The Alexandre Daigle Story.

[Samsquanch]

Give him Croshy's leadership and compete level and he would have been a super star, like in the very upper echelon of players imo,

Thats a huge ask obviously, and not realistic. But given how few f***s he gave about hockey, and that he still managed a 50pt rookie season while giving it the absolute bare minimum level of effort possible - is sort of impressive in a way. And speaks to his talent/potential.

He wasnt a "dumb" player either that was simply scoring off the rush on junior goalies, like say Yakupov ended up being. He had ridiculous vision and playmaking to go along with god given skating abilities. And a sweet set of mitts to boot. His two-way play was non existent, but people seem to forget that Yzerman (his draft day comparable) was guilty of the same thing early on in his career. Point being is that its something that comes with time for those that are willing and dedicated to their craft,

If he wanted it (stardom as a hockey player), it was his for the taking.

 

[Samsquanch]

Inwrote a good long text, and the phone switched it away

But I was in at Daigle was a lot hyped up, cause of junior hockey. He missed a ton of tools to be a complete player. He had speed and was flashy time to time. But nowhere near Bure for example.

He came exactly after the european invasion, and may have been the canadians nee hope for nee dominance or something.

He was actually questioned already before the draft. His Jr. numbers that year was also a let down.

I think too many had that ”next one” dream to highly put.

Thanks to Sidney Crosbys arrivle - wee dont no longrrbtalk avout next ones- thankfully

Thing is, every top draft pick thats been in the spotlight since before their draft year and are being touted as the #1OV pick gets nitpicked and questioned to some degree (think Tavares vs Hedman/Duchene, Hall vs Seguin, Mckinnon vs Drouin/Jones ect). If for nothing else a narrative gets created to make things a bit more interesting come draft day, even if we know its a far fetched idea that a team lets the hyped guy slide.

While no doubt there were some concerns about Daigle pre draft, he was just about as surefire a #1 pick that you can get at the draft. Pronger was the farthest thing from being polished or the Dman he would become one day, and had attitude concerns of his own that teams were aware of. And Kariya and Gratton were considered to be in a clear, well defined tier below Daigle's potential as a player.

 

[SwedishFire]

Thing is, every top draft pick thats been in the spotlight since before their draft year and are being touted as the #1OV pick gets nitpicked and questioned to some degree (think Tavares vs Hedman/Duchene, Hall vs Seguin, Mckinnon vs Drouin/Jones ect). If for nothing else a narrative gets created to make things a bit more interesting come draft day, even if we know its a far fetched idea that a team lets the hyped guy slide.

While no doubt there were some concerns about Daigle pre draft, he was just about as surefire a #1 pick that you can get at the draft. Pronger was the farthest thing from being polished or the Dman he would become one day, and had attitude concerns of his own that teams were aware of. And Kariya and Gratton were considered to be in a clear, well defined tier below Daigle's potential as a player.

Yes, BUT Daigles draftyear point was a lower than everyone wished for.

And the Tavares vd Hednan thing was because Hedman actuallt catched up

 

[Jumptheshark]

On my last thread I told the story of the Fourth Staal brother Jared and talked about how he did in the show and what hes doing now. Since that thread did pretty well, why not tell another cool hockey story!

Warning: This is gonna be a LONG thread so only read if you have time to spare

We all know that just being drafted in the NHL is an honor in itself, but going 1st Overall and being picked before all of the top Hockey Prospects in the entire world is a Dream! The 1st overall selection is only something that every struggling NHL Team dreams of having, like most sports it's decided in a lottery off the hopes of chance, And when the first overall pick is drafted most of the time that player becomes a Superstar! But in Hockey and in Life nothing is guaranteed and the first overall pick doesn't always end up being the next Crosby. Some players put up mind blowing stats in Juniors but can't repeat their success at the Professional level. This is the Story of Alexandre Daigle.

