The Aspen Daily News’s Rich Allen reports that Red Wings assistant GM and director of amateur scouting Kris Draper found himself in Colorado this week, as part of a group of former NHL’ers challenging professional pickleball players:
Aspen Meadows transformed into a top-tier pickleball venue on Thursday, featuring some of the sport’s top players with a twist — some cream-of-the-crop hockey talent traded in their blades and twigs for tennis shoes and paddles.
In the first Pickle ‘n Pucks tournament, the worlds of Tom Dundon collided. Dundon is the owner of the Professional Pickleball League and the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes, plus a businessman with Aspen ties. So, on National Pickleball Day he brought some of the top players from pickleball to Aspen to showcase their skills, inviting some of his well-known hockey connections and setting up the whole thing to be broadcast on ESPN2 to grab a larger audience.
“The crossover is the most beautiful part of pickleball,” AJ Koller, a PPA pro and former club hockey player at CU Boulder, said. “It’s not just a graveyard for tennis players or ex-tennis players. It really does let baseball guys, football guys, hockey guys find a new competitive spirit after they’re done playing pro. … So to get it on ESPN in a place like this, it’s a perfect marriage for showcasing.”
It turns out that Draper earned praise for both his pickleball skills–as he and Justin Williams beat pro pickleball players–and his drafting abilities, given that the Red Wings picked Carbondale, Colorado’s Fisher Scott with the 208th overall pick in last June’s NHL Draft:
On the hockey side were Stanley Cup champions Justin Williams and Kris Draper; new Hurricanes General Manager Jarmo Kekalainen; and current Anaheim Duck and former University of Denver Pioneer Troy Terry.
Draper, now director of amateur scouting for the Detroit Red Wings after a storied career with them — including during the peak of their rivalry with the Colorado Avalanche — made more news in Aspen recently after making Fisher Scott the first former Aspen Junior Leaf to be selected in the NHL Draft in July.
A total of seven matches were played, mixing hockey players with pickleball players, hockey players versus tennis players, and so on. The most surprising result was likely a comeback by Draper and Williams against Dizon and Bouchard, trailing heavily early but eventually pulling through 7-6.
Draper’s becoming an accomplished amateur pickleball player–between his scouting gigs, anyway.
