Gare Joyce

Gare Joyce writes regularly on junior hockey for Sportsnet.ca. A veteran journalist, Joyce is the author of Future Greats and Heartbreaks: A Year Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts, When the Lights Went Out: How One Brawl Ended Hockey's Cold War and Changed the Game and Sidney Crosby: Taking the Game by Storm. He also writes for ESPN The Magazine, espn.com and several Canadian magazines.

A few suggestions for how the Ontario Hockey League could fix a flaw in their draft system.

It's easy to love junior-hockey games. It's hard to stomach junior-hockey drafts.

The raison d'etre for drafts through the gamut of sport is the same. Last-place picks first and the champions go last in the attempt to level the playing field. Those who need talent to compete get the first shot at the best available players. Nothing could seem fairer.

Junior-hockey, however, doesn't quite work that way. It's a weird hybrid of a draft and recruiting in the U.S. college mode. Some of the best players will announce their intention to forego junior hockey to play in the NCAA but then, after a CHL power drafts them on the cheap, they suddenly have changes of hearts. In reality, well before the draft, they've been in back-channel negotiations with one or two teams that are desired destinations.

The result: The ice is tilted in the favour of a few franchises in the biggest and most lucrative markets. It's unsavoury. It's bad for the game. And it has been going on for so long that many of the hindmost teams can't even work up indignation anymore-they just accept it as business as usual.

Word is that the OHL is going to crack down. Better now than never, I suppose.

I couldn't confirm this bit of buzz but evidently league commissioner Dave Branch has told general managers that any such gaming of the draft has to come to an end. Anyone who tries to skate around the spirit of a fair and even draft will be subject to significant fines, in the neighbourhood of $200,000. A number like that is enough to throw a chill on the practice if not eliminate it. I wish a bigger number was attached with it. Then again, I'm not convinced even a seven-figure fine would effectively end it (or withstand a court challenge). One league executive said: "Even if you know it, how do you prove it?"

Wholesale changes on entry rules for major junior are desperately needed.

True story, it's going back a few years but it illustrates both the practice of the draft's black art and the mindset of the teams who are victimized by it.

Back during Pete DeBoer's tenure, the Plymouth Whalers were masters of the draft con. A kid from Michigan who would be a first- or second-round prospect would swear on a stack of Bibles that he was bound for a NCAA school-and who among us wouldn't believe them, including the NCAA schools that he was talking to. And then, miracle of miracles, the Whalers would draft the kid as a seeming afterthought in a late round and, yup, somehow this young man would land in the Whalers' camp.

I remember sitting with a general manager one game and asking him about a Whaler who fit this profile. He didn't have it in him to work up real anger. "We know they're going to do it, but if they're going to do it, could they at least take the kid in the first couple of rounds, rather than the eighth?" he said.

It wasn't the draft game that the short-changed GM hated as much as the impunity of the game-players.

One classic episode of a come-uppance goes back just as far but it is forever burned in the memories of all who were present to witness it. Go back to one of the last in-arena drafts, prior to the advent of the online/conference call now in practice. Tim Gleason, a U.S.-born kid and an elite prospect at age 15, had made all the right noises about going the NCAA route. The Windsor Spitfires rolled the dice and selected him with a top 10 pick, before Plymouth could call his name out. This led Gleason's representative, Eddie Mio, to cross the arena floor and throw a tantrum-and a sweater in the face of the Windsor GM. The Spitfires hadn't fallen in line-everyone was supposed to know that he was going to Plymouth. Profanities rained down and so did promises that Gleason would never report.

(In the end, Gleason did and Windsor actually worked out pretty well for him, putting him on the NHL track. The tantrum probably had as much to do with Mio's loss of face with the Gleason family as anything else. Weird thing, that Mio, a son of Windsor himself, would be so bent out of shape about the kid going to the Spitfires.)

Look, you have to know that the system is badly broken when London manages to land Patrick Kane in the fifth round of a draft and Sam Gagner in the fourth the following year. That's not a product of a random shuffle. That's strictly dealing from the bottom. Both Kane and Gagner advertised plans to go to college. Both had a change of heart. You can say that the Knights drafted wisely and their gambles paid off ... just don't expect OHL general managers to take up the chorus. (Even the ones who do it themselves.)

