“Sometimes,” said NHL scout Dan Marr, “your draft year doesn’t go 100 per cent according to plan.”
That’s all there really is to say about Jakob Chychrun, who was disappointed when his stock plummeted on draft day, but who is probably having a good laugh now after being told on Wednesday that he is staying with the Arizona Coyotes for the rest of the season.
Call the 16th overall pick the steal of the draft if you want. But Chychrun is a classic example of why scouts sometimes have very short memories and get it wrong.
At this time last year, the hulking 6-foot-2 and 215-pound defenceman was considered the consensus No. 2 pick after Auston Matthews. But after a season in which he failed to make Canada’s world junior team, was victimized in several YouTube clips, and managed only 11 goals and 49 points for a Sarnia Sting team that was upset in the first round of the playoffs, scouts had soured on his potential.
Chychrun was no longer considered a top-three pick. He wasn’t even a top-three defenceman, getting selected after Olli Juolevi (Vancouver, fifth overall), Mikhail Sergachev (Montreal, ninth), Jake Bean (Carolina, 13th) and Charles McAvoy (Boston, 14th), all of whom are back playing in junior or college. A total of 15 teams passed on him.
“He might have been on a roller-coaster ride at times,” said Marr, chief scout for NHL Central Scouting, told Postmedia News prior to the draft. “Looking at the big picture he brings all the skills and attributes of a bona fide top-two NHL defenceman.”
Eight games into his rookie season, Chychrun is certainly living up to that description. He has one goal and three points, as well as a team-best plus-2 rating for the NHL-worst Coyotes, who have allowed eight more goals than they have scored. In a 3-2 win against the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday, Chychrun logged the third-most minutes on the team, playing on both the power play and penalty kill.
“He played 23 minutes last night,” head coach Dave Tippett told Arizona Sports reporter Craig Morgan. “Do you think we’re just going to say, ‘Hey, go away now?’”
Indeed, the Coyotes are more than happy to have Chychrun. In fact, the team traded up four spots in order to select him with the No. 16 pick, which could end becoming the best trade in franchise history.
He played 23 minutes last night. Do you think we’re just going to say, ‘Hey, go away now?’
Then again, it’s only been eight games. And it’s only been four months since the draft, so let’s hold off on calling Chychrun the best defenceman of his class. He might end up being that. Right now, he is simply the most mature youngster playing on a rebuilding team that has room and patience for him to develop.
Still, it isn’t the first time a player plummeted down the rankings only to prove teams wrong. In 2010, team after team passed on projected top-five pick Cam Fowler, whom Anaheim eventually selected 11th overall. He was only one of five players from that year to jump to the NHL from the draft floor and has appeared in the third-most games.
Like Fowler, who was on every scout’s radar since he was 15, Chychrun’s problem might have been that he peaked too early. He was the No. 1 overall pick in the OHL in 2014 and exploded onto the scene as a 16-year-old with 16 goals and 33 points in 42 games. Scouts praised his size, shot and skating ability and called him a can’t-miss two-way defenceman.
Some even wondered if he could unseat Matthews as the No. 1 overall pick.
“His ability to take the puck and go is just outstanding,” Sting head coach and former NHL defenceman Derian Hatcher told Postmedia News last year. “That’s the first thing that everybody notices, to be honest with you. Everybody just kind of looks at each other. That’s one of those special talents to have.”
Maybe if Chychrun had made Canada’s junior team, more would have seen him on the international stage and his stock wouldn’t have fallen so significantly. Maybe if the Sting had won Game 7 of their first-round playoff series, he would have had more time to impress scouts in the month before the draft.
Either way, half the league’s GMs have to be asking their scouts why, exactly, they passed on a player who is one of only five 2016 draftees (along with Matthews, Patrik Laine, Jesse Puljujarvi and Matthew Tkachuk) still playing in the NHL this season.
“I’ve been saying for a while I think I can play in this league,” Chychrun told reporters.
No one doubts that anymore.