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Symmetrik · 08-23-2021, 11:47 PM

Turns out it's a pretty wild one.

I never would have expected Kinsinger's career to start quite like this. A kid from the city of Roskilde in Denmark, was highly touted by scouts ahead of the draft. A defenseman with a lot of offensive skill, he could bring a lot to a team, and that skill brought a lot of teams knocking come scouting time. Perhaps the first indicator of what might be to come on draft day was the complete lack of offers for Kinsinger's skills as a DFA. Despite being available, not a single team even reached out about a contract.

The first team to reach out about the draft came from a team called the Montana Silvertips. I guess that name didn't make it very long, since the expansion team ended up actually being named the Great Falls Grizzlies. A rare message using the site's PMs rather than discord, led to no further responses after my initial response. Guess they weren't that interested, but oh well, the Montana Silvertips don't exist anyway.

The next message I got seemed somewhat odd, as I got another site PM, this one from Talls, the GM of Anaheim, apparently doing scouting for the Colorado Raptors. I didn't really follow up on that one. I did eventually get a discord message from Talls actually doing scouting from his Anaheim Outlaws. After initially getting pulled away for work during our chat, we did eventually have a pretty good lengthy scouting conversation.

I also received an early message from the Kelowna Knights, and that was a very good conversation (IMO) and my initial thoughts were they were the most likely to draft me. They had the 3rd overall pick, so that seemed to line up with expectations. It did cross my mind how my SHL career had potentially come all the way around to Kelowna. All the expansions, relocations, etc, and there's very few SMJHL teams left from the teams that were here in S32 when I first created Chris York. Kelowna was one of them, and we had a bitter rivalry with them in Prince George. Myself and Cory Knouse had a back and forth little bit where he put a bounty on me. So it was funny that almost 30 seasons later I could be on Kelowna.

I heard from the real Colorado Raptors, as well as the Detroit Falcons, and Regina Elk. None of those conversations seemed spectacular, and the Elk representative even just vanished mid conversation. They asked if I was still a graphics guy, I said yes, and they never sent another message. Maybe they hate graphics? Of those 3 chats I thought the Raptors conversation was the best. If I was still available (which I didn't think I would be) they might take me at 10.

Next scouting message came from the Newfoundland Beserkers. They were an interesting potential destination, my previous player, Luca Veccelli, played for the Lethbridge Lions, who moved to Newfoundland the season I was called up to Manhattan. The conversation was good I thought, but I didn't get the impression they would pick me.

I got a site PM requesting scouting from Maine, wanting to chat on discord. I'm in the SHL server and was in the Meet The GMs server, so they could have easily just messaged me on discord through there since we share servers. Whatever, I sent them my discord ID and to message me with questions. The response was to send me their discord ID and telling me to add them. They are supposed to be scouting me, and I'd already given them my discord, there was no need for me to add them and message, they could have done that after my response. Oh well. No message came after that.

I received scouting messages from both Carolina Kraken and Quebec City Citadelles, both conversations that I thought was pretty good. The conversation with Carolina just kinda ended abruptly, but before that I thought it was going well. They told me that another prospect said the same thing (in regards to goals in the SMJHL), and didn't have anything else. The Quebec conversation I thought was good, the chat was good and I have also known Evok for a long while. I tried to sign recruit her first player to Toronto way back when I was still North Stars GM. She was also my GM in now defunct GOMHL when I played on Montreal. I thought for sure that if I was there at 11 I was going to Quebec City. Tomen also had a hand in drafting me way back in S32, the inkling of "could be a steal" in the 5th round of the SMJHL draft for Prince George. Almost 5 years ago now, and you know we've never had active players on the same team. He helped me a lot when I was first made GM of PGF, since arty was basically just out and I was operating pretty much on my own right away. I thought Quebec would be a sure thing if I was still there at 11.

The last team that scouted me was the Nevada Battleborn, who didn't pick until 35th overall. They only scouted me during the draft (only after watching me fall into the 30s during the draft). I would have played anywhere but at that point I just hoped my fall would stop.

