“Recent NHL history is dotted with players who became all-stars despite being passed over in the early rounds of the draft — players such as Joe Pavelski, Dustin Byfuglien, Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg and Daniel Alfredsson.
While those may be some of the greatest steals in history, there have been others since 2005, the period studied by the Sun.
They include players such as Patric Hornqvist (Nashville, 7th round), Ondrej Palat (Tampa Bay, 7th), Anton Stralman (Toronto, 7th), Mark Stone (Ottawa, 6th), Brendan Gallagher (Montreal, 5th), Niklas Hjalmarsson (Chicago, 4th), T.J. Brodie (Calgary, 4th), Johnny Gaudreau (Calgary, 4th), Braden Holtby (Washington, 4th), Kris Letang (Pittsburgh, 3rd), Brad Marchand (Boston, 3rd) and Jonathan Quick (Los Angeles, 3rd).
“It’s not necessarily who is the biggest, strongest and fastest at 17 or just turning 18, but it’s who projects and whose game projects,” Winnipeg Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff says. “Who is going to have that growth spurt and go from 5-foot-10 to 6-foot-2? Generally speaking, with those late-round or mid-round gems, when you look back you might say, ‘Man oh man, he was small, he looked frail, or boy, his skating didn’t look good at all, he was so weak.’ But now he’s a powerful skater and it’s because he’s matured.”
No one saw it coming at the time.
The kid had some decent attributes, but was a step slow and had his work ethic questioned by some scouts.
Yet the Dallas Stars made the heist of the last decade in the fifth round of the 2007 NHL draft.
The Stars grabbed Jamie Benn from the Victoria Grizzlies of the British Columbia Hockey League with the 129th pick that year and he has developed into one of the best forwards in the NHL, an Art Ross Trophy winner, all-star and Olympian.
“A lot of people say we knew what we were doing,” Stars assistant general manager Les Jackson says. “We were lucky. It’s a bonus, for sure.”
It’s rare that a player taken that low develops into anything more than an average NHLer, with the large majority of fifth-rounders never playing a game in the league.
“We recognized his ability, but none of us can say we knew he was going to be that good,” says Jackson, who has been with the Stars organization for 28 years. “I’ve been around a long time and I’ve seen him come up all the way. I thought he’d be good, but I never guessed he’d be that good.”
There’s a trend here, with all the aforementioned players performing well above their position in their draft class.
In most cases, the steals even out, as almost every team has a first-round bust or two.
The important thing is, if you are going to whiff on the first-rounders, you better have scouts mining for gems in the lower rounds, identifying potential and weaknesses that can be overcome.
In Benn’s case, it was his skating and the fact that he was playing junior-A hockey on Vancouver Island that scared off the scouts. Some amateur scouts wondered if he was a poor skater, or simply was not trying hard enough. Jackson says many scouts simply didn’t see him, because he played in an out-of-the-way location.
“It’s a good scouting lesson for lots of us,” Jackson says. “You never know where players come from, you’ve just got to go and see them.”
The Stars took a chance and, boy, are they happy they did.
“He just grasped the opportunity, recognized that some of the things we were talking about were important and once he grasped the concepts he took his own game and went with it.
“All the credit goes back to him.”
https://torontosun.com/2016/06/21/stars-jamie-benn-is-draft-day-steal-of-the-last-decade
by Yokepearl
