Prospects making their case

Brian Lawton was the first overall pick from the 1983 draft, an 18-year-old playing for the Minnesota North Stars. Player development, it is safe to say, wasn't quite the same back then as it is today.

"I had six games in my rookie season where I was a DNP," he recalls. "Did Not Play. Took the skate, then didn't get a shift for the entire game."

Now, for a 160-pound teenager in the old Chuck Norris Division, the end of the bench may well have been the safest place on some nights. But could you imagine today, if the Winnipeg Jets or Edmonton Oilers kept their prized first-rounders in the National Hockey League, then sat Mark Scheifele or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins at the end of the bench for an entire game?

No, the decisions being made in those two cities revolve around whether starting the pro careers of Scheifele and Nugent-Hopkins this October is best for their long-term development. If they stay, they are both going to play.

At the time of this writing - before the pre-season games played Thursday evening - Scheifele led the entire NHL with seven points in his four pre-season games. Nugent-Hopkins was tied for second with six points.

But with two games left in the pre-season for most teams - likely one start each for the two rookie phenoms - the opposition is about to get stiffer. Once the season starts, it jumps up another level.

We know Nugent-Hopkins and Scheifele can make the grade against lineups peppered with AHL and junior players. But no one knows more than last year's Calder Trophy winner - Carolina's Jeff Skinner - the challenge of walking straight out of junior and into the big leagues.

"On the ice it is just the size and the speed of the players," Skinner told reporters in Winnipeg this week. "The difference between this league and any other league is that any forward line, any player on the ice, can handle the puck and can shoot. They all have the skills.

"So there's just no room for soft-player errors out there."

"The NHL is not a league that you ease into; where you know what to expect," said last year's No. 1 overall pick, Taylor Hall. He, like Skinner, played right away and thrived as a rookie. "I knew the players were going to be bigger, stronger, faster. I don't think I realized how stiff the competition was going to be. It took me, probably 20 games to really get used to it.

"Nugent-Hopkins has shown, in the exhibitions at least, that he can play at the NHL level."

Scheifele, a centre, has bounced around the Jets pre-season lineup, looking the best with Evander Kane on his wing. Still, he's been better than centres Nik Antropov and Alex Burmistrov thus far, and would open as the Jets' second line centre behind Bryan Little if the season began tomorrow.

In Edmonton, Nugent-Hopkins has been magic on a line with left-winger Taylor Hall and right-winger Jordan Eberle. With another unit of Shawn Horcoff between Ryan Smyth and Ales Hemsky, head coach Tom Renney said of Tuesday's pre-season game against Phoenix, "You actually looked down, and you had weapons."

They haven't said that in Edmonton for a while.

Nugent-Hopkins has extraordinary vision. The thought of him growing up next to a potentially dominant scorer like Hall, with a sniper like Eberle on the other side? It has fans in Edmonton drooling this fall.

"That was one of the first things I thought of when I was at the draft table, and I knew they were going to take him," Hall said of Nugent-Hopkins. "It would be pretty fun to play with an elite passer like that.

"I envision us on a line - whether it's this year or next."

There are so many elements, so much forecasting to be done with both players, by both organizations. Scheifele, for instance, only has a single year of major junior hockey behind him. Nugent-Hopkins has three seasons and one 106-point campaign in Red Deer, but keeping him in Edmonton would mean missing a chance for one last dominant WHL season, plus a world junior tournament being held in Alberta.

Head coaches Claude Noel and Renney know all that, but then these kids go out and lead their teams in pre-season scoring.

"I'm trying to keep a level head, and not get too excited about the sexiness of this player," Renney said. "He has to be a complete player; he has to be able to play a complete game.

"Whether it's his time now, or his time a year from now, the most important thing now is that the Edmonton Oilers organization is big-time arrow up."

Mark Spector is the senior columnist on sportsnet.ca