For late-round picks trying to crack the NHL, all you need is a chip and a chance

TAMPA, Fla.

During the 2017-18 season, Brandon Hagel was sure hed be a Buffalo Sabre someday.

During the 2018-19 season, Hagel was sure hed be a Chicago Blackhawk someday.

During the summer in between, he was pretty sure hed be a schoolteacher someday.

Like, someday real soon.

Hopefully gym class, he said with a laugh.

Advertisement That summer, Jason Botterill was a year into his tenure as the Sabres general manager.

And he had little interest in an overaged junior forward with modest production in Red Deer.

So on June 1, 2018, Buffalo relinquished its rights to Hagel, whom previous GM Tim Murray had taken in the sixth round two years earlier.

Hagels hockey career was in limbo.

And not for the first time.

He had been passed over in the bantam draft.

He had been cut from teams, buried in lineups.

Hagel was always on the outside trying to claw his way in.

Doubted.

Overlooked.

Ignored completely.

It hurt him, if hes being honest.

But it also hardened him.

I went through that early on in my career, and I knew how to handle it, he said.

The emotions when youre a 15-year-old kid are a little bit different.

Youre just sad.

Youre in high school and its the cool thing to get drafted.

But you learn from it.

And then as my career went on, not making certain things or getting cut from certain things, and still being able to get drafted I was fortunate.

But (Buffalo) didnt want to take a chance on me.

A Sabres Reddit thread from that day offered a collective shrug at the news that Hagel and two other Sabres longshots wouldnt be signed.

Botterill is amazing at understanding hockey talent, one fan wrote.

If he didnt want these guys, it was for a reason.

The Athletic s scouting report on Hagel as a prospect wasnt any more effusive, calling him an AHL depth guy who never really stood out.

Less than five years later, Hagel is a genuine NHL star for the Tampa Bay Lightning .

Hes played in a Stanley Cup Final.

Hes had a 30-goal season.

Hes in the midst of a point-a-game season.

And he made perhaps the hardest team in the world to make Team Canada for the upcoming 4 Nations Face-Off.

Along with Ondrej Palat , Mark Stone and Anders Lee , hes one of the best sixth- or seventh-round picks in the 20-year history of the seven-round draft.

Advertisement And hes still only 26.

Hagel has nothing left to prove to anyone.

But hes still trying to.

Its ingrained in every late-round NHL draft pick.

They dont all end up proving it; the overwhelming majority dont.

But those who do never stop trying.

I think it doesnt matter where you get picked first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth you still have to earn a contract and then you still have to make the hockey team, Hagel said.

It doesnt matter at that point.

Youve got to prove yourself whether it was the first round or the sixth round.

But maybe youre not getting as much of an opportunity as a sixth-rounder, so you end up taking a different route.

Maybe it toughens you up a little bit, teaches you how to handle adversity.

People doubt you, and its up to you to show them theyre wrong.

Forty-three skaters and 10 goalies who were taken in the sixth or seventh round of the NHL draft have played in at least one game this season.

A few have carved out excellent careers, such as Calgary s MacKenzie Weegar , New Jerseys Jesper Bratt (taken three picks after Hagel in 2018), Carolinas Frederik Andersen , Washingtons Andrew Mangiapane , Edmontons Josh Manson , Los Angeles Darcy Kuemper , Utahs John Marino and Minnesotas Jake Middleton , the last pick of the 2014 draft.

Others are solid depth players, while still others are AHL/NHL tweeners.

For comparisons sake, 474 skaters and 26 goalies taken in the first or second round have played in the NHL this season.

It makes sense, of course.

Better NHL prospects get taken earlier.

But progress isnt linear, every player develops at their own rate, and late bloomers do exist.

And those who take the long path to the NHL, who spend years grinding away on buses in the juniors or the American Hockey League, eating at roadside McDonalds, staying in two-star hotels and toiling in relative anonymity, well, when they do reach the NHL, they often have a different mindset than those who are anointed future stars as teenagers.

Advertisement Theyre driven by all the doubts external and internal in their wake.

Well, theres no question, Lightning coach Jon Cooper said.

Because youre always the guy having to make the team.

Those other guys are already on the team.

You cant sit here and say guys that are high picks dont have drive.

Theyve gotten to that spot because they do have drive.

But those late-round picks that find a way to make their way into the league, those are guys you jump in the foxhole with.

Because theyve scraped and clawed their whole way here, and probably (have) been overlooked, and theres been setbacks along the way, but they just kept coming at you.

Its pretty much how they play the game.

Patrick Maroon was a sixth-rounder, too, taken by the Philadelphia Flyers 161st in the 2007 draft two slots later than Hagel was taken nine years later.

Maroon was big and strong, and coming off a season in which he scored 35 goals and handed out 55 assists in 64 games with the OHLs London Knights, his first major junior season.

But he was an overager, turning 20 near the end of the season.

Flyers president Paul Holmgren liked Maroon enough to draft him, but not enough to promote him.

The relationship deteriorated to the point that Maroon was essentially kicked off the team for a month for what he later said was a bad attitude.

But Anaheim Ducks GM Bob Murray saw something in Maroon and acquired him in one of those minor-league trades most fans dont give a second glance.

