NLL Insider

It’s been a couple weeks since we last checked in with a Revisiting the Draft segment and with this year’s Entry Draft about a month away, we’ll try and jam up the site with as many more draft look-backs as we can before the 2008 version touches down in Boston on the weekend of September 6 & 7.

So…

Although many usually point to the ‘02 draft as being maybe the weakest and least pro producing, the ‘04 draft definitely gives ‘02 a run for it’s money after ya breakdown exactly what that draft year left us with.

There were probably three guys that most were considering going first overall.

The fave, and the guy that did take that top spot, was Delby Powless, who blew it up at Rutgers and already had a pretty impressive box resume that included a stellar career as a Six Nations Arrows sniper, two summers worth of senior ball under his belt prior to the draft and a beauty showing at the WILC in the GTA.

The guys giving him a bit of heat were Rory Glaves and Rob Van Beek, both getting some serious buzz heading into the draft for pretty obvious reasons.

But as soon as the Bandits dealt for that top pick in a crazy series of chain reaction trades that included Minnesota, Arizona, Rochester and obviously Buffalo, ya knew Darris and Kurt were making Powless the first Native ball player taken first overall since 1994 when Rochester selected Cam Bomberry outta Nazareth. (Trivia… Who was the only other Iroquois National taken first overall in the NLL/MILL other than Powless and Bomberry? Oh yeah, and for those following, our last trivia answer was Dom Starsia).

The draft produced just 18 guys that currently play in the league, really only 14 full-time ballers on top of that. And as bad as some might say ‘02 was, they still gave us 19 ball players versus the 18 this draft did. Remember, ‘03 left us with 26 current players in the league, which is a huge difference in the world of pro box entry drafts. It’s virtually a whole round of guys that made the jump.

Anyways, onto the usual biggest winner, biggest loser, biggest bust and biggest surprise…

Biggest Winner
Well, on the day, the now defunct Vancouver Ravens did pretty damn well, picking up Rory Glaves second overall, Chris McKay seventh overall, Ian Hawksbee eleventh overall and Surrey Stickman Jr. A stud, Matt Leveque , in the final round of the day. Had the Ravens hung around, the rooks they picked up woulda made for a dynamite foundation to that team, who were struggling to regain that early success they experienced when they just stepped into the NLL.

Coincidentally, the Edmonton Rush now own three of those picks, Glaves, McKay and Hawksbee. All three playing major roles in the current Edmonton rebuild. So guess the Rush, who like Minny did in 2002, did not too bad getting top draws from this particular draft class.

The other two teams that have as many as three guys from the ‘04 draft class? New York, another team that at the time didn’t exist, and Toronto, who in recent years haven’t really scored too highly from many draft classes.

So even though they packed their bags shortly after the Entry Draft, Vancouver definitely looked the best on the day.

Biggest Loser
Couple teams didn’t have the greatest draft day, but when only 18 guys came outta that year, there were probably more teams that did poorly than the ones that did well, so guess that doesn’t say much. But if you had to pick one team that kinda crashed and burned, it had to be Rochester.

The Hawks dropped a first round pick on former Whitby Warriors snipe show and the Canuck that came before both Athan Iannucci and Jay Card at Hofstra, Mike Morrison. There were some serious concerns about Morrison’s fitness during the summer heading into the draft and after never finding a spot on the Hawks’ roster, to say it was a wasted first round pick, is a bit of an understatement. Morrison was the first of a list that included Sean Lindsay, tender Danny Walters, current NHLer Matt Moulson, and Justin Wahl, none of which ever saw any pro box action since being taken that day, with Rochester or otherwise. There were some real gambles for Rochester in that draft, with none of them panning out too well.

Biggest Bust
The two first rounders that really never worked out were obviously Morrison and then also Calgary’s first round pick, Surrey keeper Matt Morehouse, who at the time, was probably the most fawned over junior keeper that was capable of making that deadly Wall of China sized jump straight from junior to the pros. Morehouse had some work commitment issues and also some pretty severe injuries that kept him outta the bigs, so to call him a straight out bust is a bit unfair. (Interesting Fact… Morehouse and Walters, two keepers taken in the ‘04 NLL Entry Draft, went head-to-head recently as Morhouse’s Ladner Pioneers dropped Walters’ Nanaimo Timbermen in a West Coast Senior Lacrosse Association semi-final series).

The real bust? The second American field guy taken on the day, none other than Mikey Powell, who’s probably more likely to try and land a gig in the X Games than ever try his hand in the NLL.

San Jose took Powell 17th overall and probably were taking him more for trade bait than anything else (at the time the Mammoth were interested and Powell was working for Brine in Denver), so no real knock on them, but bottom line, Powell was one in a long line of high profile American field studs that weren’t willing to do give the NLL a go.

Biggest Surprise
Not too many fall-off-your-seat late round surprises, even though Kyle Ross going at the 44 spot is lookin’ like a great pickup by Minny that year. Also cool to see two Jr. B studs (at the time) going early in the third round, Jamie Rooney and Andrew Burkholder getting drafted via the Elora Mohawks and Spartan Warriors respectively.

That was all good to see, but the one pick that really jumps out athca was Eric Martin. Even though he went relatively high at 12th overall, the Salisbury D monster was probably on few, if any other team’s radar on the day, but the Stealth went all-in and made Martin the second highest Sea Gull ever taken in the NLL. The other of course being Josh Bergey a year earlier, going in the first round to Toronto.

Martin currently is one of the best pound-for-pound pure defenders in the NLL and has committed to the box game like few other Americans before him. The combination of the Stealth’s faith in him and Martin’s off the charts work ethic easily makes him ’04’s nicest steal.

Anyways, as always, check out the guys still playing in the league below, and better yet, the guys still plying their trade for the team that took a chance on ‘em…

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