The NHL Draft is returning to Nashville for the first time in 20 years, which makes this a perfect time to look back to 2003, arguably one of the greatest drafts in history for sheer depth and staying power.
Consider this: Twenty years after the fact, 11 players from the 2003 draft played in the NHL this past season.
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They included the two top picks, Marc-Andre Fleury and Eric Staal, along with two players who were selected with the 271st and 291st picks, Jaroslav Halak and Brian Elliott. The others, for the record, were Ryan Suter, Jeff Carter, Zach Parise, Brent Burns, Corey Perry, Patrice Bergeron and Joe Pavelski.
In all, 16 players from the 2003 draft have played 1,000 NHL games or more and nine more have played more than 800.
There are four 1,000-point players (Staal, Bergeron, Ryan Getzlaf and Pavelski) and four others who scored 800 points or more (Perry, Parise, Burns and Carter).
And yet, for all the impact players available in 2003, one could argue that three of the six best to emerge from that draft class were taken outside the first round. Bergeron went 45th to the Bruins, Shea Weber 49th to the Predators, and Pavelski 205th to the Sharks. Moreover, those players weren’t the only diamonds in the rough. Two players — Tobias Enstrom to Atlanta (239) and Dustin Byfuglien to Chicago (245) — went in the eighth round and Matt Moulson was chosen by Pittsburgh with the second pick of the ninth round (263).
Nowadays, the eighth and ninth rounds don’t even exist anymore.
As the NHL world settles into Nashville next week awaiting to see who goes No. 2 after Connor Bedard, there are a lot of teams crossing their fingers hoping they can pluck another franchise cornerstone or two in the 2023 draft. Twenty years ago, Nashville built the foundation of its defense by getting Suter seventh and then Weber in the second round.
“We’re hoping that lightning strikes twice, at least for us,” said Predators general manager David Poile, who is presiding over his final draft before handing the reins to Barry Trotz on July 1.
In 2003, the biggest winners were arguably Nashville, Anaheim (which landed Getzlaf at 19 and Perry at 28), and Philadelphia (Carter 11th and Mike Richards 24th). In addition to landing Byfuglien when they did, the Blackhawks also fared well, by getting Brent Seabrook at 14 and Corey Crawford at 52.
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The biggest missteps?
How about Nikolai Zherdev to the Blue Jackets at No. 4? Or Hugh Jessiman to the Rangers at 12? Injuries derailed a promising start for Milan Michalek, who went sixth to the Sharks, while Montreal gambled too early on Andrei Kostitsyn at No. 10.
There was also a young defenseman who didn’t get drafted at all in 2003, or 2002 when first eligible. After signing as a free agent with the Flames in the summer of 2004, Mark Giordano went on to have a pretty good NHL career — 1,102 games and counting, plus the Norris Trophy in 2019. He too is still active.
Today, we’ve assembled a panel of retired NHL scouts to review what unfolded in 2003, with the benefit of 20 years of hindsight. The scouts were granted anonymity in exchange for their frank assessments of what worked out and what might have been missed.
Separately, we’ve also reached out to some key decision-makers from the teams that made the most impactful selections to understand the reasoning behind their selections.
So without further ado, here is our 2003 re-draft.
(Note: The 2003 draft order is displayed along with the player and their actual 2003 team and slot.)
Missing from our do-over who were first-rounders in 2003: Nikolai Zherdev, Blue Jackets (4); Andrei Kostitsyn, Canadiens (10), Hugh Jessiman, Rangers (12); Robert Nilsson, Islanders (15), Steve Bernier, Sharks (16); Eric Fehr, Capitals (18); Mark Stuart, Bruins (21); Marc-Antoine Pouliot, Oilers (22); Anthony Stewart, Panthers (25); Jeff Tambellini, Kings (27); Patrick Eaves, Senators (29); Shawn Belle, Blues (30).
Other notable NHLers who didn’t crack our new top 30, but had successful careers: Matt Carle, Sharks (47); Maxim Lapierre, Canadiens (61); Clarke MacArthur, Sabres (74); Kyle Quincey, Red Wings, (132); Brad Richardson, Avalanche (163); Kyle Brodziak, Oilers (214); Matt Moulson, Penguins (263); Tanner Glass, Panthers (265).
Finally, more for curiosity’s sake than anything, a future Blackhawks coach, Jeremy Colliton, was selected by the Islanders 58th, and a future TNT panelist and NHL influencer Paul Bissonnette went 121st to Pittsburgh.
