OHL Writers

Just like the Swedes, the Russian squad named for the Hlinka-Gretzky Cup, which begins August 6, 2018 in Edmonton and Red Deer, is lacking in Ontario Hockey League players.

However, the Canadian Hockey League is represented by Nikita Sedov of the Western Hockey League and Yaroslav Likhachyov of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.

There are no Ontario Hockey League players on the Swedish entry at the 2018 Hlinka-Gretzky Cup – after all this is an OHL blog and our primary objective is those players.

But if you are a draft junkie then the Hlinka-Gretzky Cup is when it all begins for players hoping to be selected at the 2019 National Hockey League Draft. TSN will carry every game beginning August 6, 2018 and streaming all games live as well in Canada while the NHL Network will televise the games in the United States.

Sweden has an interesting team, bring along three players that won’t be eligible for the NHL Draft until 2020, including goaltender Jesper Wallstedt. Sweden does have four goaltenders listed on their roster, so one of them might just be staying home.

They also have a couple of behemoth forwards in Jacob Grönhagen and Elmer Söderblom who both stand at 6’6” and 209 and 214 pounds respectively. Their defence is intriguing to say the least and we’re curious to see twin brothers Joel and Max Wahlgren.

Here is the Swedish roster:

Today, the Czech Republic announced its squad that will take part at the 2018 Hlinka Memorial Cup set to begin August 6^th, 2018. The roster includes Peterborough Petes’ Erik Cermak of the Ontario Hockey League.

The Hlinka-Gretzky Cup is the premier tournament, and the only under-18 gathering, that features the best-on-best. Scouts flock to the tournament to get the first look at National Hockey League draft eligible players as they enter the 2018-2019 season.

Here is a look at the Czech roster:

USA Hockey has made a change to it’s roster for the Hlinka-Gretzky Cup set to take place August 6, 2018.

In a statement today, USA Hockey has made the following change:

Defenseman Max Gildon (Plano, Texas/University of New Hampshire), who helped the U.S. claim the gold medal at the 2017 International Ice Hockey Federation Under-18 Men’s World Championship in Poprad and Spisska Nova Ves, Slovakia, will join the U.S. roster at the 2018 World Junior Summer Showcase. A participant a year ago at the 2017 World Junior Summer Showcase, Gildon will skate on the USA Blue roster in place of defenseman K’Andre Miller (Minnetonka, Minn./U.S. National Under-18 Team), who is unable to attend camp due to illness.

The year was 1972. The World Hockey Association emerged to challenge the National Hockey League for hockey supremacy. The WHA immediately began pillaging players from the NHL – 67 in that first summer.

At one point in the 1970’s, the two rival leagues combined for 32 teams, one more then the NHL has today. The WHA looked overseas and began signing players from Europe. Still, there was a shortage of players, or for lack of a better term, quality players.

Fast forward to 1977. It was a young Ken Linesman of the Kingston Canadians who was prepared to challenge the NHL and WHA Draft age (twenty at the time) in court.

The Birmingham Bulls had selected Linesman at that 1977 WHA Draft. The WHA immediately deemed Linesman ineligible because he was 19 years of age. Linesman filed and was granted an injunction against the WHA.

The Birmingham Bulls signed him to a contract and the rest is history. Linesman recorded 76 points during his rookie season and the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers bought his rights from the Bulls and selected him in the first round of the 1978 NHL Draft.

While the NHL’s draft age remained at twenty, the WHA began signing young players such as Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Mike Gartner, Michel Goulet and others.

The NHL and WHA were in merger negotiations for some time, and in 1979 it came to fruition as the NHL absorbed the Winnipeg Jets, New England Whalers, Edmonton Oilers and Quebec Nordiques. It was at that time the NHL lowered its draft age to eighteen.

That 1979 is widely considered the best draft class of all time. It was the lowering of that draft age that basically combined three drafts into one: 20-year-old players, and for the first time nineteen and eighteen-year-old players. If not for that drop in age, players such as Ray Bourque, Glenn Anderson along with Messier, Gartner and Goulet would not have been eligible. Oh, and Gretzky, who the Oilers were allowed to keep in the merger agreement, would not have been eligible for league play.

