SAN JOSE, Calif. – As Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine continue to hopscotch around the globe, all they can really do is wait.
There will be no definitive answer about who the Toronto Maple Leafs are selecting first overall until June 24 in Buffalo, N.Y. That leaves a lot of time for the top-ranked prospects to field questions about their uncertain futures and talk about each other.
Matthews, of course, is the heavy betting line favourite to wind up in the centre of the hockey universe, but his Finnish counterpart continues to tell anyone and everyone that he should go No. 1 instead.
It’s given us a tidy little storyline to bang on about in the leadup to the draft, but it doesn’t appear to have driven much of a wedge between the teenagers.
“Everyone has their own right to their own opinion,” Matthews said Monday. “That’s his. He doesn’t mind expressing that. There’s really no problem with that. We’re all here just enjoying the process.”
They’ve reached arguably the toughest portion of their draft year. The games are done, the fitness testing is done, the team interviews are done. Now they are left to wait and wonder.
At least a trip to the Stanley Cup Final provided a welcome distraction – with Matthews, Laine, Matthew Tkachuk, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Alexander Nylander given a tour of SAP Center along with a fifth-row ticket for Game 4 between the Sharks and Penguins.
Neither Matthews nor Laine came away from last week’s draft combine in Buffalo with much sense of which direction the Leafs were leaning. There were about 10 people in the room when Matthews sat down with the team, including GM Lou Lamoriello, director of player personnel Mark Hunter and amateur scout Lindsay Hofford.
“It was very straightforward, very serious, business-like,” he said. “All of the meetings, they want to get to know you as a person off the ice. They’ve watched you play all year, so they want to get to know the kind of person you are.”
Matthews is an incredibly mature young man with the kind of world view you don’t often find among NHL prospects. The Scottsdale, Ariz.-raised centre spent this season playing pro hockey in Switzerland and counts that as a positive life experience in addition to a hockey one.
Laine is more openly gregarious in nature, almost playful, and had the kind of draft year most can only dream about. He won the world junior tournament on home ice in Helsinki and a Finnish league championship with Tappara before taking home silver from the IIHF World Hockey Championship.
A gifted goal-scoring winger, he’s likely headed to Winnipeg at No. 2.
He called the meeting with the Leafs at the draft combine the toughest of the eight he went through.
“I think that they were quite neutral,” said Laine. “They said that they will have a hard choice and it’s good that I don’t have to make the decision. I think I gave them a good impression of myself.”
Whoever gets called to the stage first in Buffalo will be in for quite a moment. They will instantly become Toronto’s top prospect and a person of great interest among the NHL’s largest fanbase.
Matthews seems ready to embrace whatever it entails.
“Obviously, it’s the hockey mecca of the world,” he said. “It seems to be the centre of the hockey universe. They’re obviously very passionate fans. As a hockey market, it’s a pretty exciting place to play.”
Matthews has kept a crazy itinerary since his Swiss league season ended in March, going from Zurich to Arizona to Florida to Michigan to Helsinki to St. Petersburg, Russia to Buffalo to Arizona and then here.
With the draft a little more than two weeks away, he’s planning to take a deep breath after leaving the Stanley Cup.
“I’m going to go home, kind of wind down a little bit,” said Matthews. “Spend some time with my family and friends. In two weeks go back to Buffalo.”
Then the long wait will be over.