Methodology
In all, we had three lists submitted by our panel of scouts and while there were some general similarities, they were all slightly different. Two of the three lists had Bergeron at No. 1. The other had Fleury. Fleury was divisive, and so was Getzlaf. One had Getzlaf at two, one had him at three and one had him at 10. Horton, the third overall choice, was 16th, 22nd and 28th.
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“One of the main challenges for me was comparing cumulative career value to peak career value because they are often two different things,” said one panelist. “The two most difficult players for me to judge were Nathan Horton and Mike Richards. Nathan Horton’s peak was in 2011, where I thought he played as well or better for Boston on their Stanley Cup team than Carter or Richards did for the Kings on their 2012 and 2014 Cup teams … But he never scored more than 31 goals in a season, never scored more than 62 points in a season. But when he was good, he was very good. He was a talented guy whose career ended because of an injury.”
One other noteworthy difference between now and then is how the NHL sets the draft order.
Nowadays, regardless of where a team finishes in the regular-season standings, if they advance to the Final Four, they get placed in the bottom four spots in the draft. Back then, a team drafted based on its regular-season point totals.
In 2003, that helped the two Western Conference finalists immensely. The Ducks went to the Final and lost to the Devils but stayed at 19 and drafted Getzlaf there. The Wild lost in the third round to the Ducks but stayed at 20 and selected Burns. Anaheim then doubled down, trading a high second-rounder to Dallas to get into the end of the first round to select Perry at 28.
How did Bergeron slip to 45?
Bergeron is a five-time Selke Trophy winner and is heavily favored to win a sixth next week. He has been a Selke finalist 12 times. He won the Stanley Cup with Boston in 2011 and won a world championship in 2004 before winning a world junior championship in 2005. He also won two Olympic golds, is a member of the Triple Gold Club and is considered one of the finest two-way players in NHL history.
How did everyone miss what Bergeron eventually became?
“I don’t think it was that hard,” said one of our panelists. “Our Quebec scout thought he was a good player, but he did not stand out. He’s a smart player, but he’s not physically dominant. Obviously, once the physical maturity caught up to his mind and his brain, he became the player he became. But that doesn’t always stand out in junior hockey, when a player has a good hockey brain because they are not physically strong enough to take advantage of their smarts.
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“Players like that, you’re not going to go in and see him three times and say, ‘We gotta have that guy.’ It’s going to take the local or regional scout to see a player like that every couple of weeks and they just grow on you.”
In Bergeron’s draft year, which was also his first full year in the QMJHL, he played for Acadie-Bathurst, a good team that lost in the second round of the playoffs. Bergeron had 73 points in 70 regular-season games, which was third on the team behind Olivier Filion and Jonathan Ferland.
“Our guy, who was a very good scout, thought (Bergeron) was OK,” said another panelist. “At that age, you couldn’t see the tremendous hockey sense the guy had. GMs generally don’t want to hear you say of a player, ‘Well, you know, he’s not bad. He does everything OK.’ Because usually, those guys don’t ever make it. I didn’t see anything that stood out in Bergeron. Everybody missed that.”
What about Weber at 49?
The Predators hit two home runs with Suter and Weber. But Poile will freely acknowledge that people have forgotten that between Suter and Weber, the Predators had two other second-round picks. At 35, they took Konstantin Glazachev. At 37, they took Kevin Klein. Klein had a serviceable NHL career (637 games) while Glazachev had an almost two-decades-long career in the KHL but never saw the NHL light of day.
“We had a bit of an inside track because the year before, our second-round pick, Thomas Slovak, played in Kelowna so we were in there, probably, more than other teams, checking up on (Weber),” Poile said. “We spent time at practice and maybe knew a little more than anyone else. But having said that, we also took Kevin Klein before we took Weber.
“In all these stories about Bergeron and Weber, you have to give credit to your scouts, but you also have to be a bit lucky that everybody didn’t see their intangibles.”
One of our panelists confirmed it was hard to see much of Weber in his draft year because he was a sixth or seventh defenseman on a good Kelowna team and thus didn’t play enough to get a true read on him. Once he reached his full physical maturity, he blossomed. But even then, he wasn’t an overnight sensation.
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Weber spent most of his first pro season playing in the AHL for Milwaukee, and in 28 NHL games, averaged 17 minutes per night. It wasn’t until Year 4 in the NHL that he went from a player averaging 19:30 per night to one playing 23:10 per night. In his prime, Weber averaged 25 and a half minutes or more. But the first year he did that, he was already 25.
