BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2013 The second edition of the NHL\u2019s decentralized draft added star power and largely avoided the pitfalls of the inaugural run, earning high marks from the executive behind the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll give it the A-minus,\u201d Steve Mayer, NHL President of Content and Events, said when asked for his assessment, \u201cbecause I always want to get to the A. But I\u2019m a tough critic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Family members of top prospects scrambled to pull out their phones as Justin Bieber walked down the aisle at KeyBank Center to announce Gavin McKenna as the first pick for the Maple Leafs, giving the league a viral moment that helped reach wider audiences than when Commissioner Gary Bettman announced the top selection of Matthew Schaefer a year ago. Nashville\u2019s first-round pick got a similar bump from country star Luke Bryan, who made the announcement in person before performing at a country music festival down the street.<\/p>\n
If ESPN\u2019s John Buccigross had his way, broadcasters would still be able to show the look on a GM\u2019s face as he worked a trade or learned of a rival team\u2019s pick, rather than having them work from their own facilities. But like all good hockey minds, Buccigross knows to only worry about what he can control. Diehard hockey fans like him are already hooked; the league needs to continue making new fans to grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s better when all the GMs and the scouts and the assistant GMs are there. I think there\u2019s a feeling of electricity,\u201d Buccigross said, \u201cand you can kind of feel the palpable angst from the tables strewn on the floor of the arena.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely better flow from last year,\u201d he added. \u201cThe NHL knew that [was something to improve] right away. They\u2019re pretty self-aware.\u201d<\/p>\n
Round 1 still ran long — the final pick came at 11:05pm, nearly four hours after Bieber left the stage — but the pace throughout the night was improved and prospect and family interviews were well-received. <\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, maybe they could streamline it a touch more,\u201d Buccigross said. \u201cThey wanted big, TV-show production and have it star-studded and to give it a big [feel]. The league is doing well, so certainly a lot of their decisions, production-wise … these are their moments to kind of put on a show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayer acknowledged connection issues led Bettman to drop an interview with sixth-overall pick Carson Carels from his family\u2019s farm in Manitoba, and a talkback with GM of the Year Bill Guerin felt clunky. But after repeated issues last year, which Buccigross described as \u201ca bit of a technical gong show,\u201d brief trouble connecting to rural Canada felt like a win.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were prepared to bring [Carels] in from where he was, and that\u2019s a great credit to our technical team,\u201d Mayer said. \u201cYou gotta realize, technically, it\u2019s holy shit, if you excuse me for how I say it, but we have to have, in real time, 32 teams being able to do all of their picking and getting the information and the data and all of the things, all that has to be coordinated. That was seamless [Friday] night, we had no issues there. We\u2019re bringing in 32 feeds from all the teams that are in war rooms. We\u2019re bringing in celebrities to make picks. We\u2019re having audio and video that has to look amazing. Like, the amount of coordination and the team that we\u2019ve got working on this, that was amazing, just amazing. It comes across –\u2029I hope — seamlessly, but there\u2019s so many things that could go wrong that thankfully didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayer is eager to see the audience and social numbers for the draft after feeling like his entire feed was dominated by posts about Bieber\u2019s appearance. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s all these moments that, again, whether you\u2019re a huge fan of hockey, or you\u2019re just a fan of sports, or you\u2019re just an entertainment fan, you know about the NHL draft today,\u201d Mayer said. \u201cAnd in this world of so much going on — and right now, right in the heat of the World Cup — like, you gotta be really proud that we cut through the clutter. We cut through the clutter [Friday] night, and we got attention on our draft. And that, to me, is a win — a big win for the NHL.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUFFALO, N.Y. \u2013 The second edition of the NHL\u2019s decentralized draft added star power and largely avoided the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,794,3915,575,85],"class_list":["post-766235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-espn","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}