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WHL: Girgensons has no ‘Plan B’ that involves Kelowna
During the dog days of summer, Zemgus Girgensons experienced the phenomena all high-profile prospects in U.S. experience, that of being a political football in the endless CHL vs. NCAA battle.
The Kelowna Rockets selected the 17-year-old, who is captain of the defending USHL champion Dubuque Fighting Saints, in the Canadian Hockey League import draft. Rockets president and GM Bruce Hamilton, by most accounts, was pretty brazen about declaring it would just be a matter of when Girgensons followed the path north that many other players have taken ("I know as soon as he's drafted, the NHL team's not going to want him in Dubuque and they're not going to want him going to the University of Vermont, either.").
That set off a furore. Girgensons, though, is sticking to his guns. The Riga, Latvia, native, who could be a first-round choice in June, is saying he will follow through on his plans to play for the Vermont Catamounts.
From Ryan S. Clark of the Fargo Forum:
"You know, first of all I don't see my future in the CHL ... I talked with other CHL teams that were interested in me. I thought about the Q (The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League) and the Quebec Remparts, but (Kelowna) drafted me and didn't say anything to me about it. After that, I felt they disrespected me a little bit. They pushed it a little bit onto my adviser and I don't think he really liked it."
" ... I keep my plans straight. I don't have a Plan B because it would distract me from Plan A. The plan has always been to go to Vermont. That's been Plan A. There's never been a Plan B." (Slightly Chilled)
With tongue in cheek, does Girgensons know what he's giving up by planning to honour his commitment to Vermont? Instead of higher education and pretty good hockey, he could be "able to make two million [dollars] in a couple of years" as Dallas Stars goaltending prospect Jack Campbell described his choice to pick the OHL over college.
(That's from a Windsor Star story about whether the NCAA amending its policies to give conferences the option to pay student-athletes a $2,000 US annual stipend will affect CHL recruiting. It likely will not since hockey is more affluent sport. Knowing the socioeconomic circumstances of many athletes in football and basketball, though, it will help many. Players in major-college football and basketball should be getting paid. That's neither here nor there.)
Circumstances can change magically for a player who was on the NCAA development path. The players are surely well-drilled on what to say and how to control the spin. Nothing Hamilton said in August is necessarily invalid. For a reminder, here's the quote from about 10 weeks ago:
"His agents think (Dubuque) is where he should be playing and he's very loyal to that program. But I know as soon as he's drafted, the NHL team's not going to want him in Dubuque and they're not going to want him going to the University of Vermont, either. We'll have a real good opportunity to have him here for sure next year, and potentially after Christmas this year. When the Latvian team plays in the world juniors, we'll be very aggressive again there." (Dub Nation, Aug. 19, 2011)
It is well-documented that NHL draft picks typically do not stay in the USHL, which is certainly not a knock on a good league. The drill there is players often move on, pure and simple. As for Girgensons, it is worth noting that he played a year of junior hockey in Vermont when he was 15, during his second year in North America. Perhaps that speaks to Girgensons, who's still pretty young and adjusting to life in a foreign country, desiring to have a comfort zone until he's mature enough for the big league, rather than adjusting to another new environment in Kelowna. Either way, the story is not quieting down.
Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.
