BUFFALO – On the ice, Brodie Ziemer doesn’t grab your attention right away. The Sabres prospect doesn’t possess that wow factor that makes you jump out of your seat.
“He’s not the fastest skater, he doesn’t have the best shot, he’s not elite in any one category,” Nick Fohr, Ziemer’s coach at the US National Team Development Program, told the Times Herald.
The thing is, Ziemer is above average in most categories. Add everything together and you have a mature, versatile youngster who intrigued the Sabres so much they traded up to draft him in the third round, 71st overall, on June 29.
“He just does so much right,” Fohr said of the winger. “… He’s just very good at everything.”
That includes earning his teammates’ respect. Last year, they voted him captain for two early-season tournaments. Fohr decided to keep the prestigious letter on him all year.
Fohr wasn’t surprised his players chose Ziemer, who plans to play college hockey at Minnesota this upcoming season. His professionalism made him the logical choice.
“He just does so much right all the time, including just every detail, every day, every meeting, he’s just locked in,” Fohr said. “He’s that typical guy that just leads by example and everybody looks to. He gets along with everybody. Everybody respects him.”
That respect helped entice the Sabres to pick him. Assistant general manager Jerry Forton, who’s in charge of amateur scouting, believes Ziemer, 18, will captain the Golden Gophers someday.
“(He is) a player that just makes other players and linemates (better) and really drives … culture there,” Forton said June 29 in Las Vegas following the NHL Draft. “I’m very convinced, we’re all very close on our staff with the University of Minnesota staff. I can almost assure you, he’ll be just like he was at the National Program, he’ll be a future captain at the University of Minnesota.”
Fohr said leadership is the most difficult piece at the NTDP. Everyone arrives at the same age, so there’s no natural hierarchy.
Most players captained teams earlier in their careers and grew up competing against each other.
“But now you put all those alpha male type of guys in one room and it’s who comes out on top, right?” Fohr said. “It’s an interesting process on how it changed throughout the two years. (Ziemer) didn’t start as one of our captains his U-17 years. But he earned that respect in the room as the two years went.”
Ziemer’s actions earned him much of that respect. He’s quiet and mostly leads by example. A few times last season, Fohr told Ziemer during one-on-one meetings the team takes its lead from the captain.
“It’s OK to speak up, and they’re going to listen to you, you know?” Fohr said he told him.
Ziemer, who scored 27 goals and 70 points in 61 games last season, took the words to heart.
“I’m a big lead-by-example guy, but this year I kind of wanted to become more vocal and that’s something I really worked on,” he said June 29 at the draft.
Fohr and Ziemer enjoyed a special relationship thanks, in part, to the captain’s desire to improve and learn from his mistakes.
“He’s always thinking and he’s always wanting to be better,” Fohr said. “So trustworthy. His usability for me as well was just off the charts. I could put him out there in any situation.”
Of course, the 5-foot-11, 196-pound Ziemer occasionally failed. For example, with the NTDP up one goal last season and an extra Clarkson attacker on the ice in the waning seconds, Ziemer grabbed the puck in the defensive zone and immediately shot it.
“Instead of skating a couple of strides because he had space to skate with it and let’s see what happens, he just grabbed it, ripped it for the empty net and it was icing,” Fohr said. “We never touched it again until we pulled it out of the back of the net, and we ended up losing in overtime.”
The next week in practice, Fohr said the team went through the same scenario.
“We showed the importance of being able to take a step or two with the puck and what that can lead to,” he said. “How (by) taking a step or two he had teammates that were going to be in situations to support him and help him, and we probably would’ve skated right down and scored.”
About a month later, a similar late-game situation materialized for Ziemer.
“The puck gets to him, and we saw him literally go to shoot and he remembered, it clicked in his brain, ‘I got to take a step or two with it,’” Fohr said. “And he took a couple steps with it, got his head up, found his teammate, made a pass, he got to the red line, he put it in the back of the net.”
