Sixty-one players were drafted before the Penguins grabbed Kristopher Letang in the 2005 NHL entry draft.
That was before Letang established himself a point-per-game defenseman. Before he helped Canada earn a gold medal at the world junior championships. And, perhaps most important, before teams fully grasped how changes in the NHL’s rules and their enforcement would affect the game.
So what most scouts saw when they watched Letang play for Val d’Or in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League in the 2004-05 season was a smallish defenseman who showed flashes of promise while putting up 32 points in 70 games, but who didn’t seem any more intriguing than a lot of other teenaged prospects.
Too bad for them. If the people who evaluate talent for a living had foreseen how Letang, 19, would develop, and accurately projected how skill and speed would become increasingly important in pro hockey, he wouldn’t have been available to the Penguins early in Round 3.
“The guys [drafted ahead of me] were like 6 feet 1, 200 pounds,” Letang said yesterday. “Now it’s based on skating and skill, so I’d probably be drafted higher than the third round.”
Letang’s offensive abilities and potential have been evident throughout the Penguins’ rookie camp at Mellon Arena. That he is a right-handed shot — something rare in the NHL and pretty much nonexistent on the Penguins’ depth chart at defense — only enhances his value.
Indeed, if the Penguins decide to try to sign Letang, who is 5-11, 190 pounds, in the near future, it might well cost them more than a team normally would spend on a third-rounder. While he might not get the maximum $850,000 base salary to which players in his draft class are entitled, Letang has the option of returning to the draft pool for 2007, at which point it’s conceivable he could go in the first round if his play doesn’t regress in the winter.
General manager Ray Shero said yesterday he has not decided whether to try to work out a contract with Letang now, but acknowledged that his status shapes up as a front-burner issue for management.
“We’ll talk as a staff, see how his camp goes,” he said. “There’s a guy we’ll have to get to sooner rather than later.”
Letang suggested that he might not be ready for pro hockey because, “I have to improve my game defensively,” and sending him to their minor-league team in Wilkes-Barre — which might be the next logical step in his development — is not an option for the Penguins.
Assistant GM Chuck Fletcher confirmed that under the NHL’s agreement with the Canadian Hockey League, the umbrella organization for North America’s three major-junior leagues, Letang must return to the QMJHL if he doesn’t earn a spot on the NHL roster.
Shero praised Letang’s showing during rookie camp, and agreed that his talents dovetail nicely with the NHL’s renewed emphasis on handling, passing and shooting the puck.
“I like what I see,” Shero said. “He’s a smart player. Really good footwork. One of those new-rules guys, obviously. They should be good for him.
“He’s a puck-moving guy which, for us moving forward as an organization, we’ll be looking for more guys like that.”
Letang’s modest size means he must learn to use leverage and body position to neutralize opposing forwards — “I need to always be at the right spot,” he said — but pointed out that defensemen like Dan Boyle and Brian Rafalski, whose builds are similar to his, have thrived in the NHL.
Shero’s former club in Nashville got good production out of physically unimposing defensemen such as Marek Zidlicky and Kimmo Timonen, so he understands that there’s more to assembling a defense corps than simply collecting a half-dozen wide-bodies.
“You need a mix of a few different types of players,” Shero said.
That’s something a lot of teams will want to remember. Even if they can’t count on finding gifted ones in the third round anymore.
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