So it's almost been a calendar year since I last posted to the South Smythian Rolo-Gator. Well, what of it? It's never too late to put something up there, and the draft is the perfect time on so many levels.

Frankly, I love the draft. Aside from the deadline or any Stanley Cup finals with the Oilers in it, it is about my favourite time of the hockey season. The worst teams get the most hope. Middling sides like the Oilers trek into a land where they're more likely to draft a bust than not, and the results can be spectacular. Who can forget Michel Riesen, Steve Kelly, Jesse Niinimaki, Michael Henrich, Mathieu Descoteaux... ah, the traditions of the Edmonton Oilers are truly rich and beautiful.

Fortunately, I think the Oilers did a bit better this year.

Pick #22: RW Jordan Eberle (Regina, WHL) [70.42+33=75 20]

If this was the only pick the Oilers made all year, it would have been enough to get my motor running. My personal prediction was that the Oilers would go with One-Bite Brownie-sized defenseman Erik Karlsson of Frolunda Goteburg's junior team, but he was off the board at 18 to the Ottawa Senators. Moreover, I honestly thought that Eberle would be gone by then: guys who can put home forty goals in a highly defensive league on a team without much scoring punch while playing with a bunch of doorknobs are usually well in demand.

The fact that Eberle fell as far as he did has to be considered a miracle. Only Steve Stamkos, Drew Doughty, Kyle Beach, and Mikkel Boedker are clearly more talented than Eberle in this draft, with a bunch of guys including Alex Pietrangelo, Zach Bogosian, and Luke Schenn joining Eberle in the second tier of the draft class. Eberle's going to be ahead of some of those guys and behind some others. But I'd rather have Eberle than Cody Hodgson ten times out of ten, for example. Joshua Bailey, Nikita Filatov, and Zach Boychuk are all guys who I'd prefer to Eberle if I was running an NHL team, and depending on what side of the bed I woke up on I might take Eberle over defensemen like Pietrangelo, Tyler Myers, and Colton Teubert.

You get the point. I'm big on Eberle. His numbers, in the context of the WHL, were superb: the entire league boasted only six 40-goal scorers. Nobody scored fifty, only three men beat Eberle's 42 and only Tyler Ennis (#26 to Buffalo) was also draft-eligible. And Ennis is fully seven months older than Eberle while playing on a vastly superior Red Deer Rebels team.

Once you take into account the sinkhole that was the Regina Pats top-line offense, things just look better for Eberle. Eberle was the only Pat to beat seventy points and the only Pat to beat sixty points. The team's next-leading scorer turned 21 in February and scored only fifteen goals himself, his offense mostly based on setting up Eberle. The team's third-leading scorer was a defenseman, and Eberle's usual left wing was fourth, who posted a decidedly second-tier line of 18 goals and 33 assists in 72 games. Eberle had more than twice the number of goals of the team's next-leading goalscorer, superb young defenseman Logan Pyett. Pyett and Eberle were the only Pats to break twenty goals; Eberle's linemates were the only others to hit fifteen.

Wait, it gets better. Eberle was the third-youngest regular player on his team behind winger Garrett Mitchell and defender Alex Pym, and neither of them contributed nearly at Eberle's level. Only Bogosian, Filatov (by ten days), Karlsson (by sixteen days), Jake Gardiner, and Michael Del Zotto were drafted before Eberle and were younger than him.

So Eberle is young, skilled, and can score in spite of having fire hydrants for linemates. His defensive skills are subpar, but the man's not Joffrey Lupul. As Lowetide pointed out in his own look at Eberle, Desjardins gives him a 15+11=26, which is just stupid good for a guy selected twenty-second overall. 

So, why did he fall as far as he did?

