If you’ve ever wondered how excited scouts and management groups get for events like the WHL Prospects Draft, many scouts will refer to the draft as everything from their Super Bowl to Christmas Day.
That’s no different in the Brandon Wheat Kings office, where Director of Hockey Operations Chris Moulton and Head Coach and GM Marty Murray preside over a mountain of scouting reports and a bevy of screens connecting them to members of their staff across the hockey world. Draft day is quite a production, as befits the culmination of so much work, but it can also be a fun day as well.
“When you’re in the rinks from September to April, enduring good rinks and bad rinks, cold rinks and warm rinks, all that work comes to fruition over two days,” Moulton said. “All the work gets us to where we want to be, and all the kids we’ve liked, we get to pick seven to ten of them and that’s always exciting.”
The draft will be split into two days once again, with the first round of the draft taking place on the night of Wednesday, May 6 and the remaining rounds beginning at 11:00 AM the following day. The Wheat Kings hold the 15th overall pick in the first round.
“Everybody has a judgement early and a judgement late, and usually everybody gets players they like,” said Moulton. “On the top end of the draft, there are a lot of good players. I would say there might not be the depth on the back end, but the exciting part is just seeing what arises, and this year will be different than others. We’re excited for what will happen early.”
Perhaps a draft with no standout strengths at any one position is just the thing for the Wheat Kings, whose prospect pool excelled at all positions this past season. Up front, a long string of young forwards put together impressive seasons, while on defense the Wheat Kings had numerous players up for league awards.
“We’re going to go for the best player available,” Moulton said. “We feel we have an even amount of depth in our prospect pool, both at forward and on defense, and even goaltending. We’re going to take best player as much as we can. We’ll have to have a balance, but going into the draft, there’s no specific area of need other than adding the best players possible.”
“Three of our defensemen, two won the defenseman of the year for their league and one was a finalist,” he added. “The numbers some of our forward prospects put up, we’re grateful that the kids are doing their part. We’re excited and proud that we have a bright future in the immediate future.”
This year’s prospects draft does promise to be different in some ways outside of the players being selected. First and foremost, the U.S. Priority Selection (which netted the Wheat Kings Levi Ellingsen first overall last year) is no longer taking place. The U.S. and prospects drafts have merged into one.
“We didn’t know how good we had it when we won it (the U.S. lottery) last year,” Moulton said. “We knew we’d gotten someone special moving forward, but man is it ever crazy to think we won a lottery and got the best player for us and now this year they’ve combined them, so no more American draft. They’re thrown right in with the Western Canadian kids. There are some teams that will utilize that more than others, that’s fine too. Our biggest thing is we’re going to take the best players.”
Moulton added that while the first round and the remaining rounds being split up makes for good publicity for the league and makes it easier to turn the draft into a more widely viewed event, it doesn’t change his job too much once the draft begins.
