Compared to the cavalcade of first-round prospects at last year’s MasterCard Memorial Cup, this year’s tournament is fairly limited in players of interest for this year’s NHL draft. The chief focus has been Robby Fabbri, a centre for the Guelph Storm, who has been slotted 21st among North American draft-eligible skaters, according to NHL Central Scouting Service. When you account for Europeans and maybe a goaltender in the mix, that ranking would place Fabbri on the fringe of the first-round.
Two storylines (and the only major ones with a draft context) coming into the tournament were: 1. Fabbri is a very good junior player but one who, at five-feet-10.25-inches and 170 pounds as measured by CSS, will be held back by physical limitations; 2. A solid performance in London would give Fabbri a bump up the board in June.
These storylines miss the mark. I’ll address them in reverse order.
I spoke to an assortment of scouts this week and by their reckoning Central Scouting was off with its ranking of Fabbri. Half of them had Fabbri ranked from 11 to 16 overall, including Europeans. All of them had him fairly comfortably in the first round. Moreover, they say that Fabbri’s placement on their lists has been fairly consistent over the second half of the season. Any move he makes up the list is more likely a function of another prospect’s fall-off than a newfound appreciation for what he brings to the table. If Fabbri goes in the top 20, it won’t be on the strength of what has been a great post-season run.
Said one scout I spoke to this week: “Size never stops him from going where he has to go and he’s willing to take a hit, even a big hit , to make a play. No fear whatsoever. And it’s not a case of a young guy doing well because he’s around a lot of really good players. This is probably the best team in Canada and he’s one of the core players … one of the kids who sets the tone and makes things go for the team. He’s a greasy kid you’d love to have on your team and hate to play against. I’ll take one of those any day.”
The final game of the opening round of this year’s tournament provided all kinds of evidence of that. Fabbri and the Storm ran the host London Knights out of the rink and the tournament. The final score was 7-2 but the game was suspenseful up to the second intermission. Fabbri wasn’t the best forward for the winners – those honours would go to Scott Kosmachuk, a third-rounder by Winnipeg in 2012, who had a hat trick and Tyler Bertuzzi, a second-rounder by Detroit last June, who had a pair of goals, including the winner. Kosmachuk was clinical in his finishing while Bertuzzi was a face-first nuisance who bore under the skin of every Knight on the ice every shift. Still, Fabbri would deserve some mention here and not just for his two assists.
Fabbri wasn’t rolled over the boards on the penalty kill — the Storm have a full complement of 19-year-olds that they deploy in those situations. But with 45 goals during the regular season, Fabbri is a first option on the power play and a pretty effective faceoff man despite his stature. As far as his willingness and ability to take a big hit, he sacrificed his body on a couple of plays in the first 40 to create chances for others. Even more impressive was the way he didn’t bat an eye after big Knights forward Josh Anderson, five inches taller and 45 pounds heavier, ran him into the glass on a penalized hit from behind. It was a play that had you worrying about Fabbri’s safety even if he didn’t — then again, it’s those who get scared that most often end up among the wounded.
For as long as the game remained competitive, it provided scouts a pretty decent measuring stick for Fabbri in the form of one of the host team’s stars, Max Domi. Last June the Phoenix Coyotes selected Domi with the 12th overall pick. As it happens, that slot would be approximately where the scouts highest on Fabbri have him going. And size is a wash between Domi and Fabbri — Domi is built a little more solidly, but Fabbri has an inch or so in height over the Son of Tie.
For a myriad of reasons, Domi is regarded as a skills phenom — he’s a prospect who owns a magic stick, makes the puck do everything but talk and shifts into top gear in a blink of an eye. Yet, in the loss to the Storm, Domi struggled mightily. He dazzled with one move but then stickhandled himself into a dead end, a sequence that played out time and again. That would seem to be his worst possible impulse: the idea that when the crisis comes, it’s on his shoulders to make things happen by himself.
For his part, Fabbri let the puck do a lot of the work for him. Rather than over-handle the rubber, he looked to dish first and fast. If you were going to criticize him, you might like him to look for his own shot a bit more.
A couple of times Fabbri had to pick up Domi on the back-check and that provided a little window into their respective skating ability. Domi would rank in the 98th percentile in the OHL and showed a little extra jump but Fabbri was able to stick with him and do an effective job. With a little extra strength that will come working his way up to a buck-ninety or so, Fabbri has a chance to be a plus-plus skater at the next level — more likely that he’ll close on Domi than get left in his wake.
This isn’t to hammer Domi for not performing. With his team idle for a month after getting knocked off by the Storm in the second round of the OHL playoffs, it would have been a lot to ask him to carry the Knights to victory Wednesday night. But if you can mention Domi and Fabbri in the same breath, then I suspect that the latter will be gone by the time the 20th pick rolls around next month.