Best of the West

One of my favourite annual events in the WHL is the release of the "Best Of The West" and "Best Of The East" polls, where the players and coaches around the league are asked to rate the top opponents in various categories. Well, the Tri-City Herald released this year's Best Of The West yesterday. This will be the last year for the Best Of The West, which next year will be renamed the Tyler Johnson Awards.

I made that last part up. But Johnson has won a number of B.O.W. categories over his career in the WHL and capped off his last season in the league this year by winning four categories (Best Overager, Best Defensive Forward, Best Skater, and Top Faceoff Man) outright, and finishing 2nd in Most Valuable Player and 3rd in Most Accurate Shot.

Remember, these awards are chosen by his peers - the other teams in the western conference. So this is a heckuva lot more meaningful IMO than something chosen by the fans or beat writers.

Given all this recognition over the years, plus the fact that he is currently leading the WHL in scoring, and let's not forget about that WJC gold medal from 2010, why is this guy still an undrafted free agent in the NHL?

I know he's 5'9" and that's an issue for NHL teams. It's also reasonable to assume that he probably isn't going to be a big offensive contributor at the NHL level; if any of the 30 NHL teams saw any chance of that possibility coming true, he'd have been drafted or signed by now. But so what? Is there no team in the NHL that can use a good-skating defensive forward who's good on faceoffs? Even if he's not a blue-chip prospect, I think you have to at least acknowledge that the kid has a chance to play at that level....there's a lot of pretty untalented 6'4", 6'5" guys getting drafted in the late rounds of the NHL drafts and yet nobody will give a good smaller player a chance. In some ways, the NHL hasn't changed very much at all.