This year marks the 30th anniversary of the only time in their long and storied history that the Edmonton Oilers have hosted the NHL’s annual entry draft.
On July 8, 1995, the league’s 26 teams assembled at Northlands Coliseum for the 1995 NHL Draft. The draft consisted of nine rounds all crammed into one day, making for an exciting flurry of activity over the course of several hours.
Picks No. 1 through No. 5 belonged to the Ottawa Senators, New York Islanders, Los Angeles Kings, Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, and Tampa Bay Lightning. The host team sat just outside the top five, with the sixth overall selection, which at the time was tied for the second-highest draft pick in Edmonton’s NHL history.
Coming off a third consecutive season of missing the playoffs, Edmonton was looking to turn the corner on its rebuild. With eight picks total, including five in the first 109, the Oilers were well-positioned to land some key pieces for the future. For the first time, they got to make those selections in front of their fans.
The stage was set, figuratively and literally, for July 8, 1995, to be a great day in Oilers history. But that’s not at all how it turned out.
Only 3 Picks Made NHL
With apologies to Georges Laraque, the 1995 NHL Draft was a massive failure for the Oilers. Of the eight selections Edmonton made, just three reached the NHL, and Laraque was the only one who stuck around for long.
Combined, Edmonton’s 1995 draft class played just 845 career NHL regular-season games, which ranks 22nd among the 26 teams that drafted that year. The four teams with fewer total games (Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Philadelphia Flyers, and Washington Capitals) all picked within the final 10 selections of the first round.
Kelly Selected 6th
The draft opened that Saturday morning with Bryan Berard taken first overall by Ottawa, followed by Wade Redden (Islanders), Aki Berg (Kings), Chad Kilger (Mighty Ducks) and Daymond Langkow (Lightning).
That put Edmonton on the clock, and the anticipation inside Northlands Coliseum was building. Fans clapped, cheered, and yelled out the name of Shane Doan, the Halkirk, Alberta, product who played forward for the Kamloops Blazers of the Western Hockey League (WHL).
Oilers general manager Glen Sather stepped up to the podium and announced his team’s pick: forward Steve Kelly from the WHL’s Prince Albert Raiders.
There was a smattering of polite applause followed by silence inside Northlands Coliseum. Oilers fans weren’t about to boo their team’s newest addition, but he certainly wasn’t who they wanted. The apple of their eyes, Doan, was selected with the very next pick, seventh overall, by the Winnipeg Jets.
Fans Knew Best
Fans often like to think they know more than NHL coaches and general managers. In this case, the Oilers actually would have been wise to listen to the outside noise.
Kelly could both score and mix it up (37 goals and 106 penalty minutes in 71 games with Kamloops in 1994-95), and was touted as being the fastest player in the 1995 class, which is largely what made him so attractive to the Oilers (“We’ve built our teams around speed and he’s certainly got lots of that,” Sather said on the TSN/ESPN2 simulcast), but his game never quite translated to the NHL.
The 6-foot-2 left-winger made his NHL debut late in the 1996-97 season, scoring one goal in eight games with the Oilers. He played another six games in the 1997 postseason.
Kelly started 1997-98 with the Oilers, but couldn’t earn a consistent spot in their lineup, suiting up for just 19 of the team’s first 39 games. Then, on Dec. 30, 1997, Kelly was traded along with Jason Bonsignore and Bryan Marchment to the Lightning in exchange for Paul Comrie and Roman Hamrlik.
Only two and a half years after being drafted, Kelly’s Oilers tenure was over. He played just 33 games (regular season and playoffs combined) for Edmonton, totalling one goal and two assists.
Kelly bounced around between the NHL and the minors over the next several years, with stints in the New Jersey Devils, Kings, and Minnesota Wild organizations. He retired in 2009, having played only 149 NHL regular-season games, recording nine goals and 12 assists.
Doan, meanwhile, went on to have a storied career, racking up 402 goals and 570 assists in 1,540 NHL regular-season games, all with the Jets/Phoenix Coyotes/Arizona Coyotes organization. He was a multi-time All-Star, won both the King Clancy Memorial Trophy and Mark Messier Leadership Award, and represented Canada at the Olympics and World Championships.
Not selecting Doan might be Edmonton’s greatest regret of the 1995 NHL Draft. But he was just the first of many stars they passed on.
Laraque Selected in Round 2
With their second selection, 31st overall, the Oilers took Laraque, a forward from the St. Jean Lynx of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). Laraque might not have quite reached the calibre of his draft position, but he was a good pick for the Oilers.
The 6-foot-4, 245-pound left wing filled the role of enforcer in Edmonton for several years, becoming one of the most beloved Oilers players of his time. Spanning 1997-98 and 2005-06, he played in 490 games with the Oilers, totalling 43 goals, 68 assists, and 826 penalty minutes (eighth most in franchise history).
Laraque left Edmonton as a free agent during the 2006 offseason and split the final few seasons of his career between the Coyotes, Penguins and Montreal Canadiens, before retiring in 2010 after 695 career NHL regular-season games.
Draft Pick Duds
“Big Georges” was Edmonton’s lone bright spot of the 1995 Draft. After Laraque, things went completely downhill for the host team. Of Edmonton’s final six selections, only goaltender Mike Minard (83rd) actually appeared in an NHL, and that was for just one game, with the Oilers during the 1999-00 season (to his credit, Minard got the win in that game, and has the unique distinction of being one of only four goalies in franchise history with a 1.000 win percentage).
The rest didn’t even play a single game for Edmonton’s minor league affiliates, never mind the Oilers. Czech blueliner Lukas Zib (57th overall) never came to North America; Ontario Hockey League (OHL) defenceman Jan Snopek (109th) spent his pro career overseas; WHL centre Martin Cerven (161st) was out of pro hockey altogether by 2001; OHL defenceman Stephen Douglas (187th) never made it beyond the ECHL, and Czech skater Jiri Antonin (213th overall) played at such low levels that Hockey DB has no listings for him after 1995-96.
As for a sampling of just some of the prospects that Edmonton could have drafted: Jarome Iginla (11th overall), Jean Sebastian-Giguere (13th), Petr Buzek (63rd), Sami Kapanen (87th), Marc Savard (91st), Mikka Kiprusoff (116th), Stephan Robidas (164th), and Filip Kuba (192nd), all of them All-Stars.
Not as Bad as 1990
Edmonton’s had some notoriously bad draft classes in its history. In fact, the Oilers are responsible for likely the worst performance ever at the NHL Draft, in 1990, when they selected 11 players, not one of whom played a single game in the NHL.
Related: Revisiting the Edmonton Oilers’ Disastrous 1990 Draft
Edmonton’s 1990 draft class is virtually untouchable in its ineptitude. Especially in this day and age, when footage of prospects from around the globe is readily available, it would take an act of self-sabotage to screw things up that badly.
But as far as the second-worst draft in Oilers history goes, considering how important it was to the franchise and the significance of being the host team, 1995 just might be it.
