Not many current EURO League people were around 17 years ago when the league started. Just 3 general managers (Chuck Massaro, Igor Kirunov and Guybrush Threepwood) and 56 players were around then and still here now. Many of those people still remember that Threepwood had to be tracked down at parties just about every time it was his turn to draft. That was annoying.

Many of those 56 players are old now, which means they are playing in Paris, where it seems you have to prove you have gray hair to get on the team. Players taken in the first round 17 years ago who are now Rouge Eiffels teammates include: Jonathan Toews (5th overall), Claude Giroux (9th), Steven Stamkos (11th), Alex Piertrangelo (13th), John Tavares (16th) and Ryan O’Reilly (22nd).

In the early hours of that first draft, the focus was firmly on one position: goalie. Of the first 10 players selected, 5 were goalies and they are all retired now. One is in the Hall of Fame (Jonathan Quick, taken 3rd overall). So is Jimmy Howard, who proved that picking goalies is definitely not a science. His first team, Oslo, waited for 15 other goalies to pass by them before they used the 68th pick (3rd round) to take him.

So what’s a good pick in the first draft of a league? Is it a 41-year-old star like Teemu Selanne who helps you win the Cup in Season 1 but retires soon after, or is it the player taken right after him, Tyler Ennis who goes on to play 17 seasons and score almost 1,000 points? We guess it depends on your goals. It’s pretty subjective.

So, for fun, we asked Commissioner Chuck Massaro to give us his opinion of the best draft pick in each round of the first draft. There is definitely room for argument with some of his picks. For example, in the round in which Selanne and Ennis were picked, he decided on plus/minus record-setter Zach Bogosian.

Goalie Robin Lehner turned out to be a super pick in the middle of the 20th round for Madrid. He is still starting in the league and he has a career save percentage over 90. It’s diamond in the rough territory once you get that deep in a draft.

Only two players taken after that 20th round are still on rosters and one of them (defenseman Oscar Klefbom of Bern) has not been used this season.

The active player who was picked deepest in the first draft is Boone Jenner. Drafted as an 18-year-old in Round 23, Jenner has now appeared in 1,078 games and he became an important part of the great Copenhagen teams of the past 6 seasons, winning a Cup in that time. He has been great in the playoffs, with 80 points in 105 games for Helsinki and the Tridents. He was also +28 with a +27 turnover ratio in those important playoff games. With those stats, and considering where he was picked, it could be argued Jenner was the most impressive pick of the draft. Ironically, he never played a game with the team that called his name at the podium. Before the first season began, Dublin traded him to Helsinki for Jakub Silfverberg and a draft pick that ended up being Olexander Podbyedonostsev. In Season 9, Moscow traded a Round 1 pick to get him (along with a 3rd round pick) and in Season 12, Copenhagen sent a 1st (Cole Sillinger) a 3rd (Morgan Geekie) and Thomas Chabot to Moscow for Jenner. He’s 34 now and seems to have even more seasons in his skates. Not bad for a guy who watched 542 players get picked ahead of him.