The Burns conundrum
What makes Burns so unique is that he was drafted as a right winger but ultimately played most of his NHL career on defense.
“He was drafted as a winger and scouted as a winger,” said one of our panelists. “I mean, he was a forward and a bit of a wild card — an off-the-wall player. That was all Tommy Thompson (Minnesota’s scouting director, who drafted Burns). Good for him. They drafted him 20th. I thought he was a second-rounder myself.”
So, what did Thompson see that others missed?
In an interview with The Athletic, Thompson noted that Burns had been playing on the fourth line in Brampton and the primary initial attraction was his size.
“He was huge,” Thompson said. “Not big. Huge. And he could really skate. Now, he wasn’t totally anonymous because he was the OHL player of the month in March and coming on like gangbusters.”
While on a trip to Toronto, Thompson remembers convincing Wild GM Doug Risebrough to stay and watch Burns in Brampton on a Sunday afternoon.
“After the game, I said, ‘What do you think?’ By then, we knew we were going to be drafting around 19, 20, 21. He looked at me at the end of the game — and he hadn’t seen many of these other guys play — but he said, ‘Could we get a guy like this at 20?’’”
But according to Thompson, the decision to switch Burns to defense from forward was made by Wild coach Jacques Lemaire after he saw Burns play at a summer development camp.
“He thought he could be a modern-day version of Serge Savard,” Thompson said. “Not a physical guy, so much as a guy who is strong and quick and could really defend. That was really the starting point for that switch.
“Burns, if you remember, played the world junior in 2003 at right wing. The next year was the lockout year and he went to Houston and he was really good playing defense down there … and the rest is history.”
A goalie at No. 1
Fleury was divisive. He got a No. 1 nod from our panel, plus a sixth and a seventh. The panelist who had Fleury seventh also left both Elliott and Howard off his list because they were never true No. 1 goaltenders.
“The three goalies in my view who were the best from this draft were Fleury, Crawford and Halak. If you look at four statistics — save percentage in the regular season and playoffs, and goals against in the regular season and in the playoffs — of those three, who is the worst in all four categories? It’s Fleury. Sometimes, that happens because the guy is on a bad team, but Fleury hasn’t been on a lot of bad teams. He’s a reflexes guy, a nice guy, a talented guy, but I always thought as a goalie he was a little overrated.”
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The Getzlaf debate
Two of the three lists placed Staal ahead of Getzlaf. The one panelist who placed Getzlaf higher than Staal said: “The problem with Getzlaf is, you’re comparing him to what you think he had the potential to be. When he wanted to be, he was a smart positional player, a very good faceoff guy, could make plays, could score goals. He was one of those guys who can frustrate you on those nights when you’re up 3-2, you’re up the whole game, you can’t get ahead of 4-2, they’re doing nothing and all of a sudden, Getzlaf does one thing at the end to tie and then they win in overtime or the shootout. His numbers are good. And he was big and hard to play against.”
Another scout suggested Getzlaf benefited from coming through the ranks with Perry.
“A lot of things depend on circumstances for these guys,” he said. “I look at Getzlaf’s final year in junior. He got 54 points (in 51 games). That’s terrible for a top guy in his final year of junior. Guys that age with that ability should get 50 points for fun as a 19-year-old in junior. But then he got in with Perry and the right situation. Perry is a hard-nosed, win-at-all-costs, do-anything-to-win kind of guy. They’re running mates from the get-go. They played in Portland together in the minors. It’s that whole thing — he had no choice but to get dragged into Corey Perry’s style, put in some effort and do what this guy is doing. I honestly believe that really helped him make the most out of his ability.
“My point is, drafting the guys is one step. But then the development path from there involves many different factors. Physical maturity. Being in the right place at the right time, playing for the right coach and the right set of teammates.”
One final thought
According to one of our panelists, the reason the 2003 draft class had staying power was not just because of the talent available. It was also because of circumstances. Because the NHL lost the entire 2004-05 season to a lockout, the players that had been drafted in 2003 weren’t rushed to the league. Instead, they were allowed extra time to develop — in junior or the minors — and thus were physically more mature and mentally readier to play when the NHL resumed in 2005-06.
“That draft is the prime example of how good things could be for players if they were required to spend time in minors or back in juniors,” he said. “So many 19-year-olds were probably ready to play in the NHL after playing the 2003-04 season in juniors but by being forced to return to juniors for the 2004-05 season, they actually became far better players. Look at all the players who were forced to spend a full year in the minors and how much that helped them in the long run.”
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(Top photo: Elsa / Getty Images / NHLI)