GLOVE, SMELL THE

He Score, He Shoot's own Moose reminded me of something recently. No, not that Greek men invented it or that he needs Nair for Hair. He used two words, two words that sounded dirty. Not dirty in a salacious way. Two words that in the context Moose was using it became almost swearwords. Certainly distasteful and most definitely a sentence on its own: Alexandre Daigle.

The year before Daigle was drafted 1st overall he played 53 games for the Victoriaville Tigers and in those 53 games he scored 45 goals and added 92 assists. Add that to a respectful 85 pims and you have a clear number 1 overall pick. A can’t miss.
The 1993 draft, arguably, was as stacked as this year’s. And from the 26 first-round picks that year, 22 produced NHL careers. Names like Pronger, Kariya, Koivu, Deadmarsh. Bertuzzi. Our pick that year was 12th and we selected Kenny Jonsson (who was later traded to the Islanders (along with our first round pick in 1997 who turned out to be Roberto Luongo….gulp!!!!) for Wendel Clark and Mathieu Schneider.)
And right now that can’t miss, number 1 pick, plays in Davos in the Swiss League, where he is 3rd line player there, too.

(Incidentally in 1999 of the 28 first round selections only 12 had careers.)

In the 1990 draft, the Islanders, who chose 6th overall, chose Scott Scissons, a center from Saskatoon. I’m sure there were smiles all around the table that year. Glad handing each other saying that Scissons was going to be a major player in their rebuild. He played 2 games. Or how about this…Martin Brodeur was selected 20th overall and he wasn’t even the first goalie chosen. Taken 9 places before him - 9 places – was Trevor Kidd.

Aki Berg was a 3rd overall selection, Luc Robitaille, 171st.


Nicklas Lidstrom was taken 53rd overall. Brett Hull: 117th. Pavel Bure; 113th. Dominik Hasek; 207th. Pavol Demitra; 227th. Peter Bondra 156th.

Patrick Roy was a 3rd round pick at 51st overall. More telling was that he was the 3rd goalie chosen. In that same draft, at 23rd and 42nd respectively, were Goalies Steve Billington and Daryl Reaugh. Who? Exactly.

In 1996 with our 13th selection, 204th overall, we selected Tomas Kaberle. The 12 selections before him; Reggie Berg, Chirs Bogas, Dmitri Yakushin, Brandon Sugden, Peter Cava, Vladimir Antipov, Jason Sessa, Konstantin Kalmikov, Mike Lankshear, Francis Larivee and Marek Posmyk combined don’t have as many points as Kaberle had last week. That's last week (in italics.)
That year two D went 1st and 2nd in the draft. Chris Phillips and Andrei Zyuzin …I know I don’t even have to finish the thought for you all.

And Dougie…450 goals, 963 assists, 14 hundred and 14 points, good Kingston boy, Hockey Hall of Fame first ballot Dougie…134th.