It took 22 years but infamous Edmonton Oilers draft pick Marc-Antoine Pouliot has finally got the best of his draft day nemesis, Zach Parise.
For all the unending, sometimes angry criticism that the Oilers got for drafting Quebec junior star Pouliot ahead of Parise, a strong two-way centre in the U.S. National Jr. team program, Pouliot has successfull7 played the long game here. He is superior to Parise in one important hockey category: career longevity.
Pouliot just concluded his 20th season as a pro. Parise’s pro career ended after the 2023-24 season, 19 pro seasons, one in the AHL, 18 in the NHL, where he played 1254 regular sesaon games, scoring 889 points. No doubt — and it’s not close — he was the superior player of the two.
Pouliot played just 192 NHL games, 176 of them with the Oilers, but he’s played 13 seasons as a strong forward in the top Swiss league. At age 39, he was a key player on the Geneve Servettte squad, scoring 22 points in 36 games. Pouliot, who became a Swiss citizen in 2021, has also signed on to play one more year with Geneve.
Team manager Marc Gautschi says of Pouliot: “He remains one of the best players around the opposing cage and on the power play, making a valuable contribution to our offensive production. His experience will also be an important asset in strengthening the group’s chemistry.”
Pouliot’s successful career stood out to me in my annual review of formers Oilers still playing pro hockey. He’s realized some of the potential the Oilers saw in him long ago in the 2003 draft, even as the team’s scouting department of that time has taken no end of abuse for passing on Parise, who quickly developed into an outstanding NHLer.
In 2012, beloved Cult of Hockey writer Bruce McCurdy named Pouliot the fifth worst draft bust all-time for the Edmonton Oilers.
Wrote McCurdy: “The 2003 NHL Entry Draft had been rightly hyped as one of the richest groups of young talent in years. There were any number of future impact players on the board, more than enough to go deep into the first round. The Edmonton Oilers, fresh off another low-seed playoff appearance — a six-game first-round defeat to guess who, the Dallas Stars — were sitting in a pretty decent spot with the #17 choice.”
Forwards taken early in that draft included Eric Staal, Nathan Horton, Thomas Vanek, Milan Michalek, Jeff Carter and Dustin Brown, but the highly-touted Parise was still on the board when it was Edmonton’s turn to pick. Here’s how McCurdy described the moment, with commentator Pierre McGuire salivating on-air for the Oilers to grab him at 17 overall.
Wrote McCurdy: “Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the Oilers doing the picking. First there was a delay, then there was a time-out, then there was a phone call or was it a face-to-face? between Kevin Lowe and Lou Lamoriello. Eventually it was announced that Oilers had indeed made a deal with the Devils. They’d traded down to #22 and had gotten a second rounder as well, albeit a second rounder that was so freaking late it had the rather suspicious number of 68. This in a 30-team league, mind, although I’ll grant you math has never been its strength. Used to be lots of compensatory picks back in the day — and of course, New Jersey had just won the Stanley Cup so their pick was a late one.
“So there was Lou smirking into the mic with Oilers’ pick and of course he took Zach Parise, and of course Zach Parise turned into a star. I could see it coming from the moment Oilers called that timeout.”
In the next few picks, future NHL stars Mike Richard, Corey Perry and Ryan Kesler were taken. Ryan Getzlaf was also still on the board when the Oil drafted 17th.
McCurdy continued: “Once Pouliot turned pro, health and performance issues both started to surface. He spent a few years on the periphery of the Oilers, never really a top nine player, never really a centre or a winger, never really a key contributor to either special team; it just never happened for the guy. Seven years after he was drafted, Poo was gone without so much as a qualifying offer, receiving a “second opinion” in Tampa and a third in Phoenix while spending the lion’s share of his single year with both organizations down in the AHL. This year he’s in the Swiss League, and the dream is all but dead.”
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