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Quick Hits: August 15, 2021
1) The Flyers announced on Saturday that they have signed 2021 second-round pick Samu Tuomaala to an entry-level contract. The Oulu, Finland native tore up the Under-18 World Championships in Texas this spring with 11 points (5g, 5a) in seven games. He split last season between the Finnish J20 level and Liiga with Kärpät Oulu. Recently, he was selected by the OHL's Sudbury Wolves with the 31st overall pick of the CHL Import Draft.
In a statement issued on June 30, Sudbury general manager Rob Papineau said, "We were very excited to be able to select Samu in the draft, He’s an elite player in his age group in the world and was a standout at World U17 Hockey Challenge last fall. He has excellent speed and a pro shot."
Regardless of whether Tuomaala plays in Finland or the Ontario League next season, his entry-level contract with the Flyers is slide-rule eligible. Because he was drafted out of Europe, he falls outside the CHL/AHL age rule. As such, theoretically, he'd be eligible to play for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms before age 20.
2) Flyers left winger Oskar Lindblom celebrates his 25th birthday today. Former Flyers right winger Jakub Voracek turns 32 today. Retired Flyers Alumni with August 15 birthdays include Marty Biron (1977), Craig MacTavish (1958) and the late Jim Cunningham (1956-2011).
3) 1990s era Phantoms fan favorite enforcer Frank "the Animal" Bialowas is the guest of hosts Derek Settlemyre and Riley Cote on the current edition of Nasty Knuckles. Watch the podcast below (and check out the Flyers Warriors jersey that Nasty sports).
From 2017 until Jay took ill with West Nile Virus last year, he and Keenan worked off and on on the book project. I was fortunate enough to transcribe roughly 14 hours of interviews that Jay did with Keenan and others who played for or worked with "Iron Mike". The interviews I helped transcribe covered an array of topics; Keenan's schooling and influences, his friendship and working relationship with the late E.J. McGuire, his junior and AHL coaching days and the first two years with the Flyers.
Through the transcriptions, I got a different perspective on the sometimes-controversial longtime NHL coach. He's a pretty complicated guy; not always a very sympathetic or likeable figure in the hockey context but an extremely intelligent and detail-oriented man who has led a very interesting life. As former New York Rangers publicist Barry Watkins said to Jay, "When you separate Mike the person from Mike the hockey coach, he's likeable."
Having been privy to much of the interview material, on and off-the-record, that Jay collected from Keenan and others for the project, I was very excited to see the eventual finished product. Unfortunately, Jay had to step aside when he became ill and he did not live to see its completion. The publisher and Keenan worked with Scott Morrison to finish the book, which will be released in 2022.
I am hoping that Jay's vital role in the project is fully acknowledged in the finished product and that his estate is fairly compensated for what became his final hockey book. I don't know any of the particulars in that regard, but's it's my biggest hope that the Keenan/Greenberg dynamic (they had a very strong relationship and Jay could get a lot of insight and introspection out of Keenan that few others could) shines through in the published edition of the book.
5) Speaking of Jay, we once had a long conversation on the way to cover a Flyers vs. Islanders game about the popularity of "retro draft" articles. As Jay said, and I fully agreed, any organization or general manager can be made to look clueless when you do retro draft exercises, because context gets lost and its infinitely easier to apply hindsight.
I said to Jay that I find retro drafting more interesting when it's applied in a positive context than a negative one: Rather than "how could you bypass so-and-so future star for Player X that didn't make it or underachieved?" what if you change the scenario to one where you couldn't really go wrong.
We then talked about the 1990 Draft, which was one of the deepest classes in history yet which would have produced very different results with the hindsight benefit of a retro draft. I think it's pretty universally accepted that, if the 1990 Draft were done in hindsight, Jaromir Jagr would have been the first overall pick rather than the fifth. But what about the rest of the first round? This particular draft was so deep that it produced 98 players who reached the NHL and an average of 437 NHL games played even though 58.1 percent of all players selected never played a single NHL game.
Let's work with this pool of players for the 21-pick first round: Jagr (picked 5th overall), Owen Nolan (the actual 1st overall pick), Petr Nedved (2nd), Keith Primeau (3rd), Mike Ricci (4th, by the Flyers), Darryl Sydor (7th), Derian Hatcher (8th by Bob Clarke's Minnesota North Stars), Keith Tkachuk (19th), Martin Brodeur (20th), Bryan Smolinski (21st), Doug Weight (34th), Geoff Sanderson (36th), Mikael Renberg (40th, by the Flyers), Slava Kozlov (45th), Alexei Zhamnov (77th), Sergei Zubov (85th), Craig Conroy (123rd), Robert Lang (133rd), Peter Bondra (156th), Valeri Zelepukin (221st) and Sergei Nemchinov (244th).
More or less, this list represents the top 21 players to emerge from that year's Draft class, at least in terms of total NHL games played and/or top individual seasons. So if you were an NHL GM whom would you pick -- with full benefit of hindsight -- when your turn came up to select.
Example: You're Pat Quinn, picking for Vancouver with the second overall selection. As happened in real life, Flyers general manager Russ Farwell has offered the fourth overall pick plus an additional asset to move up to 2nd (Farwell, in real life, was targeting Nedved, whom he'd had on his team in Seattle). In real life, Quinn turned down the trade offer and selected Nedved.
In this exercise, I'd still turn down the Philadelphia trade offer if it were made. I'd select Brodeur with the second overall pick. He woudn't still be on the board at fourth, most likely.
Now you're Jim Devellano picking for Detroit at third overall. Where do you go with your pick? Do you take Keith Tkachuk? Do you go for future Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman Zubov? Do you still go for one of the real-life top 3 selections (power forward Nolan, Nedved or actual Detroit pick Primeau)? I'd personally opt for Zubov in that spot.
At fourth, you're Farwell picking for the Flyers. In a hindsight Draft, if Jagr, Brodeur and Zubov are gone, whom do you take? If this had been the real-life scenario, the Flyers would have taken Nedved, because Farwell made no secret of his desire to be able to draft the Czech defector. But in a retro draft? Can't bypass Tkachuk and his 538 career goals.
How far would the actual top 4 slide? They all had good careers in their own right. Ricci was a one-time Selke finalist, four-time Selke top four finisher, played 1,099 NHL games and was respectable enough offensively to have one 30-goal and five other 20+ goal seasons to his credit. The vast majority of NHL players would gladly trade careers.
What you find when you do even a "can't go wrong' exercise such as redrafting one of the deepest drafts in NHL history is that is really isn't as easy as it looks at first glance. That's eveb with the full benefit of historical hindsight of how every career turned out and none of uncertainties involved in scouting and projecting 18 year old players.
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