By Peter A. Martin
Three future Husky hockey players, Steve Quailer and twin brothers Justin and Drew Daniels, were selected in the 2008 National Hockey League draft last week.
The Daniels brothers, who will spend a season in a junior league before entering Northeastern in fall 2009, were both selected by the San Jose Sharks. Justin was selected in the third round, 62nd overall and Drew was 194th overall as the Sharks’ seventh round selection.
Quailer, who will be joining the team on campus in a few months for the coming season, was selected in the third round, 86th overall by the Montreal Canadiens.
“It’s nice that these guys got selected,” said head coach Greg Cronin. “We actually thought we were going to have as many as six guys picked, but this is a good start.”
The three other candidates for selection were current defenseman Dan Nycholat, whose stock could have been hurt by a bout with mononucleosis that kept him off the ice for almost half of the year; Brodie Reid, who will either join Northeastern this year or next from the British Columbia Hockey League’s Burnaby Express; and Alex Tuckerman, a teammate of Quailer’s who will join the Huskies this season from the Sioux City Musketeers in the United States Hockey League (USHL).
The only drafted Husky who will join the team this season is Quailer, a player Cronin described as “a very unique combo of size and skill, with good hands. He plays well in traffic, and has a good shot, but we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg with him.”
Quailer played in Colorado midget leagues two years ago before making the jump to the USHL, a very competitive league that has produced current Huskies Randy Guzior, David Strathman, Steve Silva and the only other drafted Husky, Joe Vitale.
“There was a huge jump for him from where he was a year ago to where he is now,” Cronin said. “He was a great rookie in his first year in the USHL and that usually doesn’t happen, it takes a year to get acclimated.”
The 6’3″, 185 pound forward registered 19 goals and 30 assists in 60 games for Sioux City, a scoring line that compares favorably with Vitale’s final tally in his final season in the USHL: 11 goals and 20 assists.
As for draft day itself, Quailer said he had a bit of an odd way of approaching the day; he went camping with his friends and had no idea what had happened until he got home late that evening.
“I walked in the front door and my mom asked me if I knew I had been drafted,” said Quailer in a phone interview from his home in Colorado. “I said no, so she told me where.”
Quailer’s nonchalant attitude toward the draft is not uncommon, as the NHL draft, more so than other professional leagues, is what Quailer called a “crapshoot.”
That is something Vitale said he knows about. He was a seventh round selection of the Penguins in 2005.
“It’s very flattering,” he said. “People see you as a potential pro. You can always say down the road that ‘I was drafted.’
“At the same time, it is just another step in the right direction,” he said. “You haven’t really accomplished anything. It just means the potential is there. You don’t want to get in your head that you are in the NHL, and you still have a long way to go.”
Only two players who played any significant minutes with Northeastern last year moved on, Jimmy Russo graduated and Chad Costello left the team to join the Texas Wildcatters in the ECHL.
The six freshmen who will join the team this year add an incredible element of competition and depth to this team, Cronin said.
“Guys we brought in who never really put it together enough to see ice time are now turning over spots,” he said. “The competitiveness that happens when you bring in that many new faces is always good for a team.”
Fans will now have to wait until October when the team opens its season at the Kendall Hockey Classic in Alaska to find out what the newly-minted Husky players, like Quailer, can bring.
