Two hundred and 89 players were selected in nine rounds of the 2001 NHL Entry Draft. Of those, nine New England natives had their names called from rounds 2-9, and another 10 players with ties to area schools and colleges were chosen.
Phillips Exeter power forward Ed Caron (Hudson, N.H.) and St. Sebastian’s two-way defenseman Noah Welch (Brighton, Mass.) were the first regional prospects taken, by the Edmonton Oilers and Pittsburgh Penguins in the second round at 52nd and 54th overall, respectively. The final area player chosen was Boston University freshman forward Gregg Johnson (Windsor, Conn.), whom the Ottawa Senators took in the eighth round, 256th overall, and went on to complete seven seasons in the AHL, ECHL and Europe.
“Looking back on it, there wasn’t a lot of high-end talent with that group, and we knew that going in,” a longtime NHL scout based in the region said recently. “But to see less than 100 NHL games between all of them, there probably should’ve been more there. Many of them were longshots, but in the case of (Noah) Welch at least, he was an athletic player who fit the modern mold of a pro defenseman, but was done in by injuries, I think.”
Welch, who represented the area pool’s most successful pick, went on to play 75 career NHL games with the Penguins, Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning and Atlanta Thrashers. After playing his final two games in “The Show” during the 2010-11 season, that franchise’s final year in Georgia before moving to Winnipeg and becoming the Jets, Welch went to Sweden, where he played seven more years for four different professional clubs. He closed out his career playing for the U.S. Olympic squad in 2018.
Of the seven from New England drafted after Welch, Tom Cavanagh (Warwick, R.I.) was the only other to play any NHL games, appearing in 18 with the San Jose Sharks, who drafted him 182nd overall, scoring one goal and three points. The former Harvard University captain (with Welch) tallied 100 points in the AHL with the Worcester Sharks, San Jose’s top farm team, from 2006-08, and had been a stellar high school and prep player at Toll Gate and Phillips Exeter Academy. Cavanagh passed away at age 28 in early 2011 but was highly respected for his intelligence, pure compete and character at every level.
Cavanagh’s coach at Exeter, Dana Barbin (Exeter, N.H.), stacked the deck and played him on the right wing of the Big Red’s top line along with Caron on the left flank and Canton, N.Y., native Colin Fitzrandolph, a seventh-round selection of the Thrashers. All three forwards on the same line with the same prep team in New Hampshire ended up being selected in Sunrise, Fla., that June in the second, sixth and seventh rounds.
“I knew Cavanagh was such a smart defensive player, that even with him going with Eddie to make offense, the kind of kid he was, you could trust him to be first in and first back,” Barbin recently told New England Hockey Journal. “So, it really was like having two centers on one line, because (Fitzrandolph) was a good defensive centerman, and Cavanagh’s presence with the other two made it an awesome line.”
The trio terrorized opposing prep defenses throughout New England in 2000-01 starting with Caron, the left wing with pro-caliber tools already at age 18. He had left Bishop Guertin High in Nashua for prep on the recommendation of longtime coach Gary Bishop (Billerica, Mass.). As a 10th-grader in 1999, he scored 39 goals, helping to lead Exeter to the prep championship that spring. Two years later, he was on a tear when he was felled by mononucleosis early in 2001, ending his season and creating a huge hole in the lineup.
“Eddie just loved to score,” Barbin said. “He was one of the few players I coached over the years who had more goals scored than games played over his entire prep career. That year, he had 30 goals through 15 games when his season ended with mono, but I have no doubt that if we don’t lose him, he would’ve had at least 50. He was long, had that big body, a great stick, really, really good hands and he could (shoot) it.”
The Oilers were hoping Caron’s size and pure scoring tools would one day translate after his NCAA career at the University of New Hampshire. But after a solid freshman year with a regular shift on the fourth line, he made the decision to leave for Yale, where he was required to sit out the entire 2002-03 campaign per NCAA transfer rules. At some point, he decided to return to UNH, where he would play another largely unproductive year in 2003-04 before signing with Edmonton. But in the end, too much time missed in college contributed to a forgettable single pro season in the ECHL, and that was it for his hockey career. Caron eventually returned to UNH to finish his studies and is in the finance/sales industry in the Portsmouth, N.H., area.
Welch, who played all four years at Harvard before signing with Pittsburgh and spending his first two professional seasons between the big club and their AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, was dealt from the Penguins to the Panthers in 2007. After he suffered a serious shoulder injury, he was seeing his longest stretch of NHL games in 2008-09 when he was traded across the state to the Tampa Bay Lightning, but he wasn’t ever able to establish himself in the regular rotation of any of the four NHL teams he played for.
He is now living in Red Deer, Alberta, with his family and training/mentoring young area athletes at the 125,000-square-foot Sports Dome complex he manages, while witnessing to others about his Christian faith and experiences as a pro hockey player. Welch also has been able to use his experiences and resources to give back through economy-enhancing business ventures in the West African country of Ghana.
After Caron and Welch, defenseman Kenny Smith (Stoneham, Mass.) was a standout at Catholic Memorial before playing for the U.S. National Team Development Program in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was drafted 84th overall in the third round by Edmonton after his freshman season at Harvard, going on to finish his degree before embarking on a five-year pro career split between the AHL and ECHL. His final season was with the Charlotte Checkers of the ECHL in 2008-09, and now works in the financial industry in Boston.
Center Michael Woodford (Westford, Mass.), who starred at Cushing Academy with 73 points in 36 games for the Penguins that season, and Hotchkiss School defenseman Brandon Rogers (Rochester, N.H.) were taken with back-to-back picks by the Panthers and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim 117th and 118th overall in the fourth round. Woodford and Rogers both completed four seasons at the University of Michigan together. Woodford played just one professional season in the ECHL in 2005-06, while Rogers went on to play six AHL seasons in Omaha, Norfolk, Houston and Lake Erie before finishing his career in Europe. Rogers won a championship in the Italian pro league with HC Bolzano in 2012.
In Round 5, rugged defenseman Paul Lynch (Salem, Mass.) was drafted by Tampa Bay out of the Valley Junior Warriors of the old EJHL, and he played in Hockey East with the University of Maine and two games at UMass (Amherst) in 2004-05 before turning pro in the ECHL and playing another several nomadic seasons in that league and the Southern Professional Hockey League. In the sixth round, UMass forward Scott Horvath (West Redding, Conn.) went to Colorado with the 184th selection, and he left the NCAA for the OHL, playing six seasons in the ECHL and other lower minor hockey circuits.
Twenty years later, the New England Class of 2001 did not live up to its modest promise at the time but serves as a reminder that the NHL draft process is an inexact science. Injuries/illnesses and circumstances might have conspired to rob several of the players a chance to make more of an impact, or even reach the highest levels they sought.
