Last night Philippe Maillet made his NHL debut with the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League. A remarkable journey for a kid from Lachenale, Quebec, a town of just over 20,000 people, who went undrafted in the NHL and has spent the past three seasons in the minors.
What is most inspiring about Maillet is not just making it to the NHL, but the path he took to get there. He played in the Quebec Midget AAA league for College-Esther-Blondin Phenix where he was drafted in the 7th round of the QMJHL draft by Victoriaville. He had an impressive 3-year career with the Tigers amassing 240 points in 252 games but went undrafted in the NHL. He then pursued his degree at the University of New Brunswick where he played four seasons of U Sport hockey and won two national championships and league MVP.
After his impressive U Sport career he went right into the AHL and has played the past three season with Ontario Reign and the Hershey Bears before making his NHL debut last night.
While the story of the night was undrafted Philippe Maillet making it to the NHL; it’s also a story about U Sport hockey in general as the talent level in that league is high and continues to develop while the league and it’s players operate mostly in the shadows garnering very little media attention or viewership.
Aside from professional sports; the US and Canadian differ greatly in their media and viewership of amateur hockey. The Canadian model puts a lot of attention on the CHL and then secondary Junior A, especially in smaller towns that don’t have a CHL presence. In the United States the focus is on NCAA hockey and a very distant second would be local high school/prep school hockey in towns all across the US, especially in US/CAN border states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota and New York. This can be analyzed through a lot of metrics but the simplest would-be attendance. An NCAA D1 program, the highest division in US college hockey, has an average game attendance typically in the 3,000-5,000 range with some schools under 1,000 and some schools over 11,000. This is similar to the CHL who has an average game attendance, depending on the league and the year, in the 3,000-5,000 range. Now, compare that to U Sport hockey attendance and it’s not even close; the league average is under 1,000 fans per game and the highest attendance team, typically University of New Brunswick, has around 2,500 fans per game. Even further proof of this comes from observing areas where there is both a USport and CHL team like Guelph, Ontario for example. In Guelph the CHL team gets an average of 4,000 fans per game while the Guelph Gryphons U Sport team has an average attendance of 550.
As a result of the lack of media attention and viewership, U Sport hockey doesn’t get the respect it deserves. However, with players like Maillet making their way to the NHL that could change in the years to come.
“The perception of U Sport hockey was that it was recreational league for CHL burnouts that couldn’t make it to the pros,” said Marlin Muylaert, Director of Canada Scouting for Neutral Zone and former U Sport Head Coach and National Champion. “That was far from the truth back then and even more so today. The players we recruited out of the CHL had minor professional options but they wanted to get a degree first or wanted extra time to develop before going that route. We had NHL draft picks, we had guys who played in Memorial Cups and were captains on their CHL teams. We would go down to the states and play some NCAA D1 schools and those were good games.” Marlin is one of only a few coaches who has been a Head Coach in both the U Sport and NCAA and finds the leagues fairly similar. “Obviously the NCAA has more rules and doesn’t allow CHL players, but outside of that it’s pretty similar. They are both older rosters, they both play about the same number of games, both are geared towards players looking to get a degree and compete at a high level for their school.”
Paul O’Hagan, who played for Marlin at University of Guelph and now serves as Director of Scouting for Neutral Zone in Ontario, was a captain on a Memorial Cup Champion Oshawa Generals team and was an NHL Draft pick. He had offers in minor pro but chose the U Sport route to get an education and play high level hockey. “I had an offer after my OHL career to go to Roanoke in the Coast League to start my pro career and work my way up from there but I decided to go the U Sport path instead,” said O’Hagan. Why? The answer may surprise you. “First off I promised my mother I would get a degree but also I had a great conversation with Brian Burke who was the assistant GM of Vancouver at the time who drafted me and he said ‘you have an education package from Oshawa, you’re a smart kid, you’ll be better off getting your degree’ and I took that to heart.” Paul said many of the players on his Guelph team ended their U Sport career with both hockey offers and job offers and many went on to become successful in tech, finance, medicine and business.
“Don’t kid yourself, most NHL clubs I talk to have a scout that is keeping tabs on U Sport hockey the same way they do with NCAA free agents,” said Muylaert. “The hockey insiders get it and they understand the quality of the league.” Both Marlin and Paul scout the OHL for Neutral Zone’s NHL Draft coverage and feel there has been a lot of undrafted talent in the league the past two years. “NHL clubs have higher risk drafting CHL players because they have a shorter window of development as opposed to NCAA prospects who get drafted and then have 4 years of college after that before they have to sign,” admits O’Hagan. “So, the extra years of on and off ice development that U Sport provides is a major benefit to those players and will likely yield more talent to the league in the near future.”
Maillet is not the first U Sport hockey player to make it to the NHL, in fact, there is nearly a hundred players who have gone before him that played at least one game in the NHL, not to mention some career NHLers as well. Joel Ward is probably the best known having played over 800 games in the NHL coming out of University of Prince Edward Island. He, like Mailett, won the Kelly Award as league MVP, but 10 years earlier in 2004. Others include Claude Vilgrain who went straight from University of Moncton to the Vancouver Canucks; Randy Gregg out of University of Alberta, Jody Shelley out of Dalhousie University, Mathieu Darche out of McGill University and Daryl Boyce out of University of New Brunswick.
So while the high-end draft talent in the CHL and the NCAA grab most the headlines, the overwhelming majority of both of those leagues are undrafted players. Both NCAA and U Sport are predominately undrafted 20–21-year-old freshman looking to play high level hockey and get a degree. However, the NCAA garners higher viewership and respect while a lot of talented U Sport athletes are playing in empty arenas with little to no media coverage. So, when a U Sport player like Philippe Maillet makes it all the way to the NHL after going undrafted, it makes it all the more special and right behind him is a crowded group of alums with enthusiastic and unapologetic support for their guy who made it all the way to the show.