The 2023 NHL Draft in Nashville will forever be remembered as the Connor Bedard draft. The collecting world was watching closely and Upper Deck had a big presence as the sponsor of the event.
But as I was watching everything unfold on TV and through a couple of days of grinding NHL Network Radio on Sirius XM, I started to think about how it was the 20th anniversary of the 2003 NHL Draft, which was the first and only other draft held in Nashville.
For the hobby, that draft was significant. It was the first draft that actually had a hockey card and collectibles show as part of the event. It was also the first hockey card and collectibles ever held in Nashville.
Let me explain how the whole thing came together.
I was the VP Marketing at Pacific Trading Cards in 2003. We were among the card companies making NHL hockey cards at that time. There was Pacific, Upper Deck, Topps and In the Game holding trading card licenses at that time. It was an overlooked era in hockey cards. There was not the overproduction that took place when Pinnacle and Fleer were in the market, and Upper Deck was much more responsible with its production numbers than the company was in the 1990s.
In the time between Y2K and the lost lockout season of 2004-05, the competition between the companies was healthy. Each company was pushed to be creative and come up with ideas that would set them apart in the market. The products in the hobby have not reached the level of excellence that those four companies were producing then since that time.
Obligation To The NHL
In our contract with the NHL, we were obligated to spend $50,000 on a marketing initiative with the NHL. The card companies bought an ad in Power Play magazine, and the magazine was distributed at each NHL arena.
I didn’t really like the idea, but it was what everyone always did and we didn’t want to rock the boat. Our company owner and CEO, Mike Cramer, used to always tell me that if I wanted to spend a dollar on marketing, he wanted me to show him how we would get five dollars back. I had a background in the newspaper and magazine industries before I transitioned into the hobby, and I knew that $50,000 could be spent way more effectively.
But then, one morning, Mike Monson poked his head in the door of my office. Mike was our director of public relations, and he was one of my favorite people I ever worked with. Mike had received a phone call informing us that at one of the arenas, there was a dumpster full of Power Play magazines. It was the issue that we spent $50,000 for an ad and the execution of the give-away. He made some more calls and was finding that, at the arena level, the program was not what we were expecting it to be.
Mike and I had a phone call with the NHL and I voiced my displeasure about the execution of the program. I seem to remember that I wasn’t very nice on the call, and I always felt bad about that. I had always had a great relationship with Dave McCarthy and Linda Santiago of the NHL, and I have always looked upon them as friends. But I was the VP Marketing at Pacific, and I had to do my job.
For years, I had been a big fan of the NHL Draft. It was an event I loved to attend as a fan and as a collector, and I was always interested in raising our profile at the draft. We had been a sponsor of the NHL Draft in Toronto the previous year. I thought that since our products were driven on rookie cards, why not have Pacific signage on the stage? Every fan in the arena or watching on TV would see our logo when a draft pick walked on stage. Every rookie and agent would see our logo, which would help us when we made calls regarding autographs.
It was a no brainer. Almost.
The Pacific logo was placed beside other ads. It was beside the stairs walking up to the stage from the floor. Unfortunately, an arena employee decided to lean against our logo for almost the entire first round. I was in the crowd, and I was freaking out. We just spent thousands of dollars on a sponsorship, and there was a guy who checked in at least 350 salad-dodging pounds, leaning against our logo with his arms crossed. He didn’t move for about two hours. I was trying to call Linda on my phone and I couldn’t reach her. I wasn’t accredited to be on the show floor so we had no way to get the message to this guy to move his FA and quit blocking our logo. He wasn’t just blocking it – it was like a hobby eclipse.
NHL Draft Card And Collectibles Show
I brought that incident up on the call as well. Dave asked what we wanted to do if we were not taking part in the Power Play program, which they still wanted us to be a part of.
I told him that we needed to be all in at the draft. Take our $50,000, spend it on the draft, and let’s have the first ever NHL Draft hockey card show at the arena, which at the time was known as the Gaylord Entertainment Centre. Let’s have hockey dealers spread out on the mezzanine and Pacific will be the manufacturer on site and run a redemption program. Let’s have autograph guests appearing through the event – some Predators players and some retired stars. Let’s promote the card show and the event locally and through hobby magazines like Beckett Hockey and Canadian Sports Collector.
Then we brainstormed a bit. I told them that, as a fan, I always wondered what happened to the boards with each player’s name that was slid into the big draft board on the stage. I used to think of how cool getting the name board of a rookie drafted by my favorite team and putting it up on the wall in my man cave.
