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This is the big one.

The one GM’s were trading up for years earlier and the one that has already produced multiple Champion’s Cup winners and multiple year end hardware winners too.

It’s the Entry Draft Brodie Merrill was slated to go first in during his freshman year at Georgetown. Ditto for Sean Greenhalgh at Cornell, Jeff Zywicki at UMass and even though he played D at Canisius, Matt Vinc was the first keeper in a while most felt would be capable of making the jump from being a stud Jr. A tender to a solid one in the bigs too.

To make a long story short, 2005’s first round was as close to a can’t miss as the league had ever seen.

Brodie obviously was number one and Derek Keenan in Portland made no bones about the fact that the Lumberjax would be taking him first and building their franchise around the two-way work horse for years to come.

It’s also the draft that’s seen the largest amount of players still with the clubs that took ‘em. As you’ll be able to see in the chart straight at the bottom, nine players taken that year are still with the team that called their name out on the day. Since doing this Revisiting the Draft segment, looking at the Entry Draft since 2002, the next highest total for guys still with their first club is just four.

Another interesting point, even though the ‘05 draft is considered by most as the best draft in league history, after lookin’ at the numbers, ‘05 produced 25 full-time NLL ball players while ‘03 has given us 26. Which draft was truly better, cuz ’03’s first round was no slouch, even straight up with Merrill and company in ‘05?

Anyways, onto the day’s winners, losers, busts and surprises…

Biggest Winner
There were probably two teams that came away from that day feelin’ pretty damn good about themselves. Philly and San Jose are two of the team’s that made sure they had multiple picks in the early going of the draft, and as expected, it paid off large.

The Wings finished the day with Greenhalgh, Luke Wiles, Chad Thompson and even top American grads Kyle Harrison, Benson Erwin and John Christmas.

San Jose nailed down Zywicki (at the eight spot!!!), Vinc and even one of the best field-to-box stories in the last couple years, Syracuse’s Jarret Park.

Actually, Buffalo did not too bad themselves, especially considering they didn’t draft till late in the first round. The Banditos picked up Jeff Shattler, Roger Vyse, Mike Poulin and a project player that in ‘08 was definitely called upon, Kyle Schmelze.

But think ya gotta give that winner of the day nod to Philly, who made sure they picked up quality guys early, kept things safe by not wasting any early picks, and then gambled on three guys that definitely were gamble-worthy later on. Harrison and Erwin mighta passed on the Wings, but XMas is pretty much a full-time guy for them now.

You’ll find out in the Bust sec why San Jose didn’t win this category.

Biggest Loser
All three Canadian teams that year were really non-players in what was being hyped as the strongest draft in league history.

Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton had zero picks inside the first round.

The Rock’s first pick was Owen Sound Jr. B product, Tyler Gibbons. A gutsy kid that could score and always went 100% on the court, but probably on few other team’s radar, especially that early.

Calgary drafted a guy who the winter before had come off some pretty major knee surgery, and had just recently re-joined the Six Nations Arrows towards the end of their regular season, that of course being Andy Secore, previously of the Brampton Excels. His injury and fitness scared a lot of teams off, now the kids one of the most sought after players in the entire league. Of note, Secore was traded, along with Calgary’s first overall 2006 pick, to Arizona in exchange for Rob Kirkby shortly after the draft. Also of note, that first pick was later used on Paul Dawson seventh overall a year later, with Athan Iannucci going just a pick later. Crazy stuff in hindsight huh?

And then there was Edmonton, who took Mike McLellan in the second round, and then immediately swapped him in a deal with Bob Hamley’s Sting again, a move that landed them Chris Fiore and some draft picks that never really amounted to much. In the third round they drafted local boy Greg Whitenect, who’d looked like a beast with the Edmonton Miners, but obviously never panned out in the NLL. It was kinda the theme of the day for the Rush’s selections, landing them the winner’s medal in this article’s category at least.

Biggest Bust
Here’s one of the main reasons why San Jose wasn’t named our best performer on the day. Actually, it’s the only reason.

The year previous, San Jose made what turned out to be a beauty pick with Eric Martin going 12th overall. Ed Brown is not Eric Martin. The Stealth had the 11th overall pick in ‘05 and took a guy they probably coulda just invited off the street to their training camp, but opted to pass over the likes of Scott Ditzell and even Canuck Duke product, Ryan Marshall (who never panned out anyways but people at least knew who he was on the day), to draft Middlebury College long pole Brown. No offense to Brown, but the dude struggled large at that initial Stealth camp and showed no signs of being able to transition to indoor ball. Brown, along with three other Stealth draft picks on the day, were released by the team a couple weeks into January. The pick was one of the oddest early round American gambles the league has ever seen. Martin made them look like geniuses the year before, but after taking a bunch of Americans that likely would not even have been selected by anyone on the day, everything after stealing Zywciki at eight (even though Park has turned out to be a beauty, but who knew it on the day) turned out to be a bit of a wash.

Biggest Surprise
Even though he had an off year this past NLL season, partly due to some medical conditions, the steal of the ‘05 draft was hands down Dean Hill. Hill told us last winter that he wasn’t even aware any NLL GM’s knew his name, but the Swarm loved his size and obviously scoring touch, even at the Jr. B level, and really got a nice late round bonus for doing their homework. Hill bounced back nicely this summer, posting his strongest Sr. numbers to date, so he should continue making that 48th overall selection one of the better late round picks in recent years.

Andrew Lazore, the second last pick on the day and another Jr. B selection, will likely start seeing more time with Buffalo this winter, but then again, with that lineup, he may not. Lazore has scored over 100 goals in the summer loop ‘05 an onwards and definitely is on the brink of doing some special things in the NLL as well. A year from now, we may be saying the same things about Lazore that we did about Hill.

Where will Halton Hills Bulldogs’ Pat Saunders end up in the draft next month? Saunders finished with a ridiculous 57 goals in the OLA Jr. B loop this summer and took the scoring title as well. Last night he scored the game winner against the Six Nations Rebels in the Ontario finals, his 24th goal during the playoffs. With the success of guys like Hill, Lazore, Schmelze (all taken in the ‘05 draft) and Jamie Rooney and Andrew Burkholder like we mentioned in our last Revisiting the Draft, where will a kid like Saunders go in ‘08?

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