But that nothing trade changed Maroons life eventually.

Maroon got two games for the Ducks in the NHL during the 2011-12 season but was still primarily stuck in the AHL.

At some point, even the most confident player starts losing hope.

I was in the minors for five years, and Im thinking, Im never gonna make it, Im just an American Leaguer, Maroon said.

Advertisement A dozen years later, Maroon is a three-time Stanley Cup champion with nearly 1,000 NHL games under his belt, counting 163 playoff games, sixth most among active players ahead of Brad Marchand , Alex Ovechkin and Patrick Kane .

Hes now a veteran presence in an increasingly young Blackhawks dressing room.

And his long, circuitous and doubt-filled journey to the NHL gives him a valuable perspective one that could be particularly useful to the ready-made stars now populating the Chicago room, first-rounders such as Connor Bedard , Kevin Korchinski and Frank Nazar .

I feel like theres always still a chip on my shoulder, right? Maroon said.

When youre in the American League and you have that headache, you feel it.

Youre sitting at home and watching other guys get called up and youre disappointed.

I learned the hard way in Philly, b-ing about it.

But when I got traded to Anaheim, I told myself it was a clean slate, just have a good head on my shoulders, be a great teammate, be a good leader and just do your job.

If someone gets called up, you cant get mad.

Just stick with it, stick with it, and I did.

While high draft picks have clear paths to the NHL, late-round picks almost always need a break, a push, just one person that likes you, as Maroon put it.

For Hagel, it was Red Deer coach Brent Sutter.

The day Buffalo cut Hagel, one of the first people he heard from was Sutter, who told him hed do anything and everything to get Hagel where he wanted to go.

He gave Hagel a push and got him (and fellow future Blackhawks long shot Reese Johnson) a new center in Jeff de Wit, and the line tore up the Western Hockey League.

Hagel finished the season with 41 goals and 61 assists in 66 games, up from 18 and 41 the previous season.

Early on in the campaign, then-Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman came calling.

Hagel had other suitors eventually but chose Chicago largely because Bowman was first.

That meant something to him after being discarded by Botterill.

Advertisement For Maroon, it was Syracuse Crunch coach Trent Yawney who offered him a way out with an old-school suggestion.

I was a big heavy guy who put up points everywhere I went, but you have to adapt, Maroon said.

If what youre doing isnt going to work, youve got to do something else.

Ive always been a good player, always put up good numbers.

But Trent Yawney came up to me and was just like, Hey, what if you just started fighting? So I started fighting and they took a liking to that.

I could fight and I could play.

This new generation, I dont know if they want to adapt, right? But youve got to adapt if you want to make it in this league.

Maroon fought six times in the 2010-11 season.

Eight times in the 2011-12 season.

Nine times in 2012-13.

By the end of that lockout-shortened season, he was a full-time NHLer with his first one-way contract.

Hagel is a particularly interesting case, because of how quickly hes become a top player in the league.

Hes 26, in the prime of his career, hes a great skater, hes utterly relentless, hes a good teammate and hes productive.

Hes, frankly, exactly the kind of winger the Blackhawks are looking for right about now, someone to complement and push Bedard.

But he wasnt Kyle Davidsons draft pick, and the new GM had no sentimental difficulty dealing Hagel away for two first-round picks and two NHL bodies in Taylor Raddysh and Boris Katchouk.

Those picks turned into top prospects Oliver Moore and Sacha Boisvert, and the tank did lead to Bedard even though it didnt go exactly according to plan otherwise, so maybe there are no regrets on either side.

But Hagel serves as both a cautionary tale for general managers not to give up on young players so quickly no matter who drafted them and when, as well as a source of inspiration for late-round picks everywhere.

Even on Hagels old team, Louis Crevier a seventh-round pick in 2020 is carving out a future for himself in Chicago.

Advertisement I think maybe you appreciate it more, Crevier said during his first NHL stint last season.

I mean, everyone appreciates being in the NHL, but its not a sure thing when youre one of those guys.

Hagel doesnt give Buffalo much thought these days, but he still wonders about what might have been in Chicago.

The city and the organization have a soft spot in his heart because Bowman gave him the opportunity Botterill denied him.

Everything worked out better than Hagel could have hoped for as the 159th pick in the 2016 draft, a faceless name announced from the table by a team staffer because GMs dont even bother making the picks at that stage of the draft, everyone rushing to get through the last two rounds and make their afternoon flights home.

Theres no bitterness in Hagel.

But theres still that chip.

Theres always that chip when youve had to sit through more than 150 names being called ahead of yours.

It sucks, Hagel said.

But I wouldnt be here, or be the player I am today, without going through all that.

A lot of my ups and downs and not making teams and not signing, it grew me as a person and taught me how to find ways to succeed in different ways, and taught me how to go through those emotions thinking one day Im going to be a schoolteacher, and the next day Im signing a contract.

It wasnt always easy, but Im grateful for everything thats happened to me and I wouldnt change a thing.

(Top photo of Brandon Hagel: Mark LoMoglio / NHLI via Getty Images).

This article has been shared from the original article on theathleticuk, here is the link to the original article.