Daigle would start his Hockey Career in 1991 as he would join the Victoriaville Tigers of the QMJHL. And in Juniors he was very quick to stun scouts as he would put up Incredible stats we rarely see from a player. In his first season with Victoriaville he put up 35 goals 75 assists for 110 pts in just 60 games. If you thought that was impressive, the following season he would perform even better as he would put up a whopping 45 goals 92 assists for 137 pts in just 53 games at just 18 years old! At the time, Daigle looked like an absolute prodigy and it was a no brainer that a struggling Ottawa Senators team would take him First Overall in the 1993 NHL Entry Draft. The hype for Daigle was real, he was being compared to great players like Steve Yzerman and Joe Sakic. He was quickly growing a fanbase and things were only looking good for the kid. In his rookie season his stats were no way bad as he would put up 20 goals, 31 assists for 51 pts. He would then go back to Victoriaville the following season for 18 games where he would put up 34 pts. But in the next season, things took a turn for Daigle. Injurys would start to haunt his career as he would only play 97 games the next 2 seasons and would only put up a combined 54 points in that 2 year span. However in the 96-97 season Daigle would start to bounce back as he would score 26 goals and put up 51 pts in 82 games. Things were starting to once again go up for Daigle but quickly the magic dust went away as he would kept getting injured and have declining seasons. And would play for the Flyers, Lightning and Wild where he would put up decent numbers for the amount of games he played but he just could never stay healthy. In the 05-06 season he would play his last year in the league before joining the HC Davos where he would play until 2010.

Summary: Personally after taking a look at his career, I don't think Alex was the bust that many people portray him to be and his downfall wasn't his fault. In this case this was another Eric Lindros situation where Injurys would brutally cause a decline in his career. I believe if Alex could stay healthy for the majority of his stint he could have been regarded as an all-star caliber player in the NHL, I mean despite only playing half a season majority of the time he was still putting up solid numbers for those amount of games. But unfourtently, life just isn't fair.


Where is Alex Today? After looking at an article, at 45 years old he currently runs a movie studio called MTL Grande in Montreal.

Due to rules around here obviously there are large parts of his story that can not be discussed. How much money he lost when he moved to LA to first try his hands at movies is wild

 

[Jumptheshark]

You seem to like writing these things. Thats cool... i think your subject matter might be more appreciated in the history of hockey forum.

Also, doing more than a basic Google search when researching.

 

[Number 57]

No disrespect to the OP, as threads like this can be very interesting, but basically all you did was give us stats on Daigle that we can look up on HockeyDB. When I opened the thread I was getting ready to read tons of interesting stories about Daigle

Daigle's life and career is extremely interesting, probably worthy of a book or a movie. You could have dug up a little more

Thankfully a few posters picked up in the slack in the replies

 

[Number 57]

He was injured so much partly because his lifestyle outside the rink wasn't exactly clean. Dude had a real problem with the sauce. I mean, tough to blame him, everyone telling you you're the greatest, will be the best ever, and socially invited to all the cool parties...at 18, 19, 20. He gets shit on more then he should, he was an nhler, and an above average one. 11/10 given same scenario, Daigle goes 1st overall. Only revisionist history, anyone takes Pronger over him

The legendary party scene of Victoriaville and Ottawa of the early 90's

 

[archangel2]

No disrespect to the OP, as threads like this can be very interesting, but basically all you did was give us stats on Daigle that we can look up on HockeyDB. When I opened the thread I was getting ready to read tons of interesting stories about Daigle

Daigle's life and career is extremely interesting, probably worthy of a book or a movie. You could have dug up a little more

Thankfully a few posters picked up in the slack in the replies

I know there were a lot of article and stories from his time in Los Angeles when he was first starting to try to make it in the movie industry. He lost all his money and that is one reason why he had to make a comeback. He partied hard during those times and picked up the bill on most nights trying to use it as an "in" to the industry. But the people he was trying to impress were more interested in his money than any ideas he had

 

[HFBS]

No disrespect to the OP, as threads like this can be very interesting, but basically all you did was give us stats on Daigle that we can look up on HockeyDB. When I opened the thread I was getting ready to read tons of interesting stories about Daigle

Daigle's life and career is extremely interesting, probably worthy of a book or a movie. You could have dug up a little more

Thankfully a few posters picked up in the slack in the replies

 

[Karl Eriksson]

If Lafreniere picks things up he can potentially match Daigle’s rookie season.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

Daigle is my brother in laws neighbour out in the burbs.

Super nice people. Never would have guessed he was a millionaire.

 

[babylonzoo]

I can agree there because in Hockey you can't just look at what you see on the ice, you need to scout whats off the ice aswell.

Tony DeAngelo is a perfect example for that.

Or that kid/bully the coyotes drafted lol

 

[Stephen]

Here is a fun video of the Ottawa Senators alumni game on Parliament Hill from a few years ago and Daigle is flying all over the ice and scoring a hat trick on the old timers. I don't know if he didn't like the game as much as he had claimed. He had speed to burn, good skills but his processing power wasn't necessarily elite. But I bet if he started his career on a slightly better team and maybe had started his career in the high flying 80s he would have had a much better go of it.

 

[MS]

It wasn't injuries.

