Carter Klippenstein had made an impression on NHL scouts all season long with his on-ice performance. Now he’s got their attention with his off-ice work as well.
Klippenstein was one of just 90 prospects from around the hockey world invited to the NHL’s draft combine in Buffalo from June 2 to June 7. His invite was a sure sign he was firmly on the radar of NHL teams going into the draft itself.
“It’s an awesome event to take part in and it was an honour to be there,” Klippenstein said. “It was an awesome week, I got to meet some new people, staff from NHL teams, roomed with Roger (McQueen) too and it was a good time with him. Overall it was an awesome experience, they treated us unreal.”
The combine is a chance for NHL teams to get to know the top prospects and gage their fitness level in a variety of off-ice tests. The interview portion of the combine, which takes place earlier in the week, sees interested teams set up sessions with these prospects.
“I found it really professional and interesting,” Klippenstein said. “You get in a room with all these teams’ staff who have been watching you all year and they each get to sit down and learn more about you. It’s an awesome thing to do, and I can’t say any bad things about my interviews.”
One famous quirk of the combine is the propensity for teams to ask questions that seem to come straight out of left field. These questions can seem downright weird at times (each is designed to reveal some aspect of personality or thought process), and Klippenstein, who interviewed with a dozen NHL teams, encountered some of the stranger ones.
“Montreal asked me if I was stranded on an island with Roger and if he’s got a water bottle and I’ve got a bat, but I need the water bottle to survive what am I going to do,” he said. “I said I’d be sad that I had to hit Roger with the bat to take the water bottle and survive. Ottawa asked me for a joke, which kind of caught me on the spot and I didn’t really have a joke ready.”
The fact that a dozen teams wanted to learn more about Klippenstein was a promising sign, and once he had those teams’ attention, he held it with a stellar run of fitness tests to wrap up the event. He placed top-ten in seven categories, finished first in right-side agility, and showed well across the board. For the fitness-oriented Klippenstein (who set a team record at the last Wheat Kings’ training camp) there was never any doubt he would perform well at this section.
“I remember going into last season, one of my big goals personally was to get invited to the combine because I knew I could test well,” he said. “I knew I’d just overall have a good week. When I got the invite, it was an awesome thing to see and I was excited because of that fitness testing, because I knew I could do so well at it.”
The fitness testing did more for Klippenstein than just show off his conditioning level. Like McQueen, Klippenstein finished the season on the injured list and the combine was a chance for him to show, both in testing and interviews, that his injury was behind him once and for all.
“A lot of times it would come up in my interviews if I was healthy or if I would need surgery on my shoulder at all,” he said. “But I’ve been cleared for the last couple months here, working hard to get back to 100 percent and going into the combine 100 percent. It was good for me to show that it was behind me and it wasn’t a problem at all.”
Away from the testing, interviews, and press events, Klippenstein got to share his experience with Wheat Kings’ teammate McQueen. The two not only roomed together but spent much of the week together, and Klippenstein said it made the whole event more enjoyable.
“It made it a lot easier having a guy with me all the time,” he said. “It’s pretty fun having a teammate to room with. It overall made the experience a lot easier.”
The NHL draft takes place on Friday, June 27 and Saturday June 28.