Speaking of falling, I guess it's time to address the actual draft. In the couple days leading up to the draft, I learned that Kelowna was likely to pick Ben Jammin at 3rd overall. A little disappointing, but it happens, I figured at that point I wasn't going to Kelowna. I figured my next likely spots were 9/10/11. Well, really, I figured those were a guarantee. I didn't think I would fall any further than that. I thought maybe there was potential at pick 8, even though the Scarecrows never scouted me, since I did GM Sparky in PBE for a little while. At that point though I would be a little annoyed being picked by a team that didn't scout me at all. When Quebec traded down from 11 to 14 I was surprised, but I thought maybe they figured I would fall there (well, they were right, I did fall to 14... and a lot further). Anchorage didn't scout me either, so I thought they would pass on the 2nd pick. I can't imagine they would have traded up for someone without scouting them. But they did pick again at 13, and I was still available. I was a GM of the Prince George Firebirds for... 4 seasons? The Firebirds are the team that relocated to the Armada. Though they still hadn't scouted me, and the GMs are long enough removed from my time there (though I did have spooked as my co-GM, and drafted sleepy and ml who were all around for the inception of the Armada). It did make sense though, picking Spack Jarrow, the boat team. Can't argue with that logic. Quebec at 14 had another chance to pick me. And with that...I'd fallen out of the first round.

The 2nd round, I expected to go to just anyone at this point, I couldn't believe I was still available. Clearly though around this point I realized something else was going on and it wasn't just me. Durden was also still on the board (myself and Durden were tied with 205 TPE for #1 in the class...today we are still tied at 238). r1c3, mook, Shiny, Hoovuh were all still available as well. Most of those guys went in the 2nd round, some did go in the 3rd round but all of them went before I did. Kelowna, Newfoundland, Carolina, Colorado all passed on me again. Kelowna was fortunate to have 3 early 3rd round picks, since they passed on me twice again in the 3rd round before picking me 34th. Being scouted aside once we flipped to the 2nd round I expected anyone to take me.

I thought, maybe part of it was position. Teams didn't need defense as much? But I mean, maybe that's some of it, but also teams took a lot of other defensemen ahead of me. There were 10 defensemen picked ahead of me, Borje Samuelsson, Ka Chow, Zayne Dangle, Vasily Arkhangelsky, Dirty Boots, Ben Jammin, SD Core, Mikko Rashford, Jay O'Neil, Wendolene Ramsbottom. A lot of those are true rookies, which carry a high risk but probably a higher reward. Though some of those are also like... SD Core, who is Bauer's 4th player in 12 seasons, with a combined 800 TPE (which is still hundreds less than even my last player who was inactive for most of the back half of his career. I think the only logical explanation is that everyone just assumed I would be gone in the 1st round, and everyone just didn't realize he was still on the board.

Ahead of the draft, things looked pretty strong so clearly the GMs saw something weird. Not a GM, but SMJHL HO intern By-Tor's pre-draft rankings & analysis had Kinsinger ranked as the #1 prospect. Kinsinger tore up the prospect showcase, as a defenseman lead the tournament in scoring after the morning games on day 1. Through the end of day 1, I was 2nd in scoring (among all skaters. Including forwards). After the first half of day 2 I was tied for 2nd, and after the end of the "regular season" I finished tied for 5th in scoring with 30 points in 40 games on the #1 team in the tournament. 25 of those points were at even strength, which is 2nd in the tournament behind only Aittokallio (who had 26). The playoffs were a let down, but overall I think the tournament showed a strong build for Kinsinger.

So anyway, I think that's the whole story. Somehow I fell to the 3rd round, and 34th overall. The lowest I've been drafted since my very first player was drafted into the SMJHL (York 38th/11th SHL, Veccelli 6th/19th). Perhaps the question is commitment, which seems odd especially in the juniors. My "non-committed" player was an 1100 TPE player which is more than enough for the SMJHL. Certainly when the time for the SHL draft rolls around, and when the next couple seasons play out in the SMJHL, and Kelowna's defense is anchored by a capped player of a well known recreate taken 34th overall, GMs may be asking themselves... "How did we let that happen?"

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***By-Tor*** · 08-24-2021, 09:57 AM

Credit to enigmatic, Merica, and tweedledunn for sigs

Vaxlare · 08-24-2021, 10:38 AM

Always enjoy hearing about other players experiences leading up to the draft. Gives new players insight into if we did something wrong during scouting or if any vibes we got were correct. I'm honestly surprised I went as early as I did, especially before you did.

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