So, onto the question at hand.

Many believe that, with a few exceptions each year, predicting what an 18-year-old will become at the NHL level is near an impossible task and that raising the draft age to 19 or 20 will give teams a better perspective on the players they draft.

At the 1978 draft, the last draft featuring only 20-year-old players, all but three of the eighteen players selected in the first round went on to play 519 or more NHL games. Compare that to 1980 where just 10 of 21 picks played in 519 games or more. From the 1981 draft, 14 of 21 first round picks played beyond the 519-game mark.

The 2003 draft was widely considered an excellent draft. There, 23 of 30 went on to play 519 or more games. In 2004, 11 of the 30 first-round picks reached the 519-game mark.

This chart breaks down the percentage of first-round picks from these specific drafts to play in 519 or more games:

Is there something else besides age effecting the success rate?

What we’re seeing is a greater number of Europeans while the Canadian numbers have dropped. And we’re seeing a rise in the number of Americans as well and they will continue to rise as the game continues to gain popularity. Bare with me here because I am not suggesting it has anything to do with the drop in Canadians – far from it.

It’s a bigger world out there for scouts. While teams have increased their scouting staffs over the years, can one say definitively that they are getting enough looks at the players? Is a tournament here and a few games there enough? How much is enough?

Allow me to use Sean Durzi as an example. During the 2016-2017 season, I saw him play at least 20 times as well as prior to his draft year. I felt he should have been, and ranked him, 32^nd among OHL players for the 2017 NHL Draft, which would have put him in the 180 range overall. But Durzi wasn’t selected at the 2017 Draft. One year later in Dallas, the Toronto Maples Leafs would have to use a second-round pick, 52^nd overall to select him.

Is it that the Leafs hadn’t seen enough of him during the 2016-2017 season to make a fair assessment, or is it that Durzi hadn’t developed enough as an 18-year-old to make an adequate assessment? We’ll never know the answer to that, but it’s reasonable to assume that, with all the “misses” happening in drafts, that an extra year of observation should eliminate some of them.

But with the change, a legal battle is almost surely to happen as there is bound to be another Linesman out there somewhere, someday, that will bring the matter before the courts.

But the NHL’s biggest battle will be with the NHLPA not the courts. In 2004 Maurice Clarett challenged the NFL’s draft rules in court and won, but that decision was later overturned in Appeals Court. That’s because when there is a negotiated deal between the owners and the unions the non-statutory labor exemption deems that labor law trumps all else. This comes down to the NHL needing the NHLPA to agree.

However, the NHLPA has made it clear that it is opposed to raising the draft age to 19. Some argue the NHLPA doesn’t have the right to negotiate terms for players that are not yet part of the Union. They do. The NHLPA has for years negotiated on behalf of players not yet in the Union in the form of earning limits on Entry Level Contracts.

The legal battle and NHLPA battle aside, where do you stand on the draft age?

Source: Schedule and Scores – 2018 Hlinka Gretzky Cup

CALGARY, Alta. – Forty-four of the nation’s top under-18 hockey prospects will gather in Calgary at the end of July to compete for a chance to wear the Maple Leaf on home ice as part of Canada’s National Men’s Summer Under-18 Team competing at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup in Edmonton and Red Deer this August.

The invitations have been extended to four goaltenders, 14 defencemen, and 26 forwards who are developing in the CHL and CJHL, including three players who were part of Canada’s National Men’s Under-18 Team that competed at the 2018 IIHF U18 World Championship in Russia last April, going undefeated in preliminary-round action (Byram, Lafrenière, Robertson).

“Unlike our other summer camps, these players are part of a selection process from the moment they arrive, and the opportunity is to represent Canada on the world stage,” said Scott Salmond, vice-president of hockey operations and national teams for Hockey Canada. “We have a very talented group of players coming to Calgary in late July, and we will no doubt have some very difficult decisions to make when it’s time to select this year’s Canada’s National Men’s Summer Under-18 Team. The players are excited to arrive and get started, and they are all coming in with the goal of making our decision a difficult one.”

Source: 2018 National Men\’s Summer Under-18 Selection Camp Roster