First off, the man didn't have pedigree. What's pedigree? Pedigree is what got Angelo Esposito selected in the first round last year even though he was the most disappointing player in the Quebec league during his draft year and had posted only a single decent season while playing with much better players. Pedigree is why everybody's talking about John Tavares as the next superstar in spite of a 16-point regression in his last junior season and no signs of the least amount of progress for the last eighteen months. Pedigree is why Toronto Maple Leaf fans are crapping themselves over Luke Schenn, a mediocre defensive player with the NHL offense of Cory Cross.

Pedigree is what you get from being on SportsCentre. Some media hack sees you good and writes a glowing article about you. Some other media hack reads that article and writes one of his own, everybody trying to be the man who discovers the Next One. Before you know it, TSN is running profiles on you and Sportsnet sends guys to your games. The essential problem is that junior hockey in this country is popular, but it's not part of the world of your average Saturday night hockey fan. They just don't watch the game, so when they're feeded spoonfuls of hope by a media hack mailing in an article, they start saying things like "the Oilers are going to regret not drafting Esposito!" even though their knowledge of him comes from, at most, a YouTube highlight video.

Unfortunately, media hacks don't go west a lot, and those who go west stay in Vancouver and sometimes Calgary. You better believe that they don't get out to Regina or Prince Albert or Brandon or even Kamloops. Even the good guys, like Stephen Brunt and James Mirtle, are predominantly based in the east. It's a big nation and if you're lazy you're not going to make the effort to find the next great player out in farm country. A few guys, like the aforementioned Schenn, show up at a road game and draw some eyeballs. But if you're Jordan Eberle and playing your brains out on a mediocre team in Regina, the odds are against you.

GMs are only human, after all. When Phoenix drafted Blake Wheeler early in 2006, the media crucified them simply because they hadn't seen him play. When Edmonton grabbed Jesse Niinimaki, people were alarmed that there weren't any highlight videos hanging around. Granted, they were right about Niinimaki, but still. Michael Henrich got huge press in his draft year and he didn't turn out a lot better.

In the Internet age, thank god, things are getting better. If you were at Lowetide on draft day - and if not, why weren't you? - reaction to Eberle was almost overwhelmingly positive, thanks to the fact that more and more hockey fans are able to do the research, watch the games for themselves, and realise "hey, this Eberle guy looks pretty good". People aren't stupid, but they're not able to hop on a bus to Regina with a thermos of coffee and watch guys play. The Internet doesn't just make things easier for Joe Fan, it makes things possible.

Not that I expect Eberle to get a free pass.

I like the guy.

Missed Opportunities: Eberle was the best player available, but there were still some nice prospects on the board. Viktor Tikhonov (#28 to Phoenix) has Mystery Euro value and put up respectable numbers in limited ice time in the third-best league in world. Rumour was that the Oilers wanted a goalie, and Jakob Markstrom (#31 to Florida) could be a pretty good one. Finally, Nicolas Deschamps (#35 to Anaheim) was far behind Eberle in offense but had a more limited role with Chicoutimi behind established QMJHLer Francis Pare and is a superior player in his own zone. But it bears repeating that Eberle was pretty clearly the best player on the board and had been some time.

Dodged Bullets: If the Oilers were going to draft a goalie, that goalie would have been Chet Pickard out of the Tri-City Americans (#18 to Nashville). And thank god they didn't, for Pickard is far from an elite goaltender and could have been a legendary miss if Eberle does what he's capable of doing. Taking the aforementioned Erik Karlsson (#15 to Ottawa) would have been in keeping with recent history for the Oilers, and Karlsson isn't a bad player, but neither is he a gamebreaker and at 5'11" he's always going to be a chaos defender in the NHL. Meanwhile, Tyler Cuma (#23 to Minnesota) must have been tempting for the Oilers, but Cuma is a "safe" defensive defenseman: when you can get a gamebreaker late in the first round, you've got to do it.

Final Verdict: any time you get the best player available, you've done a good day's work. Jordan Eberle gets my seal of approval, which unfortunately means he's certain to be a god-awful bust. 

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