All three are considered NHL rookies, so in that sense, it’s justifiable to call the Avalanche’s all-Canadian trio of center Matt Duchene, 19, left wing T.J. Galiardi, 21, and right wing Brandon Yip, 24, a “Kid Line.” Yet their backgrounds illustrate the disparate paths even Canadians can take to reach the NHL.
“We were giving ‘Yipper’ grief about being the old guy and bringing the average age up,” Galiardi said after the Avalanche’s practice Wednesday.
“It’s pretty funny,” Yip said. “I’m the oldest guy with the least experience.”
Duchene’s status as a highly touted major junior prodigy who went third overall in the NHL draft last summer is well documented. It’s not as widely known that at age 14, he conditionally accepted a scholarship offer to enroll at Michigan State (in 2009) before deciding to go the major junior route. Once a player accepts major junior’s stipends, the only way to regain NCAA eligibility is to go through a complicated petition process that is rarely used.
Duchene’s uncle Newell Brown, now an assistant coach with the Anaheim Ducks, played for MSU and put in a few good words.
“We wanted to see what was going to happen and cover all our bases,” Duchene said. “I committed at the time, but it was a verbal commitment and it wasn’t set in stone.”
Instead, Duchene joined the Ontario Hockey League’s Brampton Battalion in 2007, at age 16.
“My goal was to play in the NHL as soon as possible,” he said. “I always believed I’d be able to play at 18, and I wouldn’t even have been starting university until after I was drafted in the NHL. So I think (major junior) was the quickest route to the NHL.”
Galiardi played one season at Dartmouth before leaving school to spend one season in major junior with his hometown Calgary Hitmen, signed with the Avalanche organization in 2008 and then spend most of last season with the Lake Erie Monsters of the American Hockey League.
“I wanted to go to college from a young age,” Galiardi said.
He said deciding to leave Dartmouth shortly after the Avs claimed him in the 2007 draft was difficult.
“A lot of things go into it,” he said. “We only played around 33 games, and when I left to play in the Western League, we played 88, including playoffs. There’s obviously positives in both, and I was fortunate enough to get a little bit of both.”
Yip, the relative graybeard of the line and a native of Vancouver, British Columbia, signed with Colorado last summer after a full four-season career at Boston University, and also five years after the Avalanche took him in the eighth round of the 2004 draft.
“I was 17 and I sat down with my parents and made the decision between going to (major junior) or college,” Yip said. “I was a late developer and I wasn’t very big, and having an education at the end of it in case hockey didn’t work out seemed like the best route for me.”
Yip laughed when asked if a major junior team took him in the bantam draft and tried to recruit him.
“No, I was about 95 pounds,” he said. “I was always real small growing up.”
After high school, he played two seasons with the Coquitlam Express, where he was a teammate for a season of Avalanche winger David Jones, who was biding his time before also going to Dartmouth.
That was in the British Columbia Hockey League, a rung below major junior on the junior hockey ladder, and many players deliberately stay at that level to preserve their eligibility for NCAA scholarships. The United States Hockey League, where Paul Stastny played before going to the University of Denver for two seasons, is similar.
Terry Frei: 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com