And of course the OHL doesn't have sole ownership of the problem. Angelo Esposito, the top-ranked Q-eligible prospect in his draft year, was all set to go to the University of New Hampshire but then the Quebec Remparts came knocking with a middle first-rounder. Quelle surprise. If you think that the Remparts were actually gambling on convincing Esposito to come ... well, don't let anybody sell you the Victoria Bridge.

I've been struggling to think of a NCAA coach that I like. Mike Eaves at Wisconsin would be one, I guess. But the fact is, they get jerked around pretty badly in all this too. I don't need to like them to sympathize with them. But you have all these little con men flown in for tours of the campus while talking to a CHL GM or two on the sly ... it just reeks.

One of the obstacles in getting fair and equal treatment for all OHL and CHL teams in the draft is the fact that all franchises are not equal. Some have hugely profitable, others just make ends meet. Some are close to good post-secondary schools, others have limited options. Some are simply more attractive locations than others. How to balance this? Or, at least, better balance it?

My Rx: I'd like to see players have to declare their intentions to enter the draft. That long before a league entry draft, teams have to know the elite players are coming or are staying away.

How to make that work:

1. Have league each OHL general manager submit a list of the top 100 draft-eligible players.

2. A general manager goes through this drill with the knowledge that he can only draft names on his own list through the first four rounds.

3. Every player who is named on any of the lists is to receive a $1,000 advance against his honorarium to play for his team. (The costs here are picked up by the respective GMs. A kid on all 20 lists will cost a general manager $50. If he alone nominates another prospect he's on the hook for the whole grand but at least he knows that he can alone draft him.)

4. The $1,000 payment should be enough to void NCAA eligibility. Therefore, once a player cashes a cheque, he's out of the NCAA mix. The major junior teams can pass along proof of the payments to the NCAA head office and, if they want to really jump-start it, to rival coaches who were reportedly recruiting the prospect. If he doesn't cash the cheque he's ineligible for the draft. He is placed on a suspended list and must wait a year to re-apply.

5. Once a team drafts a player listed, that team has to pay back the other teams that listed that player. (So it is that everything will basically balance out.)

6. Out of consideration for the best students among the prospects (university-track marks from their respective high schools will be needed to back this up) they can upon approval submit a list of, say, five cities where they have post-secondary options. Sorry, Owen Sound and Soo and Belleville, but if you draft them, you have them as long as they're in high school. Afterwards, they're assets to trade at least.

Look, I'm sure that there are holes here. I've arbitrarily picked the numbers here-100 could be 50 or it could be a few more. I guess if a kid doesn't go in the first five rounds he's entitled to have a few options. There are a few different approaches that could be taken-the payments could be based on those who are brought in or invited to the midget showcase. What do you do if a kid chooses not to report? Well, maybe some form of compensatory pick would be in order. The basic principle though is simply a matter of timing: Players lose their NCAA eligibility once they've played for major junior teams, what's to stop you from voiding it before they're drafted and as a condition of being draft eligible?

The system as it is now is under-regulated, both on the CHL end and on the NCAA's side. They've given the players the catbird seats allowing them to play once side vs. the other. The fast-and-loose draft that is in place favours the few and mighty and doesn't give all franchises a fair shot.

Stuff that fell out of my notebook ... If John Tavares passes Peter Lee's league scoring record by a single goal, Lee should find himself a lawyer and pursue all legal recourses to have an asterisk attached the JT's number. A goal that Tavares scored against Guelph this week was so clearly kicked in-well, it was less Mike Bossy than Ronaldo. A team that might trade up for the No. 1 pick: Porto ... Talked to one scout the other day and he figures that the danger team for the Western Conference heavyweights is Plymouth. Said that the Whalers are a different team since Mike Vellucci went behind the bench a couple of months back after a sluggish start to the season. I thought he did a heckuva job with the Whalers when they went to the Mem Cup in 2007. Funny thing that sticks in my memory: At the press conference after the Whalers suffered a loss in the opening round at that tournament, Vellucci said it was his fault. Nobody else's. Everyone just sorta looked around the room, just to make sure we heard him right. Another thing: I've never seen anyone complain so much about a tie for a Christmas gift than he Vellucci did in this video. Seriously, though, they've played the best teams in the league on level terms even though I look at their line-up and don't see a lot of break-out talent (limited guys drafted, none of their draft-eligibles ranked in the top 200 NA skaters according to Central Scouting) ...