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.

With all the pressure a Memorial Cup brings, at least players won't have to worry about their NHL draft ranking being impacted.

RIMOUSKI -- Ninety-nine and 44 one-hundredths per cent of scouting for this year’s NHL entry draft is already complete. Fact is, a vast majority of it is done even before the CHL playoffs start. The first scouting reports on draft-eligible players were filed back when they were 16-year-olds, maybe even earlier for some.

As exciting as you might find the Memorial Cup in coming days, doings in Rimouski will likely have minimal effect on the order of names called in Montreal next month. That’s the tournament’s recent history. Nobody shoots up to No. 1 off a strong Memorial Cup. No unknown emerges and establishes himself overnight as a Top Ten pick. That might play in the movies, not in real life.

Look at Dustin Tokarski. He was lights-out in the Spokane goal all through last year’s playoffs and right up to the last minute of a nail-biter Memorial Cup final, and still he was sitting there at No. 122, 12 other goaltenders taken ahead of him. He did all he could have been asked to do and more but the report on him was etched in stone: Too small for the next level.

Yeah, NHL scouts do come to the Memorial Cup, maybe not quite in the numbers you’d expect. The under-18s, for instance, are much more of a priority. That gets full attendance from scouts who travel (as opposed to those who just mine their own regions). Those who do come to the Memorial Cup aren’t looking to tear up their scouting reports compiled over a season or two. They come to the tournament with players categorized, rated and slotted. Mostly, they come to have their opinions confirmed and to check out the form of any kids who were selected in previous drafts. And to watch some good hockey.

I haven’t done a head count and my own survey of the scouting fraternity is by no means definitive, but it does seem that this year’s tournament will attract fewer scouts than usual. And some who’ll make their way to Rimouski will put in two- or three-day cameos only, getting a chance to watch each team once and getting out long before knock-out play begins.

Fact is, Rimouski is a bit of a trek. The past couple of Memorial Cups have been awarded to franchises that made it easy for scouts to attend. Last May it was Kitchener, home base for at least a couple of NHL scouts I know and within an hour of dozens more. The year before it was Vancouver and it was even more convenient for even greater numbers. Rimouski, well, I took a quick look at the NHL scouting lists and I can’t find a one who lives there. Not that there isn’t quality of life there, just that it isn’t handy for getting around the Q, never mind going national or international.

Yeah, scouts know how to get there and they have over the years. I remember hanging with Don Murdoch in the late 90s, back when he was scouting for the Tampa Bay Lightning. The franchise was at its absolute nadir: the 'mysterious absentee Japanese owners' phase. There weren’t enough bodies on the Lightning’s scouting staff to get a decent game of poker going and management squeezed the scouting budget down to the bare minimum. Tampa Bay was so bad that they locked up the first overall pick not long after Christmas and Vincent Lecavalier was the draft-class star. Murder didn’t have the coin to make repeated trips to Rimouski, or anywhere else really, so he parked in Rimouski for a great long stretch. Didn’t want to blow the call. And though he took some flak for the team’s next pick, so many players in that year’s draft he didn’t get to see, there’s no second-guessing a 64th pick overall on Lacavalier’s Rimouski teammate, Brad Richards.

The scouts made their way out to Rimouski to see Sidney Crosby. They would have gone just for pleasure, I guess, but, as it would later turn out, every team had a shot at him. Or at least a ping-pong ball. A fluke of the collective-bargaining staring contest and lockout. (Imagine how different the league would look if Pittsburgh hadn’t won the lottery and Anaheim, first runner-up, squeaked in).

NHL scouts know that it will be hard to get out to the tournament and they know that rooms are at a premium, there just aren’t that many hotels in the burgh. The idea of going out there on a whim at this late stage is a non-starter and that wasn’t the case with either Kitchener or Vancouver.

There are a few compelling draft interests, mind you. I’ve mentioned a few of them in previous missives. From NHL Central Scouting’s list of North American skaters: 11. D Dmitry Kulikov (Drummondville); 16. D Ryan Ellis (Windsor); 21. RW Jordan Caron (Rimouski); 52. D Tyson Barrie (Kelowna). It drops off pretty fast after that.

It’s not so unusual that an upcoming draft isn’t heavily represented at the Memorial Cup. Teams that make it this deep have pointed to a championship run for a year or two. They’re looking to ice mature teams rather than evolving ones. The world juniors and the Memorial Cup are a piece on this count—19-year-old tournaments.

What is unusual, mind you, is the fact that Windsor’s two best players are Ellis, a draft-eligible, and Taylor Hall, a 91 late birthday. Ellis, as I have written before going right back to the fall, offers you more entertainment value than anyone in the junior ranks. That said, his star was eclipsed in the late season by Hall — he has been an obvious talent since he first stepped on the ice for the Spitfires back in the fall of ’07, but his game has matured even as this season progressed. We’ll look back in a few years and wonder how Hockey Canada ever cut Hall from the world junior team. (The same might be said of Brampton’s Matt Duchene, but I digress).

Just looking at NHL Central Scouting’s ratings it’s easy to say that Kulikov and Ellis have the most on the line at this tournament, but I sorta doubt it. There isn’t a whole lot of wiggle room up for Kulikov as a lot of those slots are accounted for. He can’t jump into the top six with even the most commanding performance. Maybe Ellis could take a bit of hit if his skating is exposed, but that’s an if and not a small one. It wasn’t exposed versus London or Brampton (or at the under-20s really). Some scouts see the both of them as Top Ten picks. And I suspect that those scouts will see them that way whether they’re in standing room at the Colisee or watching at home.