Combine designed to give strength coaches a feel for player athleticism
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Sam Bennett, who was obviously positioned to get the last laugh after his head-turning performance during the Calgary Flames’ playoff run, couldn’t help but reference his NHL Scouting Combine experience on the eve of another round of the dreaded fitness tests.
So he sent this message to Connor McDavid, Lawson Crouse and 18,620 of his Twitter followers:
“Good Luck in the NHL combine tomorrow @LawCrouse @mcdavid97. Watch out for that pull up bar” typed Bennett, who punctured his tweet with the perfect emoji.
Bennett, who was alleverything with the Ontario Hockey League’s Kingston Frontenacs, could not do one pull-up in last June’s fitness tests. That didn’t stop the Flames from selecting him fourth overall and he has since opened the door to a permanent spot in next season’s lineup.
Which begs the question, what information can teams glean from this phase of the combine?
“No player here has to prove anything because it’s not a competition,” said Dan Marr, the director of NHL Central Scouting. “This is an avenue for the strength coaches to get a feel and an assessment as to where the players are in their athletic development at this age.
“There’s a lot of projection that goes on, just as there is on the ice, but they’re going to determine the body type, how much weight they think a player can put on. Can they make him faster? Quicker? Those type of things.”
The 119 prospects who are in Buffalo to be eyeballed by the 30 NHL teams didn’t get to this point without a need to be competitive. So on Saturday, when the players are bench pressing and pushing themselves through the dreaded Wingate cycle stage and facing the pullup bar, they will have a goal in mind. They will feel they have something to prove.
Take McDavid, the Canadian Hockey League’s player of the year who will soon don an Edmonton Oilers jersey as the draft’s first pick. When he was asked what he wanted to accomplish, he said: “Not to embarrass myself.
“Bennett tweeted me today and said to watch out for that pull-up bar,” he continued. “I don’t want to get zero by any means, but you look at a guy like Sammie ... and what an unbelievable year he had. I think his combine experience has long been forgotten.”
“They tell us it’s not a competition,” said Boston College defenceman Noah Hanifin, “but we’re all naturally pretty competitive so we want to do our best. Push ourselves to the limit.”