Welcome to the BIG TIME - hockey player Dan Hamhuis

SEE A DIFFERENT GAME

One top prospect, a small-town Canadian teen, rides the unnerving waves of the draft day experience

Dan Hamhuis picks at a piece of imaginary lint on his brand-new suit. He shifts in his aisle seat at the National Car Rental Center in Sunrise, Fla., then absently cracks his knuckles.

Hamhuis, 18, is a 6-0, 195-pound defenseman waiting for his name to be called by an NHL team at the annual entry draft.

A soft-spoken teen from the remote northern British Columbia outpost of Smithers, he is trying to contain himself on the official first day of what NHL scouts suggest--and his family hopes--will be a long career in the bigs.

But the suspense is getting to him.

For support, Hamhuis has with him his father, Marty; his mother, Ida; younger sisters, Cindy and Erin; his girlfriend, Sarah; two uncles, Herm and John, and his agent, Ross Gurney. The family has flown 12 hours, through three time zones and on three airplanes to share Hamhuis' big day. Herm came all the way from Nicaragua, where he listens to Dan's games over the Internet.

In getting to this point, the curly-haired, rosy-cheeked Hamhuis virtually came out of nowhere to be ranked the No. 1 North American defenseman by the NHL's Central Scouting Service. The rating capped a yearlong coming-out party for Hamhuis, an offensive defenseman who can join the rush and loves open-ice checks.

"At home games, they play a video of Dan's body-checks called `Hammy Hippy Shakes,'" Erin says. The video montage is set to the Georgia Satellites' version of "Hippy Hippy Shake."

Hamhuis (pronounced Ham-hyoose) finished the season with the Prince George Cougars of the Western Hockey League with 59 points (13 goals, 46 assists) in 62 games. He also had 125 minutes in penalties.

In January, Hamhuis won a bronze medal with Canada's national team at the World Junior Hockey Championship in Moscow. He wasn't on the radar of many hockey people before that tournament. Then his stock took off.

But the question of the moment is, which NHL team will pick him?

Already, another defenseman, University of Michigan product Mike Komisarek, has been drafted ahead of Hamhuis by the Canadiens at No. 7, adding to the tension.

Hamhuis and Gurney had extensive meetings with the Blackhawks before the draft, but Chicago goes with Finn Tuomo Ruutu, a left winger, with the ninth pick.

Gurney expects his client to go 12th overall, where the Predators are slated to pick, but no one really knows for sure what will happen on this trade-happy day. Draft day is often as filled with intrigue and trade rumors as it is with the realizing--and crushing--of hockey dreams.

"I thought I had it figured out last night, but you look at all those teams out there, and anything can happen," Hamhuis says.

He wipes his brow and leans forward, then leans back, then takes a sip from his bottled water. Ilya Kovalchuk and Stanislav Chistov, two Russians taken first and fifth overall, respectively, have vacated the seats in the two rows in front of Hamhuis.

The Rangers take goalie Dan Blackburn with the 10th pick before Wayne Gretzky, new part owner of the Coyotes, approaches the podium. Before Gretzky, who had played three years in the NHL by the time Hamhuis was born in 1982, can make his selection, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announces two trades.

The Hamhuis family holds its collective breath. Sarah has her hands folded in front of her in a white-knuckled combination of prayer and nerves.

The trade doesn't affect Hamhuis. Gretzky takes Swede Fredrik Sjostrom with the 11th pick, then the Predators, attending the fourth draft in franchise history, approach the podium. Officials with Nashville had told Gurney before the draft they would take Hamhuis if he were available at No. 12.

After a few agonizing seconds of expressing his team's gratitude to the Panthers as hosts for the draft, G.M. David Poile gets ready to make his pick.

Forty years ago, the town of Smithers bought an airplane hangar from the distant town of Terrace for $1. The townspeople took it apart, hauled it to Smithers--a town of 6,000 that is a 12-hour drive from Vancouver--and rebuilt it as part of a hockey arena. Hamhuis' grandfather led the charge to build the arena.

