from Gare Joyce of Sportsnet,

The interview went forgettably, canned answers all the way, but it ended with a bang. As he was shaking hands with the kid, Murray asked him about the town where he played in the CHL. The kid gave a perfunctory answer. “It’s a nice place,” the kid said or something like that.

Murray closed it like a veteran detective. “I’m actually going out to that town of yours this summer for a golf tournament,” Murray said. “Do you know any good places to go out for a drink and a good time?”

The prospect then rhymed off a bunch of watering holes, various waitresses names and the town’s one strip club. All this passed for irrefutable proof that he was old beyond his years in life experience, but as guileless as a toddler. Not surprisingly Murray’s team passed on the prospect at the draft. And equally not surprisingly the prospect had issues with drinking down the line that compromised his professional career.

The images that come to mind when the NHL Draft Combine rolls around every early summer: young men straining to push up the bar on the bench press or squeezing out one last pull-up or pedalling on the stationary bikes like they’re straining for their livelihoods if not for their lives. Okay, there are other stations during physical testing and some of them might be as intriguing, but still the strength and conditioning testing constitutes a fraction of action at the combine.

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