Depending on how closely you follow the Wild, you may have glanced at their stable of prospects from time to time (If you haven’t, you should try; it’s fulfilling and meaningful work).
A glance at their latest list shows mostly familiar names to those who keep track of minor league and junior prospects. By now most if not all Wild fans are familiar with Mikael Granlund and are sitting on their hands waiting for him to arrive from Finland. Tyler Cuma and Marco Scandella likewise are known, if unseen, prospects. The rest of this list is populated with guys who have either played for the big club at various times (Gillies, Wellman, Almond, Prosser, Falk, etc.) or guys who played in the WCHA in either the past, present or future (Erik Haula, Chad Rau). Though the rest of the list is populated with names that fans may not know yet, a quick click of the mouse will show you that they were at least drafted by the Wild.
Except one: Meet Joel Broda.
Broda was a fifth round pick of the Capitals in 2008, when he was coming off a 30 goal season split between two stops in the Western Hockey League. Since then he has been traded again (this time from Moose Jaw to Calgary in the WHL), put up back-to-back 70+ point seasons with another 41 points in 41 WHL playoff games, fought enough to earn himself a reputation as a nasty customer who sticks up for his teammates and yet never got a sniff of a contract offer from the Washington Capitals.
Wait, what?
The Wild snapped him up during a development camp earlier this summer on a three-year entry-level contract, and he’ll play this season for new coach Mike Yeo in Houston. So why did the Capitals let a seemingly promising player go for nothing? And why did a guy whom former Calgary Hitmen teammate and current Wild prospect Kris Foucault call “a pure goal-scorer” go undrafted in this past June’s draft when he went through the process again? Let’s take a closer look.
Broda comes with a few knocks. Depending on who you talk to, Broda is either a weak skater, not responsible in his own end, and/or lacks heart and commitment. Any of all of these may be true, but let’s take these one at a time.
1) The skating thing. This is a huge problem for everyone who isn’t Andrew Brunette. Then again, it isn’t a problem for Andrew Brunette, so Broda has a model for how to play without great feet, and he doesn’t even have to look outside his own organization.
2) Defensively Broda may be a concern. On a good Calgary team for which he was the second-leading scorer, Broda was the only top-ten scorer on the roster who finished with a minus rating (he was minus-1). That is troubling for a guy who factored into 73 different goals for his own team. However, a lot of players in Canadian junior leagues have similar stats. Even Tyler Seguin, the number 2 pick in the 2010 draft was “only” plus-17. That doesn’t seem too bad, but when you factor in that he put up 106 points in 63 games for the Plymouth Whalers it seems a little low. And even if Broda is a poor defensive player, who cares? He’s 20 years old, and a lot of players struggle defensively at that age. Mike Modano was a combined -21 in his four years playing for the Minnesota North Stars. Ten years on he was one of the best two-way forwards in the league for a Stanley Cup-winning Dallas team. Defense can be taught, scoring ability cannot.
3) The heart thing. Apparently the reason Broda was traded twice in the WHL was because he frustrated coaches by “coasting” too much. There’s no defense for that but the only thing that one can say about it is that he’s still young. Just like college or high school players here in the U.S., in Canadian Junior Hockey talent is king. The skill level is so varied in those leagues that players can literally play at half speed and put up huge numbers. It won’t take long for Broda to learn, if he needs to, that even at the AHL level, that talent only gets a player so far in the professional ranks. Let’s hope he takes that lesson to heart.
The Wild have been down this road before. In the early years of the franchise, Doug Risebrough plucked two players (Stephane Veilleux and Kyle Wanvig) in the draft that went unsigned by the first team that drafted them. Wanvig never panned out, but Veilleux became and important grit player for several years for the team.
Broda will probably not become the second coming of Andrew Brunette. He likely won’t even become the second coming of Stephane Veilleux. If he doesn’t sort out the perceived problems listed above, he won’t even become the next Kyle Wanvig. But the Wild didn’t spend a draft pick on him, and all he will cost them in the end is the relative pittance of an entry-level contract. Seems like a safe-enough gamble, no?
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