What to expect at the NHL Draft: Recent first-rounders’ advice to the class of 2024

Just stay cool, Adam Fantilli thought, but it wasn’t easy.

It was June 2023, and it was time for his next interview during the NHL Draft Combine process. He and his good friend and Michigan teammate Gavin Brindley, roommates for the event in Buffalo, had exchanged pep talks, reminded each other to be themselves. But that was before Fantilli stepped into an interview room to face somewhere between 12 and 15 people. He had no idea he’d be speaking to such a large group at once. His heart rate spiked.

So did Seth Jarvis’ in 2020. It was a COVID-19 year, so his interview was virtual, but he didn’t expect to be staring down one of his all-time favorite players on the Zoom call in Martin Brodeur. Suddenly, the throat got a bit dry. Jarvis tried to remember his mom’s advice: “be as professional as possible.”

In 2018, Barrett Hayton wasn’t so worried about the interviews. He remembers feeling comfortable in his own skin at the time. It was more a matter of ensuring his body was in a good place for all the testing. He was only a couple weeks removed from the OHL playoffs while undergoing the full gamut of physical trials. In his mind, most of his regular hockey-style training was conducive to the combine, so he opted not to change his routines leading up, and he hoped for the best.

The Combine process is nerve-wracking, sure, but it’s nothing compared to Draft night. What happens on that fateful Friday when you’re a projected first-rounder, dressed to the nines, waiting to hear your name called? Daily Faceoff talked to recent NHL first-round picks in hopes of gleaning some advice to pass on to the Class of 2024 when they head to The Sphere in Las Vegas June 28 and 29.

1. It’s OK to do some homework on yourself…to a point

The typical hockey player mantra would tell an 18-year-old kid to be utterly selfless, never buy into any hype and not get his hopes up by reading any rankings. But that’s easier said than done for a soon-to-be first-round pick. As Jarvis recalls, in the days and weeks leading up to the Carolina Hurricanes drafting him 13^th overall in 2020, people were tagging him on social media with pre-draft content, making it difficult to avoid reading anything about himself.

And, really, it would be impractical not to read a single thing about yourself in the time leading up. What if you’ve jumped from a projected second-rounder to a first-rounder and didn’t realize it? What if you have an inflated head and viewed yourself as a top-10 pick all year, but all the buzz in the final month has you outside the second round? It’s best to know what to expect. While it wouldn’t be healthy for a prospect to obsess over what prognosticators say, it’s good to land “somewhere in between” being in the know and being in the dark, as Hayton puts it. In 2018, before the Arizona Coyotes (now Utah’s NHL team) picked him fifth overall, the interview process was his primary resource for setting expectations. He took note of which teams seemed to express the keenest interest in him – and when they were picking.

With that ballpark knowledge of when you might be picked: you can allow yourself or maybe your loved ones to start picturing a certain team’s jersey with your name on it. There’s a jinx factor there, sure, but embracing the fun of the process trumps it.

“I wasn’t picturing myself in any jerseys, but I did have family members going on the teams’ websites making [mock] jerseys and sending them to me,” Fantilli said. “And I definitely saw what they looked like, and that was cool. But I don’t think I was really focusing too much on that.”

2. Go to your happy place when the day arrives

Everyone has their own process for navigating Draft day in the best possible state of mind. For some, it can mean totally disconnecting.

“The day of the draft in the morning, I was so nervous,” Jarvis said. “I went to the gym just to get my mind away from everything and just be able to get out of it for a second.”

In Fantilli’s case, it was about surrounding himself with the right people. He had a bunch of family on hand in Nashville as an entourage and his parents set them up with an Airbnb, something he’s still thankful for today given how difficult he remembers it being to co-ordinate the trip for so many travellers. Having his favorite people all around him kept him grounded and positive.

“Come Draft day, you definitely have some nerves going throughout the day and that’s just normal,” Fantilli said. “But once I got in there and sat down with my family and sat down in the row, I was able to take a breath – and sit there and realize where I was and take a step back and look at everybody else that was in the same situation and just enjoy where we all have gotten to, enjoy the moment, enjoy the walk up to shake [NHL commissioner Gary Bettman’s] hand and enjoy putting the jersey on. I was really able to take a step back and remember it.”

Not every player is so lucky. As Fantilli recalls with a laugh about his former Michigan teammate and Winnipeg Jets first-round pick Rutger McGroarty: “He said he blacked out at the Draft.”

3. Your phone is going to BLOW UP. It’ll be OK

Can a phone visibly emit smoke? The seconds, minutes and hours after you’re drafted puts that theory to the test. Players get pummelled by a tidal wave of calls and especially texts. Hayton can’t say for sure if it was thousands, but he at the very least received “hundreds” of messages. The backlog can be positively overwhelming, and Fantilli even remembers getting some surprising calls that he “almost would’ve stopped at the podium” to answer.

“It took me probably like a week and a half to answer everything,” Fantilli said. “Because you get some things that are like, oh my god, ‘I’ve got to reply to this one,’ and then it starts to pile on top of each other, and at a certain point you can’t really keep up with it. So you have to shut your phone off and let it happen and enjoy the moment. Then once everything calms down and you get back to your bed or you get on the plane or in the car, you can go through that when you have some time. But in the moment you’re not going to be having any time to be focused on the texts that you’re getting.”

That can be tough, because there’s a sense of obligation for a player to thank everyone who helped him make it to that point.

“It was pretty overwhelming trying to get back to everyone and whatnot, but I definitely did my best over the next couple of days just to do it,” Hayton said “There’s so many people who were a big part of your journey who weren’t actually there to thank and soak it in with in person.”

4. Once you’re picked, it’s time for the ‘Car Wash’

There’s a reason why you have to save the text replies for later. As Hayton remembers, he didn’t even get a chance to look at his phone for hours after the Coyotes called his name. Fantilli dropped the ‘car wash’ reference in describing what happens after a first-round pick poses with Bettman, and it’s an accurate analogy; players are more or less pushed down a conveyor belt. They do immediate interviews with media. They take photos wearing their new jersey and hats and take part in some team videography. Next is a trip up to the club’s suite to meet the front office members.

“The management staff is usually up there and you meet everybody again and you try to remember names of everybody,” Fantilli said.

5. Congrats, you’re hired. And you start immediately

There may be an assumption that new prospects get somewhat of a grace period to breathe after being drafted given it happens just days before free agency and the club might be pre-occupied. Nope. Once you’re picked, the contact with your new employer begins pretty much right away. Jarvis was on the phone with Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour and then-GM Don Waddell that evening. Fantilli got his development camp travel information pretty much right away. Hayton travelled directly from the Draft to the Coyotes’ prospect camp.

So it’s not hyperbolic to say that everything happens incredibly fast. Once a player takes that podium, it’s over in a blur and his NHL career journey begins. That highlights how important it is to take it all in. As cliched as that sounds, cliches exists for a reason; they typically represent a universal truth. And living in the moment is the primary piece of advice a former first-rounder offers to today’s potential draftees.

“You have to enjoy it because you’re never going to get drafted again,” Jarvis said. “It’s such a cool experience. You want to make sure you enjoy it with your friends, with your family. It sounds pretty simple, but you can get lost in everything going on, all the chaos of it. But if you can take time to sit back and really realize what you accomplished and what you did, it makes it 10 times sweeter.”

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