For fans looking to get familiar with the top players in the upcoming draft, the NHL Scouting Combine (May 28-June 2 in Toronto) is a good place to start.
This year’s edition will include the top 105 draft-eligible players in the world, including blue-chip prospects such as Nail Yakupov, Filip Forsberg and Morgan Rielly.
To see the full list of this year’s invites, click here.
The Combine is comprised of fitness/strength tests, psychological evaluations and interviews with teams.
The interview is seen by many as the make-or-break portion. After all, a player’s fitness can always get better. And if an 18-year-old’s strength really mattered, Steven Stamkos and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins wouldn’t have gone first overall.
But a player’s personality and motivations are harder to shrug off.
Questions that have reportedly been asked during interviews:
---- What would you like better, a gun, or a good poem? (Answer: Gun. Then rob a poet of all his good poems.)
---- If you were getting invaded by a country in a war and you had to take one family member with you, who would it be? (Answer: If my country were getting invaded, I’m not leaving, I’m staying to fight with the gun you gave me to rob the poet.)