Though his Kingston Frontenacs teammates’ hockey season came to a stark and heartbreaking end with the Game 7 loss in Barrie back in April, Tyler Hopkins has had barely a chance to catch his breath in the two months since.
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“It’s been non-stop,” Hopkings said in a phone interview this week, just before packing his bags to head to the National Hockey League entry draft in Los Angeles where he’ll be waiting to hear a GM call his name at the Peacock Theatre this weekend.
NHL Central Scouting Service slotted the 18-year-old centre from Campbellville No. 68 among North American skaters in the mid-term rankings and he rose to No. 52 in the final rankings. While it’s highly unlikely he’ll hear his name called in the first round on Friday night, he can reasonably expect to get called down to the floor in early Saturday afternoon when the draft picks up with the second round.
Not that his post-season whirlwind will end there, mind you.
That night in Barrie, Hopkins said goodbye to his teammates who were boarding the bus back to Kingston and then he hopped in a car bound for Toronto to catch a flight to Texas for the IIHF world under-18s championships.
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The chance to join the Canadian team at the tournament had been hanging out there in the event that Kingston didn’t advance to the third round of the OHL playoffs — something that no one in the Frontenacs room would want to talk about out loud at the time, but that management was aware of.
“The coaching staff was really supportive and the team has been really supportive through the whole process,” he said.
The under-18 tournament is the chance to make a last and maybe most meaningful impression on NHL scouts for players ahead of the NHL draft and the Canadian team made the most of it, eking out a white-knuckle 3-2 overtime win over Czechia in the quarters, then running the table with a 4-0 win over Slovakia and a 7-0 pounding of Sweden in the gold medal game.
Joining the team mid-tournament, Hopkins wound up moving around and shuffling on and off lines in the rotation, spot duty, but he knew the drill, not to mention of the players having played for the Canadian team that won the Ivan Hlinka under-18 tournament in Edmonton last August.
“The tournament in Texas was a really fun experience and I was fortunate to do with a couple of my friends that I’ve grown up with playing with and against,” Hopkins said. “My mom and dad were able to come down on short notice and be there for the gold medal game.”
In that win over Sweden, Hopkins picked up an assist on a third-period goal by Braeden Cootes.
After the tournament, Hopkins had just days to get ready for the NHL combine in Buffalo.
“A lot of the older guys (on the Frontenacs) have been through it, so they gave me a heads-up about the testing, but it wasn’t like I had any chance to train for it,” he said. “I thought I did pretty well on the 30-second bicycle test — that was the toughest thing and it felt like my legs were going to fall off after.”
Just as stressful and no less important were the interviews with NHL management groups. The first team he met with, the Tampa Bay Lightning, put him on the spot in a hurry.
“The weirdest question I heard at the combine was from Tampa Bay,” Hopkins said. “They asked me, ‘If every player on the team is really focused on getting better himself every day, is that, is a team full of those players going to be able to win?’ It threw me for a loop.”
Hopkins had no time to formulate an answer to what seems like a trap question, a prompt that might catch a self-centred teen, someone who comes into a situation with his own program rather than looking at the collective good. The Lightning had to be encouraged by Hopkins’s response.
“I told them that the team will be able to have some success to a certain degree but won’t be able to win anything because the team needs to be able to come together,” he said.
Hopkins would wind up talking to 20 other teams at the combine and said he became “more comfortable as it went along.”
The Frontenacs selected Hopkins with the fourth overall pick in the OHL priority selection in 2023 and he took a significant step up his second year in the league, Hopkins racked up 20 goals and 31 assists in 67 regular-season games. Nonetheless, the playoffs were both a team and personal disappointment for Hopkins, who managed only five points, all assists, in the 11 post-season games. In the Barrie series, Hopkins had good looks and chances, but he couldn’t help but feel snake-bitten.
“It was my line that needed to get us over the hump against the Colts and Joey (Willis) and I just couldn’t get anything to go,” he said.
Thankfully for Hopkins, he’s had little opportunity to dwell on despair and knows that he’ll be heading to a summer-rookie camp staged by the team that selects him in Los Angeles. For that reason, he’s only been off skates a few days and hasn’t taken any time off gym work at all.
“It’s every kid’s dream is to play in the NHL, and the combine and the draft are that first step in making that dream come true,” he said. “Just getting picked is all that matters — who knows where, who knows when. I want to get drafted and get picked as high as possible and give myself the best opportunity that I can to make an NHL team one day.”
gjoyce@postmedia.com
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