2010 NHL Entry Draft: Scouting Combine begins today

John Tavares, a top hockey prospect and potential No. 1 overall draft pick in the NHL draft, goes through testing during the 2009 NHL Scouting Combine in Toronto on Friday, May 29, 2009. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Darren Calabrese)

AP

The Scouting Combine for the 2010 NHL Entry Draft begins today, a mere day after Taylor Hall and the Windsor Spitfires won their second consecutive Memorial Cup. The Combine runs fro, May 24-29 and will give teams an idea about a player’s physical - and in the case of individual interviews, mental - attributes that on-ice play might not indicate. For the NFL, the Combine (and draft in general) is almost an industry unto itself. (Heck, they even had the stones to run the draft against other sports’ playoff competition this year.) It’s a time in which football obsessives put far too much weight in 40-yard dash times while us normal folks ignore our own man boobs and laugh at Terrence Cody’s scary set.

The NHL’s version isn’t quite as glitzy or breathlessly covered, but that doesn’t change the fact that impressions made during the event could change the future of franchises. One odd wrinkle, though, is that hockey players don’t actually go on the ice to show their stuff. An interesting NHL.com article explains why they just stick to weight room showings and interviews, with thoughts from NBC correspondent Pierre McGuire.

McGuire said there are a number of reasons for not putting the prospects on skates. First, for the top players, teams likely have seen them multiple times in person or on video already.

“Is it fair to the kid whose high school season ended in February to stand next to the kid who played in a championship game on Sunday?” McGuire said. “It might be unfair to the Memorial Cup participant if the (high school) kid had just been doing the Combine tests, sprinting five times as week and not having to practice. That Memorial Cup guy, did he block a shot to win a championship and his ankle is sore?”

Instead, the players are put through their paces in a three-hour crucible which includes events as simple as the sit and reach, push-ups and sit-ups, right through a pair of high-tech stationary bike tests -- Wingate anaerobic measure and an aerobic-max VO2 test.

Of course, as you can see in the photo that accompanies this post, the Combine also provides its fair share of hilarious and awkward photo opportunities. Perhaps the question isn’t “Taylor Hall or Tyler Seguin?” or even “Which player will improve his stock or see it drop the most?” but rather “Which player will provide an image that immature bloggers can make jokes about?”

I mean, that’s what this is really about, right?