When Aaron Ekblad showed up at the draft, scouts touted his physical maturity.
“Eighteen going on 30” was the standard description and the consensus was that coming straight out of junior at 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds as measured by NHL Central Scouting Service, he was well-prepared to stand up to the rigours and demands of play in the NHL.
More on the 2016 NHL Combine here:
Physical testing at the combine indicated that the book on Ekblad was pretty accurate—he was as close to straight as you could expect. A surprise, however, was that he was bettered in a few tests by a couple of little heralded defencemen: Brett Lernout, then of the Swift Current Broncos, and Blake Siebenhaler, a Fort Wayne, Indiana native who plays with the Niagara Ice Dogs.
Lernout might not have been that much of a surprise—he was 6-foot-4, 201 pounds and, as a late September birthday, one of the oldest prospects at the combine. But Siebenhaler was dynamite in a plain wrapper, 6-feet even and 179.5 pounds.
You have to figure that the physical testing could only have helped Lernout’s and Siebenhaler’s stock in the draft, the former going 73rd overall to Montreal and the latter four picks later to Columbus. Lernout was called up from St. John’s this season and Siebenhaler was a leader of the Niagara team that reached the OHL Final.