He had superlative speed and pretty good playmaking. He was soft and wasn't much of a goalscorer and had zero capacity for two-way play.

I think that even if he had cared he would have been disappointing, but he could have been a 25 goal-65 point player.

I liked him and wanted him to do well in his early years but watching you could see that he absolutely refused to pay the price and often didn't really know where to be.

I remember a quote from Mike Peca after the Sabres swept the Senators in 97 where he had been shadowing Yashin. He said something like, "at the start of the series, they had me on Daigle because he has that speed, but we quickly figured out that he doesn't do anything out there so they moved me to Yashin".

Daigle was like a less engaged, less effective version of Jonathan Drouin and far worse defensively. No exaggeration.

This is 100% correct.

It's incredible that people still think he could have been a superstar.

If he had stayed healthy, he could have had a Martin Havlat career (not that Havlat was terribly healthy himself). Could have been a speedy player with a bit of playmaking ability who hit the 60-75 point mark relatively consistently. Wasn't a great finisher, didn't have elite hockey sense. As noted above, when sharing a rink with Kariya at the 1993 WJCs, Kariya was easily better. Should not have gone #1 overall. If he went #3 or #4 overall where he should have, his career would be judged completely differently.

 

[Big Phil]

Here is a bizarre thing about him. He had a career high 51 points, but did it three times. His rookie season, 1997 and 2004 for whatever reason.

The thing I remember about him was that even when he was young you thought he was a permanent bust. He was 22, 23 years old and it was the equivalent of Macaulay Culkin when he was, say, 16 years old. You know there is no upside to him. He's finished. For whatever reason he was a guy you just got the feeling with by that time.

 

[billbillbill]

Daigle was overhyped for various reasons (handsome, charismatic/quotable, the next big prospect in the hockey card boom, his name was in proximity to Mario Lemieux's because he was French and was very briefly on pace to break Lemieux's record for points in the QMJHL in his draft year) but he was an excellent prospect. Some GMs might have preferred Pronger over Daigle, but that's no snub on Daigle. I like the Kariya comparison. Kariya got "Wayne Gretzky vision" hype but Daigle was a little bigger and "fiery" (he got suspended for a dirty hit in his draft year and undeservedly got Jeremy Roenick comparisons). Kariya and Daigle had almost identical 19 year old seasons in the NHL - Kariya kept improving and Daigle didn't.

I think there's a clear pattern of complacency in Daigle's career. He did not have the mentality to improve/reinvent himself that you need to be a star. Every time the league figures out Ovechkin, he finds new ways to score. Sidney Crosby willed himself to be a top faceoff man. Daigle fought his way back to the NHL and had a good season for Minnesota. Suddenly the drive is gone. He's booted off the Wild in 05/06 and not just demoted but demoted to a different NHL club's farm team so as not to negatively influence the Wild's prospects. Even in Daigle's post-NHL career, his performance dropped off considerably year over year.

Another factor is that Daigle WAS a rush player and a terrible fit for the DPE. Maybe we can excuse him the way we do some of the coke machines (Hugh Jessiman) drafted in the years prior to the "New NHL" in 05/06.

 

[Rapsfan]

What went wrong with Dangle's career? I'm not sure if the timing is right to post this. He was a 1st overall pick in the 90s. Why did he fail in the NHL?

 

[Ishad]

Daigle. He didn’t like playing hockey.

 

[wavaxa2]

Not enough dangling.

 

[SEALBound]

He didn't like playing hockey all that much.

 

[cudi]

They didnt scout the person enough back then. They just saw the insane talent. They missed the lack of drive behind the scenes.

 

[goonybird]

Hockey stopped being fun when he couldn't video game his way through it. Sound familiar?

 

[WarriorofTime]

Fancy dan whose skills didn't translate to the NHL level and wasn't able to gain other skills to compensate. Can make of what you want about reported concerns over his attitude and work ethic, but that is of course, speculative.

 

[HugeInTheShire]

He was as disinterested as they come, although I hate calling him a bust... He actually had a decent NHL career just not for a 1OA

 

[Perfect_Drug]

He's my brother in laws next door neighbor in St.Julie. Good person. Lovely family.

He's given plenty of interviews:
Former Senator Daigle, now 42, has no regrets | Ottawa Sun

He never loved hockey, he was just pretty good at it.

I sorta think someone who doesn't invest the effort, and can still score 20 goals in the DPE is still pretty damn good. He just didn't meet the loft expectations projected onto him, but he was still a decent NHLer, especially in Minnesota.