Great Expectations

With Sean Day set to become the fourth young man to be awarded ‘exceptional’ status for early entry in the OHL draft, it got me thinking about some of the players who have carried the sometimes impossibly heavy mantle of supreme expectation into the NHL draft.

Who were the most hyped players ever? And did they turn out?

It turns out that while scouts don’t get everything right, when they declare en masse that a player is the second coming of Gretzky/Orr/Crosby, they’re usually pretty close to the mark. For every failed first overall draft pick – think Patrick Stefan (’99, Atlanta) or Hailey’s big brother Doug Wickenheiser (’80, Montreal), there’s a Guy Lafleur or a Mario Lemieux to remind them that serious can’t-miss prospects seldom do.

Last year’s OHL draft exception, Connor McDavid of the Erie Otters, looks like he could be the real deal, but he has a couple of years to go before he’s even drafted into the big leagues. The first ‘exceptional’ player – John Tavares – certainly brought a trunk of press clippings into his draft year after a standout junior career with the Oshawa Generals and the London Knights. But did he make the list?

The following is my take on the Top 10 most hyped hockey players in history:

1.       Wayne Gretzky. The Great One was turning heads and making headlines from the day he laced up skates. When he was 10 years old he scored 378 goals in a single season, which was when I first heard of him. At 16 he was the top scorer at the World Juniors and was giving grown men fits at the age of 17 in the WHA. Considered the greatest player in NHL history, Gretzky – more than anybody else – lived up to his top billing.

2.       Bobby Orr. There was nobody like Orr, who simply revolutionized the game. The Boston Bruins recognized that very early, and bought the entire Parry Sound minor hockey organization just to ensure Orr – who would star for the Oshawa Generals in junior – would turn pro with them. Smartest decision Boston would ever make, I’d say.

3.       Jean Beliveau – The last of the pre-draft superstars on the list, the always classy Beliveau carried the weight of the entire province of Quebec when he was a junior, but Le Gros Bill spurned the Montreal Canadiens’ offer to play in the NHL, choosing instead to remain a star with the amateur Quebec Aces. Montreal’s solution was the same as Boston’s a decade or so later – spread the money around. The Habs bought the entire Quebec Senior League and turned it pro, effectively forcing Beliveau to sign with the NHL club.

4.       Mario Lemieux – There are some who would argue that Super Mario is the best hockey player ever. If they’re wrong, it’s not by much, and Lemieux had a spectacular junior career with the Laval Titans – smashing scoring records set 13 years earlier by #6 on this list – before launching his NHL career with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

5.       Eric Lindros – The Next One was a man among boys during his junior days with Oshawa, leading the Gens to the Memorial Cup championship in 1991. A little controversy helped ramp up the hype machine as well: Lindros said no to Sault Ste. Marie when the club chose him as the top pick in his OHL draft year and told the Quebec Nordiques to take a hike as well at the NHL draft, forcing a trading frenzy that saw him traded to two different teams at the same time.

6.       Guy Lafleur – The flower smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes a day and didn’t practice worth a damn, but he was worth every penny the Canadiens paid him (and every Ralph Backstrom they had to trade to the sad-sack Oakland Seals to draft him), electrifying fans with his play and leading Montreal to five Stanley Cups.

7.       Sidney Crosby – The first player on this list to have the internet and a million media channels to help pump up the promotion machine, number 87 has lived up to his end of the bargain after a standout junior career with Rimouski. Crosby has led Pittsburgh to a Stanley Cup, and scored a Golden Goal for Canada to cement his status as the world’s best player.

8.       Gilbert Perreault – Pity the poor Vancouver Canucks, who lost the spin of the roulette wheel in 1970 and had to settle for Dale Tallon, instead of Perreault.  The French Connection superstar went on to play 17 Hall of Fame seasons, all with the Buffalo Sabres, after his junior career with the Montreal Junior Canadiens. The first true first overall pick, Perreault perhaps pitied himself at the time of his selection: if he had been one year older he would have been protected by the Habs as a native son.

9.       Alexander Daigle – the first and only bust on this list, Daigle was projected to be the saviour of the second-year Ottawa Senators when he was chosen first overall in 1993. He did stick around for more than 600 NHL games, but never played near expectations.

10.   John Tavares – Yet another Oshawa General on this list, Tavares would probably rank even higher if he was drafted a year earlier, when he was scoring 72 goals and wowing scouts in every rink he played. But his final junior year was slightly underwhelming and there were rumours that Swedish defenceman Victor Hedberg would go first overall instead. The Islanders are glad they didn’t listen to those rumours.

For Honourable Mentions, I also considered Alexander Ovechkin (2004), Vincent Lecavalier (1998), Denis Potvin (1973) and Ilya Kovalchuk (2001).

For the record, six players on the list are already in the Hall of Fame, two are still active and one (Lindros) will get in eventually, despite what the haters have to say.

Daigle’s selection into the hallowed Hall appears unlikely.