When Darryl Plandowski arrived in Tampa Bay as the head scout in 2008, the Lightning’s prospect pool was barren except for one recently stocked big fish. After a last-place finish in the 2007-08 NHL standings, Tampa selected center Steven Stamkos first overall at the 2008 NHL Draft in Ottawa.
“There wasn’t a lot of talent there so we were starting from scratch for sure,” Plandowski said.
The Lightning scouting staff was also in a state of chaos.
“We had two owners and they wanted all of their buddies to scout so when I first started it was a little hectic,” Plandowski said. “When Steve Yzerman took over (as GM in 2010), we streamlined our scouting staff into areas, guys knew their areas, there were not as many crossovers and everybody knew every player in their area. It allowed us to do a good job with the top end of the draft, but we also wanted to steal guys in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh rounds.”
Fourteen years later, Tampa is coming off back-to-back Stanley Cup championships with three Cup Final and five conference finals appearances in the past seven years. Most of the ingredients in that success were pieces that Plandowski, along with director of amateur scouting Al Murray and the Tampa scouting staff put in place.
If you are looking for inspiration for the Coyotes in the first year of this difficult rebuild, look no further than Friday night’s opponent at Gila River Arena. The Lightning is littered with key players from all rounds of the draft. Plandowski, the Coyotes director of amateur scouting, is hoping to engineer a similar roster construction in Arizona.
“Darryl is an excellent talent evaluator and his fingerprints are all over the Tampa Bay Lightning roster,” GM Bill Armstrong said when he hired Plandowski in October 2020. “We are thrilled to have him lead our amateur scouting department.”
If you look at the Lightning’s top 10 points-per-game leaders (a stat we chose because star forward Nikita Kucherov has only played 12 games), seven of them are products of Lightning drafts and five of them were drafted after Plandowski came on board. Additionally, defenseman Mikhail Sergachev was acquired from Montréal in exchange for another Tampa draft pick (2013 first-round pick Jonathan Drouin) and defenseman Ryan McDonagh was acquired in a package from the New York Rangers that included sending Tampa 2011 draft pick Vladislav Namestnikov to New York.
Here is a look at some of the Lightning’s key contributors and when/where they were drafted.
F Steve Stamkos, 2008 first round (No. 1)
F Alex Killorn, 2007 third round (No. 77)
D Victor Hedman, 2008 first round (No. 2)
F Ondřej Palát, 2011 seventh round (No. 208)
G Andrei Vasilevskiy, 2012 first round (No. 19)
C Brayden Point 2014 third round (No. 79)
C Anthony Cirelli, 2015 third round (No. 72)
F Mathieu Joseph, 2015 fourth round (No. 120)
F Taylor Raddysh, 2016 second round (No. 58)
F Ross Colton, 2016 fourth round (No. 118)
What’s striking about that list is how many key players the Lightning found after the first round, or even after the top 15 picks. Only Stamkos, Hedman and Vasilevskiy are first-round picks. Six of the players were found after the first two rounds.
Plandowski admits that luck plays a major role when drafting 17-year-old and 18-year-old kids who have a lot of mental and physical development ahead of them. There were even times when the Lightning had planned to take a different player only to watch him go off the board just before they picked.
“Everybody says later, ‘Wow, what a pick’ and you’re like, ‘Geez, certain things happened for us to get that guy,’” Plandowski said, laughing. “I think every staff talks about finding players in the later rounds but we had a great staff, we did our work on a lot of guys and we did have strong feelings about them.”
Armstrong has emphasized the importance of finding players after the first round to fill in around the stars. A top-heavy roster can fall prey to the issues currently plaguing the Edmonton Oilers and other teams, but a team that is built with a lot of depth through the draft will theoretically have a steady pipeline of players coming through the system to fill roles.
“Obviously, you have to have talent,” Plandowski said. “The top teams, they can score goals, they can possess the puck, they have good defensemen who can go get the puck and move it, and they have difference makers.
“On every NHL team that wins the Cup, there’s a lot of difference makers, but then there’s those other guys, kind of the glue guys, the guys that help protect the difference makers or can eat minutes as a defenseman or fill different roles. In Tampa, we talked about it a lot. We were always after skill but we knew we needed those glue guys, too, and even when you recognize what needs you have that are still missing, you can trade for that when you have enough picks. It allows you to do both.”
When Armstrong had completed his whirlwind of deals this past summer, the Coyotes owned eight picks in the first two rounds of the 2022 draft and they are likely to acquire more at the March 21 NHL trade deadline; either for 2022 or subsequent drafts. Armstrong will also try to replicate this past summer when he took on bloated contracts from other teams in exchange for picks or assets.
Plandowski and assistant director of amateur scouting Ryan Jankowksi likened it to Christmas for scouts.
“Bill is a lot like Steve (Yzerman) in his approach,” Plandowski said. “I wouldn’t have come to Arizona if it was just a GM that didn’t have the knowledge that Bill did and a belief in the amateur side and the draft and bringing the emphasis so much on that part of the equation.
“There’s guys going to different situations where they don’t have time to build through the draft or their team is well along and they don’t need more draft picks, but when you’re where Tampa was or you’re where where Arizona is, as painful as it is right now, it’s a real chance to build something that’s different than the rest of the organizations; something sustainable.”
Plandowksi hopes the fruits of this arduous labor will be visible soon.
“It might take a little time but I think once we get talent coming up — and it doesn’t necessarily need to be on your team right away because hockey fans will follow the guys coming up — I think fans will get excited,” he said. “Over the next three years, our plan is to put talent and skill and skating into the lineup.”
Top photo: Tampa Bay Lightning center Brayden Point via Getty Images
