about their background, their character. We want young men that hockey is the most important thing to them, next to their family."

The Riders think they got one of those young men in 16-year-old defenseman Nolan Zajac with their first pick. A Winnipeg, Manitoba, defenseman, he has three older hockey playing brothers, including Travis, who is a forward with the NHL's New Jersey Devils.

"Great family, great work ethic," Carlson says to the rest of the room.

Before the draft began, Carlson's phone rang several times. It was opposing coaches/general managers in the league bringing up trade offers.

One coach proposed a draft pick for draft pick trade that Carlson politely declined. Two other trades he went through with, dealing two-year forward Nick Oddo to his hometown Omaha Lancers for two draft picks and defenseman Nate Jensen to Tri-City for forward Derek Deblois.

The USHL isn't just recruiting and scouting. It can also have a pro feel with the trades of players.

"That's a great way to put it," Carlson said. "I think our jobs as GMs in this league are some of the greatest jobs in the world. And I think they're some of the most difficult jobs, probably the most difficult job in all of hockey. You draft players, they are not bound by anything. They can go anywhere they want. So you've got to recruit them, just like in college basketball and college football. Then you have the pro mentality because there are drafts (and trades)."

On the easel board with RoughRiders' players names are four lines printed in the corner in big letters:  "Goals," says the first line; "Tempo, pace" is on the second line; "Puck skills" is in the third line; "Power Play" is the fourth. These are the kinds of things the RoughRiders want from this draft.

 Shortly after forward Garrett Ross is taken with the Riders' second-round draft pick, Carlson gets a text message from former scout Tony Gasparini that says "Love the first pick. Saw him play ... keep it rockin.'"

They keep it rockin.' Early into the second phase of the Entry Draft, a player's name comes up that has all four men scurrying to their seemingly endless supply of notebooks to find information. Carlson asks Mullen for a phone number of the young man's coach, which Mullen finds on his laptop.

"Hey, Jim, this is Mark Carlson," Carlson said. "I wanted to ask you about (a certain player). Any chance he could play in our league next year?"

The consensus is that this particular young man can eventually be a good player. His family didn't have the money to send him to an endless stream of showcase tournaments around the country, so he's a little bit unknown.

Beckfeld eventually writes his name below the RoughRiders name on the draft easel board. Nate Wilson of Mesa, Ariz., is selected and has the chance to be the first African-American player to ever make the RoughRiders.

"You know me. I never want to get too high or low," Carlson said after the five-hour Entry Draft finally concludes. "We like our draft. But it'll depend on how hard these guys work, how they compete."

TRYOUT CAMP AROUND THE CORNER

Their drafts are complete. They've got a list of 30 kids who will show up to their tryout camp in a couple of weeks, trying to make the initial 2009-2010 roster.

But the work is not nearly done. There are many, many good youth hockey players out there who weren't selected in either draft, so it's up to Carlson and  Mullen to work the phones, sooth the hurt of getting draft snubbed and coax kids to come to their camp anyway. That's all on the kid's dime, or his parent's dime.

You do it every year, and it can be more challenging than drafting because some USHL teams hold tryout camps on the same weekend. Kids are being coaxed to come here and there. It's that recruiting element again.

If there's one thing Cedar Rapids would seem to have going for it is a history of "free agent" players making the team each season. Carlson was asked about his biggest draft disappointments but wanted to talk more about the unheralded guys he brought in who made differences on their teams.

"Brandon Svendsen," he said, of a free-agent guy who made the RoughRiders, played an integral role on their 2005 Clark Cup championship team and went on to play college hockey at Bowling Green. "It wasn't like he came out of the blue because I'd seen him play in high school. But he was an undrafted player and turned out to be a very valuable player on that (championship) team. He was a great penalty killer, a power-play guy, took a regular shift, was an energy leader. He was just an excellent player for us.

"Phil Axtell was a free agent for us, too. He was a good story."

Carlson did admit there have been some misses over the years.

He had Detroit Red Wings goalie prospect Jimmy Howard all lined up to come to Cedar Rapids, only to have him swiped away at the last second by the U.S. National Team. Then there was Trevor Lewis. He was drafted one year by the RoughRiders but didn't make the cut.

The center went on to make the Des Moines team, scored 10 goals his first season with the Bucs and blossomed into the league's MVP the following season. He is considered one of the Los Angeles Kings better young prospects.

"He was in our camp that year, but we didn't think he was ready," Carlson said. "So with our league rules, past a certain date we couldn't protect him. He goes to Des Moines ... That's the way it goes sometimes. We just try to have the best camp we can. Attack it that way."

So this year's camp has approximately 80 kids particpiating. It started Thursday with some practices. Wednesday was more practice and some games. It's the same thing Saturday, with Saturday night and Sunday morning picked for all-star games of the top 40 kids in camp.

From there, Carlson and Mullen will confer. Eventually a list will be posted on the hallway wall near the visitor's locker room at the Ice Arena. There's your initial roster. It could look different by the time fall practice rolls around, but these kids are what you could call the survivors.

Or maybe you could call the coaches the true ultimate survivors. Once this team is picked, it's on to thinking about other things.

"As soon as this day is done, it's time to start working on the 2010-2011 team," Carlson said.

Constrtucting a Junior Hockey team never ends.