NHL Entry Draft: Roger McQueen serving up a first-round wild-card
Roger McQueen — a first-round prospect in this week's NHL Draft — has been asked about many things by now.
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Roger, that.
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Turns out his dad, Scott — a former member of the University of Saskatchewan Huskies who played in the Western Hockey League with the Red Deer Rebels and Saskatoon Blades — is not only a big tennis fan, but also a big fan of tennis great Roger Federer.
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'Well, that's what my dad tells me — he's a huge Federer fan, a huge Federer fan,' stresses Roger McQueen. 'He tells me that. I'm not 100 per cent sure, but there's a great chance that I am named after Federer.'
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When it comes to Roger McQueen, however, it's 100 per cent about hockey.
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It's been like that ever since he grew up playing in the Saskatoon Minor Hockey Association's Bobcats zone and later with the Saskatoon AAA Blazers.
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He's gone on to star for the WHL's Brandon Wheat Kings, who selected him fourth overall in the 2021 Prospects Draft, and internationally for Canada at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup, World U-17 Hockey Challenge and World U-18 championship.
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However, the 6-foot-5, 200-pound McQueen enters this year's NHL Entry Draft with both an exclamation mark and a question mark attached to his name.
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Admittedly, he's a bit of a wild-card after missing most of this past season while recovering from a pars fracture of the spine, also known as spondylolysis.
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McQueen doesn't mind being a so-called wild-card. If he is indeed considered one of those 'high-risk, high-reward' prospects, he hopes to reward the NHL team that picks him in a big way.
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'It's kind of cool, in a sense,' he says. 'Obviously, I wouldn't want the injury. But at the same time, it's healed and I'm excited to have a team draft me and have a healed version of me. It's exciting going into the draft and kind of being the wild-card, as everyone says.'
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