Doug MacLean & Scott Morrison: "Draft Day: How Hockey Teams Pick Winners Or Get Left Behind" (SportsLit S7E06)
The coauthors whose book is one of the most gifted of this holiday season discuss how NHL organizations try to figure out which gifted young players have the right stuff for The Show.
Doug MacLean is finally going No. 1.
The course of recent hockey history, and his professional arc, might have been much different if the NHL draft lottery balls had popped up more generously for the Columbus Blue Jackets while MacLean was their general manager from 2000 to ’07. Columbus gained the goal-scoring gifts of Rick Nash with the top pick in 2002. It was farther down in the board for the Alex Ovechkin draft in ’04 and the Sidney Crosby draft a year hence. And, of course, Crosby and Ovechkin saved the NHL — well, at least according to Ovechkin. And nobody wondered how those generational talents happened to end up on U.S. big-market teams that needed a reboot.1
(If you want to hear MacLean discuss Nikolai Zherdev and Gilbert Brulé, start around the 44-minute mark.)
MacLean’s and Scott Morrison’s coauthored Draft Day: How Hockey Teams Pick Winners or Get Left Behind is the No. 1 seller in several categories on Amazon Canada. Neil Acharya and I enjoyed 40-plus minutes of banter with two seasoned hockey men about the history of the draft and the hard-won lessons MacLean acquired over preparing for 24 of them as a career hockey man.
(As always, here is a link to buy through sportslit.ca.)
Anywhoodles, here is a listening guide to the episode, the points raised, and parts that might require more context than we could supply on the fly. Keep listening, and keep reading.
Introduction
0:30-5:45. Some background on Doug MacLean, since professional memoir is a big piece of Draft Day. He came along in the era of the “career coach” that developed in reaction to Canada barely eking out the W in the 1972 Summit Series against the more well-drilled and well-skilled, if not as adaptable, Team USSR. Hey, Scott Morrison talked about that with us in 2022! So did John U. Bacon!
One upshot of ’72 was that it gave the Canadian hockey ecosystem, which in those days included virtually all NHL general managers, a kick in the pants. They realized that even if you want to give coaching jobs to your friends, they should have some formal credentials. That’s pretty standard in the hockey industry. It might even reach as far as Edmonton someday.
MacLean diligently followed that path, coaching juniors, and uni-puck at the University of New Brunswick before his first NHL job as an assistant coach alongside Jacques Martin in St. Louis. Later he was in player development with Detroit when the foundation of their late 1990s Stanley Cup-winning teams was laid, and helped expansion franchises in Florida and Columbus get out of the gate. MacLean was head coach when the third-season Panthers were the 1996 Stanley Cup playoffs runner-up. He was with Columbus from its creation to the end of 2007.
5:45-18:45. Astute readers-listeners (both of you?) might have picked up on some reiterated material about how the four major men’s pro sports in North America adopted drafts.
I believe drafts in sports are inefficient on top of being immoral. Bad for the personal and professional development of The Players, bad for the health of The Game, and bad for making one of our few collective unifiers Even More Transactional Than It Already Is. Ironically, the old ways where NHL clubs sponsored a network of minor pro and age-group pro teams2 might be better for broadening interest. Tie-ins could be created by combining the fan capital both the NHL and Ontario, Québec, and Western leagues have developed.
That’s not covered in the book, though, and the guests are the star of the show. So, another time, perhaps.
INTERVIEW
18:45-22:10. “I wasn’t keen on doing a book about myself.” MacLean and Morrison cover how they found their hook for Draft Day.
22:10-29:25. “Maybe Stevie Yzerman got bothered more at the drafts than we did. I just thought it was magical to be there.”
The NHL’s recent choice to “decentralize the draft,” with teams’ hockey ops staffs likely being off-site, was a newser angle for this episode. It sounds like Doug, Scott, Neil, and I all fall into hoping against hope this change will not hurt the vibe of the whole week, which is a celebration of hockey and selling hope. The scouts deserve a few days in town. They do not necessarily have to be at a table on the floor of an arena, though.
29:25-35:00. “Or a fake me yelling at the refs.” Neil has some questions about analytics and the possible role that AI might have in NHL roster building.
35:00-40:00. A few Heritage Minutes from our foursome. Learn your hockey history, class.
40:00-44:00. “There were no trade calls prior to that — it was sort of a handshake agreement.”
One truly had to be there to appreciate L’Affaire Lindros in the early 1990s — and MacLean and Morrison were there when it all went down at the ’92 draft at the old Forum in Montréal. The New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers each came away believing they had a deal with Québec for a franchise player. An arbitrator eventually ruled that Lindros would play in Philly. Pagé, who still works in hockey in western Europe, had impeccable files from that period.
Some former general managers have denied the book’s claims. Malheureusement pour eux, M. Pagé a conservé ses reçus.
What is probably lost on a younger generation regarding Eric Lindros and his refusal to join the Québec Nordiques is that it came while Canada’s Two Solitudes seemed held together by hockey tape, even more so than usual. Support of the Québec sovereignty movement had surged again, so the Jesus-big hockey hero from Ontario declining to play for the NHL’s Frenchiest franchise became a political flashpoint. It all came down to personalities between Lindros and the Nordiques chief exec Marcel Aubut.
There should be a biopic made about Aubut, but no one should release it while he is still above ground as a potential litigant.
44:00-53:00. “He might have been the best player I ever saw from a talent perspective.” What made Draft Day engaging is that MacLean still wears what did not work out for Columbus under his command. In the loaded 2003 NHL draft, they spent their No. 4 overall choice on the Kyiv-born Zherdev. Choosing No. 6 in ’05, they took Brulé after the Zherdev experience caused doubt clouds to roll in about Anze Kopitar.
It is 18 years later, and Kopitar is a future Hockey Hall of Fame inductee, and still with the Los Angeles Kings. Only 10 players selected in the draft have been one-organization hockey men: Kopitar in Los Angeles; Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang in Pittsburgh.
MacLean notes a “15 percent success rate” at the draft is very good. At the risk of sounding like a Slappy, I winnow that down to 10 percent. The NHL, compared to the Big Three ball-and/or-stick leagues, is the toughest league for drafting. They have an 18-year-old draft. They have the shallowest talent pool, spread out over two or three continents and however many cultures and first languages. And, down the line, the NHL’s hard salary cap tightens the margin for error even further.
53:00-FIN. Scott Morrison lets us in on his next book project: a book with one-time Stanley Cup-winning coach “Iron” Mike Keenan. We probably need some background on the infamous 1980 Memorial Cup tournament.
The '“Memmer” is a four-team tournament involving the team from the host city and league champions from the OHL, QMJHL, and WHL. That format was adopted in 1982. Previously, it involved just the league champs, who all played each other twice, with the top two teams meeting in the final. Keenan, depending on whom you talk to, might have been the reason for the change.
In ’80 at Regina, Keenan-coached Peterborough had a spot in the final sewn up ahead of the final round-robin game against the Cornwall Royals, the Québec league champ. Cornwall needed to win to make the final. A Peterborough win would put the hometown Regina Pats in the final.
So, Peterborough didn’t put up much of a fight in the third period as Cornwall surged back to win. It was easy to jump to conclusions about “Rigged!” and the Petes tanking the game in order to avoid facing the local team. The final two days later was a “gong show” of titanic proportions.
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind.
“There are no conspiracy theories.”
— Geoffrey S. Smith, 1941-2021
The Canadian Hockey League, the parent group of the Ontario, Québec and Western leagues (OHL, QMJHL, WHL), is professional hockey. Amateur sports ends when you pay the coach. Full stop.
Fun episode!