?Shayne had grown,? recalls Riley. ?He still probably was a buck-fifty, but he was now 5-10 or 5-10 1/2 and his intelligence with the puck was [working] at the college level.
?So then the question, as it is for everybody you look at, is, ?Will this translate to the pro game at some point?? There were these -- you want to call them clouds? -- hanging over him. He?s already been through one draft, he?s undersized, from Florida, and there?s never been a player from Florida in the NHL. Plus, he?s from Union College, which isn?t what Union College is in hockey today.
?I mean, there were all these reasons why he shouldn?t be [a prospect] but you leave the building scratching your head, saying, ?The little guy is pretty good,
?I just kept coming back to his hockey IQ, his agility, his skating ability, and the fact that he could shoot the puck. I mean, at that size, how did he get so much torque on it? But he did.
?I probably saw him 10 or 11 times. After one of his games, against Cornell, I got a video, sent it to [Flyers Director of Scouting] Chris Pryor and said, ?You need to watch this.? That video was one of the things that got Sarge (Pryor) on board.
?We had several conversations about where [Gostisbehere] might fit into the landscape. As the year progressed, he went from maybe seventh round to sixth round, to ok, maybe fifth round or fourth.
?I give [Pryor] an awful lot of the credit. I was a regional scout, and it?s your job to promote the guys that are in your area, same as Todd Hearty would speak up for a kid in Quebec. You become a little attached, root for your guys. But it was Sarge who sold Homer (GM Paul Holmgren) on Shayne. And our group does a great job of [ranking] guys in the right spots.?