Dave and Linda made that happen, and Mike put together a program on our website where collectors could bid on the name plate of a draft pick of their favorite team. We also got an autographed jersey of the first pick from each team.
That show in Nashville checked all the boxes. It exposed a healthy sports town and baseball/football collecting base to hockey cards. It added to the overall draft event. It also gave Pacific amazing exposure to a young and vibrant hockey collecting base as well as to an international market on television.
For all the grief I gave Dave and Linda at the NHL, they put together an incredible event. We grew the event in Carolina the following year, and then the NHL lockout happened. While the NHL wanted to work with Pacific, Ted Saskin and the NHLPA had other ideas. Pacific, Topps and In the Game were all informed that there would be no hockey cards in 2004-05, and when play resumed, Upper Deck would have an exclusive license. Mike Cramer sold the company and the brands to Playoff, which was bought by Panini.
One Of The Best Drafts Ever
As far as the 2003 Draft was concerned, it was one of the best ever. Marc-Andre Fleury became the third goalie to ever be selected first overall. Florida traded the first pick and 73rd pick to Pittsburgh for the third pick, 55th pick and Mikael Samuelsson. Florida picked Nathan Horton third, while Carolina chose Eric Staal second.
That draft was loaded with a solid first round, and there were stars sprinkled throughout the middle and lower rounds. Ryan Getzlaf, Nikolay Zherdev, Milan Michalek, Ryan Suter, Dion Phaneuf, Dustin Brown, Jeff Carter, Dustin Brown, Zach Parise, Brent Burns, Corey Perry and Bryan Boyle were among the first rounders that year. The second last pick overall was goalie Brian Elliott, who has 279 career wins and is still in the league. He was a rookie with Ottawa in 2007-08 and has had a winning record every season of his NHL career except for 2010-11.
While we were in Nashville, there was a luncheon we attended with the top 15 or 20 prospects as part of a media event. I went to the event with Russ Cohen, a Rangers fan and author who you may know from Sportsology.com and as a prospect analyst on NHL Network Radio.
The NHL had a trophy case set up, and as we were looking at the trophies, we came across Dion Phaneuf almost hypnotized as he looked at the Norris Trophy, given out annually to the NHL’s best defenseman. Russ truck up a conversation with Phaneuf, who was clearly imagining what it would be like to have his name on the trophy. It was really a cool moment. I was at a gala dinner that Phaneuf was at in 2019 and I told him that story about the draft in Nashville. He didn’t remember, he thought it was awkward, and I think he thought I was creepy, so he slithered out of the conversation and away from me as quickly as possible.
There were a couple more interesting things that happened at that show. I went out for dinner a couple times with our Canadian sales director, Oliver Lea. We were sitting in a restaurant/bar and we decided to eat at the bar. We were just chatting about this and that, when the guy sitting beside me asked if we were Canadian. He figured it out based on our accents. I told him I was from a small town of about 5,000 people in Eastern Ontario along the US border. He said he was too. I told him I grew up outside of Prescott, a small town along the St. Lawrence. Not only did he also grow up just outside of Prescott, but he was also my parents’ paper boy when he was a kid. He worked for ATF and was based in Washington, and he was on a project for a week in Nashville.
Oliver shook his head and laughed. “It doesn’t matter where we go or what city we are in, you always run into someone from Prescott.”
It happened at least a half dozen times.
The other hobby significance of the 2003 draft in Nashville was that it was when the concept for the Pacific TNA Wrestling set was born. I had worked for Shop At Home in Nashville before moving to Seattle to work for Pacific. I connected with Mike Waddell, whom I had worked with in Nashville. We went out to grab a beer and some wings at a bar on Printer’s Alley called Buffalo Bill’s. Low and behold, we ran into another Shop at Home alum, on-air pitchman Don West. Everyone from TNA was there, as they had a room upstairs and were celebrating their first anniversary. Within an hour, we met everyone, and the idea for Pacific TNA Wrestling was drawn up on a soggy napkin. Russ Cohen and Doug Costaldo of Sportsology wrote the card backs, Don West got to be on a rookie card as part of the set, and Pacific’s 2004 TNA Wrestling is currently one of the most popular and sought after Pacific sets on the market.
I didn’t make it to Nashville this year, and I haven’t been back since 2005. Some day I will get back there. I will always remember that week 20 years ago when Nashville became a bona fide hockey card market.
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