Paul Henry has had an amazing hockey career. He’s identified many talented players for many teams. He can talk to you about Rod Brind’Amour, who was in the ’87 Spengler Cup, or he will tell you who the best player was in that tournament – – Dominik Hasek.

“Brind’Amour was 17, out of Wilcox, Saskatchewan, then Notre Dame, playing for me,” said Henry, who was Team Canada’s General Manager. “But the best player was Dominik Hasek. He dominated the tournament as well as Gretzky dominated the NHL. It was clear-cut how good this guy was.”

I love NHL Draft history, and Henry brought me into the Florida Panthers draft room and the New York Rangers’ as well. Henry scouted him in Prague and wanted him for the Panthers.

“I saw Chara, and I was in the building with my buddy Chuck Grillo, who I worked with for four years with the New York Rangers. We both thought along the same lines; Chuck was a great teammate,” said Henry.

“Chara was ridiculous. He was performing these Serge Savard spin-o-ramas. I couldn’t believe how good he was. But I also didn’t have the balls to pick him on a one-game basis. When it came to our turn to pick with Florida that year, we would have picked him in the second round. But we traded our second-round pick for Ray Sheppard, who helped us get to the Final in 1996. He got us there with his scoring, but it cost us.”

Henry then added this.

“We were going to pick Chara in the third round (56^th overall in 1996), but Anders Kallur, who won four Cups in four years as a player with the Islanders, picked him four picks before we were picking him.”

Here is the bit about the Rangers.

“We had the ninth overall pick. I wanted Adam Graves. I saw Adam play 18 times and I saw Brian Leetch play three times. You tend to favor the player you know better. I lost a fight to the two great American scouts. They beat me up at the draft table,” Henry chuckled. “We had such a good team. I mean, we had nothing but respect between us, and we all fought for our players.”

The story didn’t end there.

“At Henry Graves wake, Adam’s dad, I remember telling them both in their suits, the story about how they both became Rangers and, well, you know, Stanley Cup champions. Those are the things that happen in scouting that nobody hears about.”

Henry has some stories, that’s for sure. And he’s still scouting.