First off, and very quickly, the Rock have posted a video of their coverage of Draft Night. I think only Shannon is mic'ed, so the interviewees are a bit quiet.
Second, the Rock signed unrestricted free agent Pat Merrill (also here and here and here). It really wasn't much of a secret that this was going to happen, since Colin Doyle blogged about how great it would be to have Merrill back on the 10th of August.
Merrill's career stats are here, and there is no reason to confuse him with his younger (and more talented) brother. Pat's got Brodie beat in penalty minutes and, even though the stats page doesn't list it completely, faceoff success. Merrill was the first overall pick of the Toronto Rock in 2002 (Tutka's 2008 analysis of the 2002 draft), so how exactly did we get to the point of the Rock having to sign him to get him back?
We have to look into the dark ages (that none of us want to remember) of Toronto Rock history, 2007-2009. (I'm going off the top of my head here, but the Wikipedia entry confirms my memory.) The Rock had a bit of a letdown in 2006, and Terry Sanderson was let go to be replaced by
For the 2008 season Boston was awarded an expansion team and they were given the chance to draft one player from each of the other teams in the league. The Rock's protected players list looked like this:
Bob Watson (G)This left an unprotected players list (i.e. those available in the expansion draft) that looked like this:
Mike Poulin (G)
Jim Veltman (D/T)
Josh Sanderson (F)
Blaine Manning (F)
Aaron Wilson (F)
Ryan Benesch (F)
Chris Driscoll (D/T)
Derek Suddons (D)
Rob Marshall (D/T
Matt Carroll (D/T)
Kevin Fines (F)
Scott Campbell20-20 hindsight shows a lot of things that probably should've been done differently with this protection list. Carroll would clearly be out and Merrill in, unless there was a potential deal in place to get Merrill back for a pair of players. Fines played well that year, on a terrible team, but I suspect the Rock could've underachieved just as spectacularly without him. Benesch could also have been thrown to the wolves, but the franchise had too much invested in him to make that move at the time, and they did manage to get a draft pick for him at the end of the day (a first rounder in 2009, which they (the second coming of Terry Sanderson) put to good use).
Dan Ladouceur
Brad MacArthur
Mike MacLeod
Patrick Merrill
Tim O'Brien
Ian Rubel
Matt Shearer
Jamie Taylor
Shanny (brother of the more famous hockey Shanahan) and Blair Campbell put their analysts hats to work to speculate about who the Blazers should/would draft. Shanny wrote:
The choice here is between tough young 26 year old defender Scott Campbell who is 6 feet, 220 pounds or the leagues reigning heavyweight, Tim O'Brien, who is 30 years old. Although Campbell is the more skilled player I would be tempted to take O'Brien who you would make plenty of room for the younger players who are learning the game. Besides you can't go wrong with an Irishman like O'Brien in a town like Boston.Campbell was a bit more sane, and less pugilistically inclined, and speculated that the Blazers would go for Merrill.
Defenseman has been through the wars in his Rock career, can play both ends of the floor and is good on faceoffs.Merrill went first for the second time in his career. (And I begin to wonder if anyone is stupid enough to follow Shanny's advice by attempting to build a team around a goon, aside from Brian Burke; normally I like Shanny's ideas, but I don't think I'll ever understand the logic of pugilism - I guess I'm just not a true Torontonian.) Then a strange thing happened.
The 2008 season was cancelled by the National Lacrosse League, because the players refused to cave in the contract negotiations. A week later the season was back on, but all of the teams were given the option to go dormant for the year if the week off had ruined their arena scheduling and promotional efforts. Boston opted to take the year off and then redraft a whole new team the following year. Arizona decided to take the year off as well, and to get all of their players back the next year. A dispersal draft was held. Some teams opted for permanent players from the Blazers roster, others opted for rental players from the Sting roster. Merrill went second after Dan Dawson. The Rock picked up Peter Lough as an unrestricted free agent, which seems to be a pattern whenever a team goes dark for a season.
The Rock traded a one year rental on Lindsay Plunkett, Kevin Fines and a fifth round pick to Chicago for Cam Woods, and also picked up Jon Harasym - not a bad day, considering it was the dark ages. In semi-related news, the Arizona Sting officially folded the following year and their players were dispersal drafted a second time (much to the confused chagrin of many fans who didn't understand that the first draft was temporary); Chicago also folded before the 2009 season, so Boston wound up with three first overall picks in a single off-season (Dan Dawson from Arizona, Anthony Cosmo from Chicago and Daryl Veltman
Merrill spent the 2008-2010 seasons in New York and then he moved with the team to Orlando, and was eligible for free agency when the Orlando Titans
Regardless, I'm happy he's back, I just hope that his knack for taking an undisciplined penalty at the most inopportune times has diminished. A quick look through his stats and boxscores suggests that he's still a guy that plays on the edge (and gets caught stepping over the line a couple of times a game) - great defenders are useless in the penalty box,
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