Because his family had a key to the arena as the operators of the concessions stand, Hamhuis on some nights would drill pucks around the old hangar until 3 in the morning.

His hockey fanaticism wasn't contained to the arena, however.

"He'd shoot pucks at us in the house," Marty says with a smile before draft day. "Tennis balls would be smoked at us. He Rollerblades around the house, mountain bikes in the house."

There's more. "He hip-checks us all the time in the house, too," says Erin. Cindy nods in agreement. Not to mention full nelsons on his sisters and, occasionally, his mom.

Oddly, inside the house is where Hamhuis honed his game. One of the main ingredients for road hockey--the primary entree to hockey for most Canadian children--is a road. The dead-end road in front of the Hamhuis house, however, was made of dirt, so there was lots of basement hockey for Dan and his dad in the early years.

"It turned out well because they paved the road just when Dan was getting too strong for basement hockey," says Marty, who coached Dan for eight years.

The road was paved in 1991, when Dan was 9. Hamhuis immediately shined on the Smithers paved-road circuit. It was his road to stardom.

The Nashville Predators," Poile says, "are pleased to select, from the Western Hockey Leagues Prince George Cougars, defenseman Dan Hamhuis."

Hamhuis hugs his family. The Predators stayed true to their word. He walks onto the stage, dons the gold, silver and blue jersey of his new team and shakes the hands of Poile and the NHL commissioner, among others. The moment every young hockey player dreams of lasts less than a minute before Hamhuis is taken to the Predators' draft table to meet the scouts and executives. The name of the 13th pick already is being announced as Hamhuis goes around the table.

The Predators seem pleased with their pick.

"The kids from Western Canada are pretty much the same," Poile says. "We got one last year in Scott Hartnell, and if this kid has any of the upbringing and values that he does, we'll have a winner on and off the ice, I know that."

Hamhuis is swept along by a Predators official and joined by his family as the post-selection agenda moves into high gear.

After leaving the draft floor, Hamhuis' official duties begin. He signs photos and hockey sticks before heading off to the photo booths of the NHL, the Canadian Hockey League and various trading card companies. There are individual shots, family shots, head shots.

"It's unbelievable," Hamhuis manages to blurt out before doing a live radio spot, followed by a brief online chat for NHL.com. He signs autographs deliberately and gently, as if he's learning some strange new dialect, but it's just his modesty showing. He hasn't yet perfected the insta-scribble autograph of the Big Star.

In Smithers, the term "salt of the earth" likely gets little use because that's the way everyone is.

"We're humble people," says Marty. "When we put Dan in hockey (at age 4), it wasn't to get to the NHL.

"Enrollment was low," Marty says, laughing. "They were taking anybody! He ended up playing against 9-year-olds."

Sister Erin keeps her big brother humble, too.

"I never thought he was anything special because he's my brother," she says with a candor only siblings can get away with.

After he's finished talking with the media, Hamhuis re-enters the arena floor and walks through a bevy of autograph seekers.

He makes his way up to the rarefied confines of the Predators private box at the National Car Rental Center, where there's a hot and cold buffet and a well-stocked fridge. The carpet is thick, and the tables are marble.

Team president Jack Diller explains to Hamhuis that Nashville is an emerging hockey market, that it's a great place to play and, by the way, that there's a conditioning camp in Nashville in 10 days.

Hamhuis listens respectfully, then checks out the gear in his Predators bag--lots of caps, a T-shirt and a license plate that will fit on his "baby," a light blue 1988 Mazda 323--before settling into one of the plush box seats to eat and watch other kids hear their names called.

It's a long way from shooting pucks in the dark of an old airplane hangar, and from this vantage point high above the din of the draft floor, Dan Hamhuis knows the sky's the limit.

Want to know more about the NHL entry draft? Drop by sportingnews.com/nhl/draft/to see who went where and what expert analysts Larry Wigge and Ray Slover think of it all.

Stephen Knight is an associate editor at Canadian Hockey Magazine based in Toronto.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Sporting News Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group