Alex Edler will officially retire as a Canuck on Friday night.
The player known as “The Eagle” played 15 seasons with the Vancouver Canucks and holds multiple franchise records for defencemen, including games played, goals, assists, and points.
None of it would have happened if not for a single phone call.
Edler's humble beginnings (but don't call it a beer league)
Heading into the 2004 NHL Entry Draft, Edler wasn’t even among the 161 European skaters ranked by NHL Central Scouting. That’s not surprising: he was playing in the third-tier Swedish league in the city of Östersund, far north and inland from the hockey hotbeds of Sweden.
Edler hadn’t even been scouted by Swedish teams, let alone NHL teams. He was just a teenager who grew up in Östersund and was playing for his local team.
Just don’t call it a “glorified beer league” team, something that was frequently said after Edler was drafted. He felt it wasn’t a fair thing to say.
“It definitely is unfair,” said Edler. “It was the third league in Sweden but, to be honest with you, the people that play in that league, they probably work harder than everyone else because they practice the same but they also have to work on the side. It’s a grind.
“It was crazy because I went to school back then, but the other guys were all working. Some were working from seven to four and then they came to practice and on bus rides to away games.”
Edler’s talent would have surely gotten him noticed eventually but the fishing buddy of an NHL scout fast-tracked his path to the NHL.
Detroit Red Wings superscout Håkan Andersson was once a fishing guide in Sweden and he got a tip from a fellow fisherman who lived in Östersund: a kid on the local team was pretty good. More than that, he was born in 1986, making him eligible for the 2004 draft.
Andersson knew he had to go see Edler play but time was running out to get a look at him. It was already January and their season ended in February. So, he made the long trek out to Östersund and realized his fishing buddy was right: Edler could play.
“I go up to watch him play and realize I like the kid,” said Andersson on the Elite Prospects Podcast. “Now I'm back scratching my head. Where does he fit in? They only have a few games to go, what do I do now? I've got to see him again.”
Andersson wanted to get a second viewing of Edler but didn’t want to make the long trip without being certain that Edler would be in the lineup. It’s not like there were going to be any other prospects playing that would justify the trip.
So, he made a phone call.
A phone call and a four-and-a-half-hour train ride
“Here's my mistake,” said Andersson. “I call the coach and I say my name is Andersson, I'm a scout, I'm going to drive almost seven hours to see you guys play. I just want to check if he's playing. And he said, ‘Yeah, he's playing.’”
The coach, Roger Forsberg, was friends with a hockey agent. Armed with the information that an NHL scout was interested in the young defenceman, Forsberg connected Edler with his friend, who immediately went to work drumming up attention for his new client. He started calling and emailing other NHL scouts, letting them know about the diamond defenceman playing in the rough of the Swedish interior.
Just one of those scouts made the trip to Östersund: Thomas Gradin. And, when Gradin saw Edler play, he knew the Canucks had to draft him.
“I was not that optimistic,” said Gradin years later. “I took the train up to this town, a four-and-a-half-hour trip. I didn't have high expectations. Most of the time you hear these things and it doesn't turn out to be anything. Once in a while, it's something.”
Gradin was a star for the Canucks on the ice but had an even bigger impact on the Canucks as a scout. He played a major role in the Canucks drafting Daniel and Henrik Sedin, as well as Mattias Öhlund.
Edler was arguably the biggest feather in his cap, however. He as the dream of every NHL scout: a future star playing in what was effectively the middle of nowhere that no one else had even seen. Or, rather, one other person had seen him: Andersson.
“The problem was I ****ed up,” said Andersson. “I should have asked my friend to find out if he was playing. He knew some people on the team and everything. That was just stupidity by me. If I hadn't made that call, nobody would have known about him.
“Who would have known that that coach was friends with an agent?”
It wasn’t just the luck of the phone call, of course. Other scouts could have made the trek out to Östersund; Gradin actually did it. And he had the keen eye to immediately recognize that Edler was something special.
Drafting and developing a top-pairing defenceman
The Red Wings didn’t have a pick until the third round in the 2004 draft. The Canucks used their first-round pick on goaltender Cory Schneider but then didn’t have a pick until the fourth round.
Knowing that Andersson was the only other scout who knew about Edler, Gradin and Canucks general manager Dave Nonis knew they had to get ahead of the Red Wings in the third round. So Nonis made a trade, sending a 2005 third-round pick to the Dallas Stars for the 91st pick in the 2004 draft — six picks ahead of the Red Wings at 97th.
“As soon as the Canucks got that pick, I told everyone at our table I'd eat everything on it if Vancouver didn't take Edler,” said Andersson.
There’s more to the story of Edler getting drafted but the Canucks also deserve credit for how they developed Edler. They first helped him join the MoDo hockey program, where he played in the J20 SuperElit league, then brought him over to North America to play for the Kelowna Rockets in the WHL.
“That was all Vancouver,” said Edler. “They had something to do with me going to MoDo to finish my last year of school — kind of a hockey high school program — and then they asked me if I wanted to come over and play junior hockey. It wasn’t an easy decision but there were a lot of other defencemen the same age as me in MoDo that were ahead of me to make the pro team, so I figured it was a good opportunity.
“I’m very happy I did, because I think I developed that year in Kelowna to get ready for the style over here.”
Edler even played with a young Tyler Myers in Kelowna.
“He was a guy who took me under his wing,” said Myers on Friday. “What was it, 18 years ago? Weird to say…I came in at the end of my under-age year and he was one of the older guys. You found out pretty quick what kind of player he was and he’s always been a really nice person and a class act.”
"He's been our best defenceman every year"
In Vancouver, Edler became arguably the best defenceman in franchise history, only now surpassed by the brilliance of Quinn Hughes.
Edler averaged 22:55 per game as a Canuck and was regularly playing 24+ minutes a night when the Canucks were at their peak. He steadily put up points, whether with his rocket of a shot or his passing from the point on the power play.
When the Sedins retired, they were quick to praise Edler, with Henrik even naming him as the unofficial third Sedin.
“There’s few players that meant more than [Edler],” said Henrik. “We talk about Markus Näslund and Mattias [Öhlund] and Trevor [Linden], but he’s the guy that we played with for a lot of years.”
“We played so many shifts together,” he added, “more so maybe back in the day when we had a great team, he was that offensive guy and he was behind us every single shift when we were out there against the Blackhawks and the Kings and those tough teams…He’s been our best defenceman every year. There’s no question about it.”
That influence continued on as he became the elder statesman for the younger players.
"When I came up, Eagle, he was the Canucks," said Thatcher Demko. "As a young player, he was a guy I looked up to. When you think about what it means to be a Canuck, he was the guy who really embodied that, and a guy who led by example on and off the ice — in the community, in the locker room, in the gym, whatever it was, he led the right way."
"He played with a lot of guys that came through the system and I know that he had an impact on all of them," he added.
And none of it would have happened if Håkan Andersson never made that phone call.
